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WORD ORDER VARIATION, VERB MOVEMENT, AND ECONOMY PRINCIPLES
Author(s) -
Wilder Chris,
Ćavar Damir
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9582.1994.tb00849.x
Subject(s) - linguistics , word order , raising (metalworking) , verb , movement (music) , variation (astronomy) , germanic languages , history , computer science , psychology , mathematics , philosophy , physics , german , geometry , astrophysics , aesthetics
. In Chomsky's Minimalist framework, word order variation reflects different movement options arising from interaction between parametrized morphological properties of functional items and invariant economy principles. In the simplest case, languages vary in whether a given movement (e. g. V‐to‐I‐raising) feeds PF (French) or not (English). We consider more complex cases involving language‐internal word order differences due to construction‐specific movement‐Germanic Verb‐Second, Last Resort Verb fronting in Croatian‐showing how they can be explained using the concept of Early Altruism latent in Chomsky's model. We further propose that (i) not only morphological, but also purely phonological properties of lexical items can trigger movement (clitics in Croatian); (ii) both finite and non‐finite verbs raise to C in LF; (iii) English do‐support is not a Last Resortoperation: instead English ‘simple’ tenses are basically periphrastic, composed of a main verb and a‐sometimes abstract‐auxiliary.