Verb-Initial versus Subject-Initial Clauses in Greek: Eventuality Existentials versus Predication Clauses

Abstract

The paper aims to describe (a) the distribution, (b) the semantic interpretation and (c) the semantic and syntactic derivation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses in Greek. Concerning (a), it is argued that the verb-initial and the subject-initial word orders are in complementary distribution. A particular numeration can be assembled in only one way, i.e. as a verb-initial or as a subject-initial word order. The properties of the numeration that play a role in determining the word order for that numeration include the syntactic type of the predicate, the presence or not of non-arguments, the presence or not of sentential operators, and the mode of presenting information. Concerning (b), it is proposed that the semantic interpretation of verb-initial versus subject-initial clauses can be described as a clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials versus predication clauses. Concerning (c), it is proposed that this clause-type distinction has to do with how the subject and the predicate are put together semantically/syntactically. Namely, it is proposed that in eventuality existentials (the entity denoted by) the subject saturates/is selected by (the property denoted by) the predicate, while in predication clauses it is (the property denoted by) the predicate that saturates/is ‘selected’ by (the second-order property denoted by) the subject. For the proposed analysis to be right, (a) the clause-type distinction between eventuality existentials and predication clauses, (b) the complementary distribution of the two clause types and (c) the semantic/syntactic derivation for the two clause types must be part of UG. What cannot be part of UG is the syntactic manifestation of this semantic distinction across languages.