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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 9–33

Chapter 1
Against V2 as a general property of Old Romance languages

ORCID logo | University of Lisbon, Portugal
This paper revisits the hypothesis that the verb-second property was a shared feature of the Old Romance languages by investigating Old Portuguese. It demonstrates, on the basis of positive empirical evidence, that Old Portuguese allowed clausal configurations that could not have been derived by a verb-second system. It is shown that clitic placement offers the means to pinpoint items that are categorically excluded from left-peripheral topic positions (non topic items – NTIs). Once NTIs are identified, the distinction between verb-third orders that can be accommodated within a verb-second system and those that cannot becomes clear-cut. It is shown that the test devised to recognize ‘true’ verb-third orders in Old Portuguese produces similar results when applied to other Old Iberorromance languages.
Keywords: verb second, Old Portuguese, clitic placement, verb movement, middle object scrambling, non topic items, Old Spanish, Old Catalan
Article outline
  • 1.A test for verb-secondness: Non topic items (NTIs)
  • 2.Word order: Verb movement, object movement, clitic placement
    • 2.1Common features of Old Portuguese and contemporary European Portuguese: V-to-T; proclisis and enclisis in finite clauses; Clitic Left Dislocation; topic precedes focus
    • 2.2Particular features of Old Portuguese: Middle object scrambling (SOV); discontinuity between clitic and verb (CL-XP-V)
  • 3.NTIs identify V > 2 root clauses that cannot be derived by a V2 grammar
  • 4.A disconfirmed generalization (Benincà 2006)
  • 5.Beyond Old Portuguese
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources of the data
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.01mar
References (79)
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Portuguese
Arthurian Novel [13th century]
DSG – Martins, Ana Maria, Sandra Pereira and Adriana Cardoso. 2014–2015. POS-tagged Demanda do Santo Graal / Parsed Demanda do Santo Graal. CC licensed WOChWEL by Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa. [URL]
JAR – Martins, Ana Maria, Sandra Pereira and Adriana Cardoso. 2012–2015. POS-tagged José de Arimateia / Parsed José de Arimateia. CC licensed WOChWEL by Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa. [URL]
NB: The identification number (ID) of the example sentences extracted from these texts is the ID of the POS-tagged version. The first part of the ID (before the comma) is common to both versions and allows you to easily retrieve the same sentence in the Parsed version.
Chronicle [14th–15th century]
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[no author supplied]
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