German clause structure involves movement of lexical verbs to functional head positions
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Peer-reviewed linguistic literature and academic texts document that standard generative analyses of German and related Germanic clause structures involve the movement of verbs to functional head positions.
Abstract The syntax of the modern Germanic languages is characterized by a word order pattern whereby the finite verb appears to the immediate right of the first constituent (“verb second” or V2). In canonical verb-second languages (German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish), verb second is limited to main clauses, yielding a main-embedded clause asymmetry, characteristic of the syntax of many Germanic languages. In the standard generative analysis, dating from the 1970s, the derivation of the verb-second pattern involves two ordered steps: (a) verb movement to the complementizer position C and (b) phrasal movement of an arbitrary constituent to the specifier position of the complementizer phrase. While this analysis remains a popular starting point for generative treatments of Germanic verb second, later developments have posed serious problems for the approach. These developments include (a) the articulation of a more detailed structure of the functional domain of the clause, providing a range of possible landing sites for the finite verb in verb-second clauses; (b) higher standards of descriptive and explanatory adequacy, necessitating well-motivated triggers for each individual movement step; (c) the development of the minimalist program, involving a sharper definition of what counts as syntactic operations, allowing for the possibility that certain processes previously considered syntactic are now better regarded as post-syntactic linearization proces
This theses contributes to the growing body of research on the acquisition of complex syntax by young children. Relying on naturalistic and experimental data, I consider the acquisition of complex constructions in German. I assume a weak continuity approach in which the child's phrase marker is gradually expanding and phrase structure trees are built up in a bottom-up fashion, in accordance with current minimalist assumptions. The child's grammar is viewed as both minimal and economical, the phrase marker being projected only as far as is necessary to licence elements within it. Once feature values of a functional category become fully specified, it becomes associated with a lexical item. It is argued that the familiar Verb Second (V2) phenomenon in German involves movement to the functional category IP, rather than CP, contrary to what is often assumed. I assume that what has traditionally been referred to as CP is comprised of features relating to logical mood and subordination, and that verbal inflectional features are located in the node immediately lower in the tree, namely IP. The analysis is supported by the spontaneous speech data of two twin monolingual German-speaking children, for whom it is observed that V2 is acquired relatively early, yet constructions involving the C-system continue to present difficulties. The acquisition of subordinate constructions, particularly relative clauses, is examined in the spontaneous speech data of three children, for whom subordin
main verb moves to a low functional head as in (6b), followed by movement of the VP remnant to a specifier … V-Aux order is derived by movement of VP into the specifier of a functional head which selects the auxiliary … the projection of the lexical category would be a left sister of the functional head and at the same time
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