Post-Verbal Asymmetries in Spanish

Abstract

Spanish allows its post-verbal subjects to appear in the VSO and VOS configurations. It has been generally assumed that the second order is generated by the adjunction of the subject to the right (Rizzi 1982, Torrego 1984, and Sun_er 1994). This paper explores an alternative to this traditional view in which this order is generated by the scrambling of the objects to the left. Empirical support in favor of this hypothesis comes from certain syntactic asymmetries between VSO and VOS. Some of these asymmetries reflect the fact that the object c-commands the subject in the VOS order but not in the VSO order. In other cases, the asymmetries show that certain types of objects cannot move to the left to produce the VOS order. This is the result predicted by the constrained nature of scrambling. Specifically, there is a parallel between these alternations in Spanish and the same ones described in scrambling languages (e.g., German or Korean) with SOV and OSV alternations. Finally, this hypothesis supports the line of research put forward by Kayne (1994) for word order in UG, according to which right adjunction is not possible.