Is German V-to-C Movement Really Semantically Motivated? Some Empirical Problems

Abstract

1. The central issue for a linguistic theory of sentence types is to what extent their meanings (‘sentence moods’) can be compositionally derived from their form. T[ruckenbrodt]'s paper is a valiant, and altogether fascinating attempt to identify a specific contribution of the central formal feature of German sentence types – verb position viz. finite verb movement to C (V-to-C ) – to these meanings. His central claim is that V-to-C is triggered by a context index in C containing crucial sentence mood elements that must be checked in order to yield the appropriate illocutionary interpretations of V-in-C root clauses. In short, according to T, German V-toC has a purely semantic viz. illocutionary motivation. It is this central claim that I will take issue with in the following.