Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages

This volume provides both an accessible and general introduction to verb-third (V3) patterns in V2 languages, as well as an in-depth discussion of the not so well-known V3 patterns that arise with adverbial resumptives. The following languages are covered: Medieval Romance, Old Italian, Old English, diachronic and synchronic varieties of German, varieties of Flemish and Dutch, Icelandic, varieties of Swedish, and Norwegian.

While Verb-third (V3) patterns have long been studied in verb-second (V2) languages, a similar pattern in which an initial adverbial constituent is resumed by a clause-internal element has been much less studied. The latter is referred to as ''adverbial resumption'' and it also has the character of being a V3 phenomenon. Therefore, the pattern is labelled ''adverbial V3 resumption'' or ''adverbial V3.'' The present volume is an up-to-date overview of the subject featuring case studies of individual languages that display certain patterns of V3. The authors discuss this pattern in relation to several different languages, addressing among other things issues of microvariation in contemporary varieties and diachronic variation. The book covers Medieval Romance, Old Italian, Old English, diachronic and synchronic varieties of German, varieties of Flemish and Dutch, Icelandic, varieties of Swedish, and Norwegian. Through analyses of adverbial resumptive V3 orders in Germanic and Romance, the contributors explore the nature of V2: while adverbial resumption only occurs in varieties that observe the V2 rule, in itself it leads to apparent violations of linear V2 order, namely to V3 orders. Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages provides comparative analyses which touch upon the nature of sentence-external versus sentence-internal adjuncts, and the fine-grained architecture of the clausal functional hierarchy. These papers constitute a valuable contribution to the theoretically important topics of V2 and V3 that will be of interest to comparative linguists, Germanic linguistics, Romance linguists, and anyone working on formal grammar in general.