Verb-second in grammar, processing, and acquisition : What you see is not what you get

Abstract

The verb second (V2) phenomenon received a lot of attention in last decades. By now, it is widely accepted among syntacticians that the finite verb originates from a base position and is moved into the left periphery of the clause. However, it still remains to be resolved why the verb has to move. One particular aspect of V2-movement is that such a prominent formal transformation seems to be independent of the meaning of the moved element. V2- movement applies generally and affects only the finite verb irrespective of whether it is a lexical verb as in "Ich höre ein Lied" ‘I hear a song’, an auxiliary such as "habe" ‘have’ in "Ich habe ein Lied gehört" ‘I heard a song’, or a part of a particle verb such as "auf-hören" ‘stop, lit. up-hear’ in "Ich höre zu singen auf" ‘I stop singing’. The present work addresses the question which role the lexical content of the moved element plays during sentence processing. The main answer is that the lexical content of the V2-verb is interpreted only at the end of the clause, i. e. at the base position of the finite verb. The investigations are carried out on three levels: grammar, sentence processing, and language acquisition.