Feature 27. Placement of clausal arguments

found in question(s): 61, 62

Definition and illustration

The placement of clausal arguments often diverges from the placement of non-clausal arguments. For example, even though object NPs in English are strictly adjacent to the verb (1a), object clauses are preferrably extraposed to the end of the sentence (1b). This toy example also shows that this effect cannot be wholly reduced to the law of growing constituents since the clausal object is shorter than the NP.

(1)

In OV languages, clausal arguments are often preposed to the beginning of the sentence, opposing the law of growing constituents. Some OV languages also extrapose clausal arguments to a position after the verb, so even though German object NPs cannot occur postverbally, object clauses are at least very much degraded in preverbal position:

(2)

The postverbal placement of clausal arguments in OV languages had been used to argue for an underlying VO order in the past (see Zwart 1993, based on Kayne 1994). Nowadays, clausal extraposition is generally motivated as a device to avoid center-embedding (Yadav et al. 2022).

The difference in placement between clausal and non-clausal arguments has not been thoroughly documented before. Clausal extraposition is mostly known as a Germanic phenomenon and clausal preposition has not been thoroughly studied to our knowledge. This feature explores this dimension, allowing for future insights into these phenomena.

For OV languages, we predict that clausal arguments tend to appear in the sentential peripheries. Based on previous results, we predict that clausal arguments can appear postverbally even when no other category can appear postverbally in a language (Pregla 2024, chapter 5).

Questions 61 and 62 explore the placement of clausal argument.

Correlations

Question 61 investigates whether clausal objects can occur in their regular argument position or have to be extraposed (= disloacted to the right). We expect dislocation to be more pervasive in OV-languages:

Question 62 investigates whether clausal arguments can occur in their regular argument position or have to be fronted. We expect fronting to be more pervasive in OV-languages:

References