PP-over-V meets Universal 20

Abstract It has proven hard to force a decision between rival analyses of Universal 20. This is because new typological data are scarce, and the number of syntactic tests applicable in the noun phrase is relatively small. I therefore consider a related set of facts that involve language-internal word order variation in the verb phrase. I first show that the pattern of grammatical and ungrammatical orders in Dutch verb phrases containing three PPs closely matches the pattern of attested and unattested orders in the noun phrase. I then use the distribution of the particle pas ‘only’ to argue tha... Mehr ...