Linguistic Variation - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2013

This paper argues that Negative Concord is generated by the grammars of all English varieties, but just not “realized” in the standardized variety, in the sense of Barbiers (2005, 2009). I show that Double Negation constructions, wherein two negative elements yield a doubly negated meaning, are formed identically by English varieties that realize Negative Concord and those that do not. Unlike previous Minimalist Agree approaches to English Negative Concord, this proposal accounts for the fact that English varieties generate both Double Negation and Negative Concord constructions. This paper employs Tortora’s (2009, in press) mechanism of feature spreading, and López’s (2009) derivational assignment of the pragmatic feature [contrast], to successfully capture the facts of Negative Concord and Double Negation in English. In so doing, it contributes insight into the representation of sentential negation, and supports the Barbiersian notion that not all grammatical structures are realized in a given variety.

This article elucidates the synchronic and diachronic status of English light verbs. In doing so, it contributes to the debate on the status of light verbs cross-linguistically. Synchronically, light verbs appear to straddle the boundary between lexical and functional categories. This has led to the view that light verbs are a diachronic stage on a grammaticalisation cline from full verb to auxiliary. Another view holds that light verbs are historically a dead-end. In this article I will present synchronic and diachronic data that show that the history of English light verbs does not display signs of grammaticalisation. I will argue that English light verbs are synchronic variants of full verbs.

This paper provides new evidence that verb cluster formation in West Germanic takes place post-syntactically. Contrary to some previous accounts, I argue that cluster formation involves linearly adjacent morphosyntactic words and not syntactic sister nodes. The empirical evidence is drawn from Swiss German verb doubling constructions where intriguing asymmetries arise between ascending and descending orders. The approach additionally solves the cluster puzzle with extraposition and topicalization, generates all of the crosslinguistically attested six orders in the verbal complex and correctly predicts which orders are penetrable in which positions. On a more general level, the paper provides arguments for a derivational treatment of verb cluster formation and order variation and adduces important evidence in favor of a right-branching VP.