The Derivation of VO and OV (review)

This volume contains eleven papers that grew out of a 1998 University of Tromsø workshop on analyzing VO word orders, or headedness issues more generally, plus an elaborate, paper-length ‘Introduction’ (1–26) by the editor. Svenonius offers some valuable background on the theme of the book, introduces the major theoretical issues employed here (antisymmetry, universal base hypothesis, mirror effects), and puts the contributions into perspective, also pointing to some potential tensions and points of reconciliation.

In ‘Word order, restructuring and mirror theory’ (27–43), Michael Brody presents the essence of his framework and points out that it does not allow covert incorporation. Applying his theory to Romance restructuring and Hungarian verbal clusters, he aims to show that this approach is superior to covert head movement analyses.

Hubert Haider, ‘OV is more basic than VO’ (45–67), defends his claim that head-final structures are less complex than head-initial ones. This means that VO is the result of head movement, in direct competition to the antisymmetric universal base hypothesis which assumes all structures to be head-initial and derives head-final (OV) ones by massive phrasal movement.

In ‘Remnant movement and OV order’ (69–96), Liliane Haegeman proposes a modified antisymmetric analysis of verb-final patterns in West Germanic embedded clauses. It involves two steps: first, short movement of the verb (morphologically-driven V-to-I movement) and second, remnant XP-movement (namely, of VP to the specifier of a high TP).

Knut Tarald Taraldsen addresses ‘V-movement and VP-movement in derivations leading to VO-order’ (97–122) from the perspective that all Germanic languages exhibit overt argument movement. He proposes that all arguments leave the VP, leading to an intermediate OV order (the surface structure in German). VO languages are then derived by subsequent (remnant) VP-raising across all objects.

In ‘Deriving OV order in Finnish’ (123–52), Anders Holmberg also employs remnant XP-movement. The major claim is that head-final orders in the mixed order language Finnish are derived by movement of the complement of a head to the specifier of that head in a right-branching structure.

Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir, in ‘Parameter change in Icelandic’ (153–79), evaluates various accounts of the loss of OV orders in the history of Icelandic. Her proposal is also in line with an antisymmetric approach that involves remnant movement, in this case remnant VP-preposing. It further allows (initial) comparative correlations in Germanic with regard to the issues at hand.

Sjef Barbiers looks at ‘The right periphery in SOV languages: English and Dutch’ (181–218) from a modified antisymmetric point of view. He considers both languages to be OV underlyingly (except for propositional CPs, which are generated to the right of the verb) but only English to have overt short V-movement.

Naoki Fukui and Yuji Takano, in ‘Nominal structure: An extension of the symmetry principle’ (219–54), contrast Japanese and English. After applying their symmetry principle to the analysis of relative clauses, they argue that a variety of differences between the two languages fall out from one parametric difference, N-to-D raising (which Japanese lacks as it doesn’t have a D-category).

In his own contribution, Peter Svenonius shows that ‘Quantifier movement in Icelandic’ (255–92) is not subject to Holmberg’s Generalization. This could have interesting consequences for a derived analysis of OV-orders in West Germanic, as Holmberg’s Generalization is operable not only in related contexts in Norwegian but also in all other relevant contexts in Icelandic.

In ‘Licensing movement and stranding in the West Germanic OV languages’ (293–326), Roland Hinterhölzl investigates the distribution of syntactic elements beyond arguments, arguing that these elements also move out of their vp-internal position. such licensing movement can be reconciled with stranding by a particular...