The fundamental left–right asymmetry in the Germanic verb cluster

Abstract Cinque (Linguist Inq 36(3):315–332, 2005; Universals of language today. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 165–184, 2009; Functional structure from top to toe. Vol. 9 of The cartography of syntactic structures. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 232–265, 2014a) observes that there is an asymmetry in the possible ordering of dependents of a lexical head before versus after the head. A reflection on some of the concepts needed to develop Cinque’s ideas into a theory of neutral word order reveals that dependents need to be treated separately by class. The resulting system is applied to the probl... Mehr ...