Verbal breakups and the interaction between syntactic structure and processing Lotte Hendriks, 3173240 Master’s thesis Linguistics: the study of the language faculty Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS Utrecht University Supervisor: Prof. dr. L.C.J. Barbiers Second reader: Dr. J.M. van Koppen August 2013 Verbal breakups ABSTRACT This thesis reports on a study of verb cluster interruptions; a phenomenon that shows great variation across languages. This variation will be shown to be fairly systematic, as it is the direct result of interactions of different components of human cognition; namely syntactic structure and processing. It will be argued that different types of elements that are allowed within verb clusters in different languages can be predicted from a Verb Cluster Interruption Hierarchy, which follows directly from a combination of syntactic and processing principles. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe thanks to many people. Particularly, I like to express my thanks to the many informants who provided me with the data on which this thesis is grounded. My research could not have been carried out without their help. For that reason, I thank my informants in Flanders and the Netherlands for their patient participation, as well as the Meertens Panel informants for their partaking in the online questionnaire, and to Rob Zeeman who has made this possible. Also, a special thanks goes out to Marc van Oostendorp and the Taalpost administrators for placing a call for dialect speakers. I further thank my supervisor, Sjef Barbiers, for his helpful comments, feedback and suggestions throughout the entire process of this thesis. Furthermore, I thank Mattis van den Bergh for his support with the statistical procedures used in this thesis. In addition, I thank my future fellow PhD students; Heidi, Jolien and Marko, who made the effort to discuss the content of this thesis with me, and I thank Heidi additionally for proofreading my thesis. Finally, and above all, a big thanks goes out to my (step)parents and close friends, who were there for me during my linguistic career so far, as well as Vincent, who made the final steps of my thesis much less lonely. I am very grateful to all of you for your support; you often believed in me more than I ever did. ii Table of contents TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Verb cluster interruptions .........................................................................................................................1 1.2 Variation in the construction ...................................................................................................................1 1.3 Research goals ...........................................................................................................................................4 1.4 Overview ....................................................................................................................................................5 2. Expectations ................................................................................................................................. 7 2.1 A formal approach ....................................................................................................................................7 2.1.1 The Dutch word order ........................................................................................................................7 2.1.1.1 Dutch as a head-final language .....................................................................................................9 2.1.1.2 Dutch as a head-initial language ...................................................................................................11 2.1.1.3 The tribulations of incorporation .................................................................................................13 2.1.1.4 The mixed order approach ............................................................................................................15 2.1.2 Syntactic structure ...............................................................................................................................17 2.2 A functional approach ..............................................................................................................................22 2.3 Interaction effects .....................................................................................................................................24 2.3.1 Processing & syntactic position..........................................................................................................24 2.3.2 Processing & internal syntactic structure...........................................................................................26 3. Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 30 3.1 Goals ..........................................................................................................................................................30 3.2 Design ........................................................................................................................................................30 3.3 Material ......................................................................................................................................................31 3.4 Informants .................................................................................................................................................32 3.5 Statistical analyses ......................................................................................................................................32 4. Results ........................................................................................................................................... 34 4.1 What are the properties of verb cluster interruption? ............................................................................34 4.2 Which factors play a role in verb cluster (interruption) formations? ....................................................38 4.2.1 Processing & syntactic position..........................................................................................................39 4.2.1.1 The base-generated position .........................................................................................................39 4.2.1.2 Scrambling ......................................................................................................................................43 4.2.1.3 Intermediate conclusion: processing & syntactic position .........................................................46 4.2.2 Processing & syntactic structure ........................................................................................................48 4.2.2.1 The minimal domain .....................................................................................................................48 4.2.2.2 Stranded prepositions ....................................................................................................................53 4.2.2.3 Intermediate conclusion: processing and syntactic structure .....................................................54 4.2.3 A grammatical hierarchy .....................................................................................................................55 4.3 What can explain the observed variation in the use of the construction? ............................................55 4.3.1 Inter-speaker variability .......................................................................................................................55 4.3.2 Cross-linguistic variation .....................................................................................................................57 5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 62 References ......................................................................................................................................... 66 iii Verbal breakups Appendices ........................................................................................................................................ 71 Appendix I. Background participants ................................................................................................... 71 Appendix II. Questionnaire round 1 ...................................................................................................... 74 Appendix III. Questionnaire round 2 ...................................................................................................... 85 Appendix IV. Meertens panel survey ....................................................................................................... 87 iv Introduction 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 VERB CLUSTER INTERRUPTIONS Many west-Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Flemish and Swiss-German, have a head-final word order in embedded clauses. In these languages, multiple verbs group together in a sentence final verb cluster, as in (1).1 (1) Ik vind dat iedereen moet kunnen lezen. I find that everyone must can read ‘I think that everyone must be able to read.’ When an object appears in embedded clauses, it generally precedes all verbs. In certain Dutch dialects, however, non-verbal material can occur within a verb cluster.2 (2) a. Ik vind