Search results for "phase edge"

Parameterizing 'lexical subject-finite verb' inversion across Verb Second languages: On the role of Relativized Minimality at the vP edge

2020

By discussing novel data from two Dolomitic Ladin languages spoken in Northern Italy, Badiotto and Gardenese, we show that in these Verb-second languages subject-finite verb inversion i) is constrained by the syntactic (adverb or object) and discourse (focus or topic) nature of the sentence-initial constituent, and by the discourse status of the DP subject. We demonstrate that in both varieties subjects in inversion either appear in a FocusP of the vP periphery (Belletti 2004, Poletto 2010) or in an A position in the IP layer, and that the observed distribution of inversion follows from two universal constraints of movement affecting extraction through the vP edge: a) cyclicity (extraction …