Verb clusters in North Germanic: A Spanning analysis
Peter Svenonius
July 2022 

Verbs in Norwegian and other North Germanic languages cluster at the left edge of the verb phrase, when V2 is controlled for. This clustering has the superficial appearance of “lowering” of auxiliaries (including modals) to be adjacent to the main verb. I propose a general account of the PF linearization of spans (head-chains) which handles the North Germanic cases, and extends readily to other cases beyond North Germanic. The mechanisms necessary for these cases treat phenomena that are problematic for an account in terms of head movement, and render head movement unnecessary even for more straightforward cases such as subject-aux inversion in English, V2 in Germanic, and French-style V-to-T.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006744 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	submitted
keywords:	span, spans, spanning, head movement, verb cluster, v2, linearization, spell-out, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [July 2022]
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