Abstract
Certain recently-attested varieties of Germanic V2 languages are known to deviate from the strict V2 requirement characteristic of the standard. This is the case, for example, for Kiezdeutsch, a new German dialect, as well as urban vernacular varieties of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: descriptively speaking, in these varieties, subject-verb inversion may be absent under certain well-defined conditions. In this article I outline those conditions and the type of syntactic analysis required to account for them, claiming that an articulated left periphery is needed to account for the findings. The similarity of the V3 patterns found in these new varieties, which are geographically isolated from each other but which share a characterization in terms of the demographics of their speaker groups, invites a diachronic account in terms of language contact. I argue that transfer cannot account for V3, but that a scenario of sequential simplification and complexification is able to do so. Finally, turning to Old English, which exhibits similar (though not identical) V2/V3 alternations, I argue that a similar synchronic analysis can be upheld and that its diachronic origins may well also have been similar—a case of using the present to inform our approach to the past.
Highlights
Most modern Germanic varieties, with the notable exception of English, are characterized by the well-known verb-second (V2) constraint in main clauses: (1a–c) illustrate for standard German
Ganuza (2008: 62–64) analyses 10,953 subordinate clauses produced by her large sample of Swedish Urban Vernacular informants, and finds that 99.9% of them are standard-like in their word order; her focus group did not produce deviations from standard Swedish word order in the direction of V3 (2008: 71)
It is not clear that the profile of preverbal subjects in L2 varieties is that of familiar topics; rather, SV order seems to be more general in interlanguage.15. Another indication that imperfect L2 acquisition cannot be the whole story is that Dutch Urban Vernacular, despite being in many respects similar to the other Germanic urban vernaculars discussed in this article both linguistically and sociolinguistically, does not productively feature V3, and is not stereotypically associated with this word order (Freywald et al 2015: 86–87)
Summary
Most modern Germanic varieties, with the notable exception of English, are characterized by the well-known verb-second (V2) constraint in main clauses: (1a–c) illustrate for standard German. Morgen gehe ich einkaufen tomorrow go shopping c. *Morgen ich gehe einkaufen tomorrow go shopping ‘Tomorrow I am going shopping.’. I suggest that West Saxon OE V3 may have been an innovation, and that the circumstances under which it developed may have been somewhat similar to those of the modern urban vernaculars.
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