35.2289, Review: Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages: De Clercq, Haegeman, Lohndal and Meklenborg (eds.) (2023)

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Subject: 35.2289, Review: Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages: De Clercq, Haegeman, Lohndal and Meklenborg (eds.) (2023)

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Date: 19-Aug-2024
From: Pierre-Yves Modicom [pymodicom.ling at yahoo.fr]
Subject: Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax: De Clercq, Haegeman, Lohndal and Meklenborg (eds.) (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.237

EDITOR: Karen De Clercq
EDITOR: Liliane  Haegeman
EDITOR: Terje Lohndal
EDITOR: Christine Meklenborg
TITLE: Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Pierre-Yves Modicom

SUMMARY

The book begins with a very short introduction by the editors (p.
3-6), recalling some working definitions and presenting the
contributions collected in the volume. After that, the first part of
the book is a “presentation of the volume” in two large chapters.
Chapter 1 (“Adverbial resumption in V2 languages : The background”, by
Liliane Haegeman, Karen De Clercq, Terje Lohndal and Christine
Meklenborg (p. 7-42), is a detailed presentation of the matter. This
chapter summarizes what is to be understood under verb-second (V2)
languages and which kinds of verb-third or apparent verb-third (V3)
patterns are attested in Germanic and in older Romance languages. Most
of them involve dislocation, hanging topics or the fronting of a
peripheral, illocutionary autonomous adverbial clause. But at least
some varieties present a wider range of possibilities, such as the
fronting of a non-clausal adverbial phrase, followed by the subject,
usually in pronominal form, and then by the finite verb. In this set
of constructions, the editors isolate a specific kind of V3 pattern:
those involving an adverbial resumptive pronoun, like så in example
(1), from Swedish.
(1)     I går           så      var     vi      i       teatret
        yesterday       så      were    we      in      theatre.DEF
“Yesterday, we went to the theatre.” (quoted from p. 24)

The rest of the introduction is devoted to the typology of
resumptions, highlighting several parameters such as whether the
resumptive has to fill the pre-finite slot or whether it can be placed
elsewhere; whether the resumptive can be modified; whether it is
obligatory or optional. Probably the most important distinction,
however, is the one between specialized and generalized resumptives
(see Meklenborg 2020). Another important aspect is the status of the
initial (resumed) constituent, especially on information-structural
terms.

Chapter 2, “Framesetters and microvation of subject-initial
verb-second” by Ciro Greco and Liliane Haegeman
(tanderso at coloradomesa.edup. 43-77), is a reedition of a previous
contribution, to be found in Woods & Wolfe (2020). It is devoted to
West Flemish, where adverbial adjuncts can be followed by a pronominal
subject and then by the finite verb. These adverbial adjuncts can be
peripheral clauses, but also framesetters. In information-structural
terms, they are topical. The initial adverbial is a primarily external
constituent that is integrated onto a V2 pattern thanks to the fact
that the external adverbial maps some functional coordinates whose
encoding is located in the left periphery of the V2 clause. Another
finding from the study is that subject-initial V2 clauses do not have
the same fine structure in West Flemish and in Standard Dutch: the
Dutch finite verb stands lower in the functional hierarchy of the
clause than the West Flemish finite verb, so that only West Flemish
displays the functional left-peripheral configuration requested for
the V3 pattern.

Part II, “Revisiting the typology of adverbial resumption”, begins
with a paper by Jan Casalicchio and Federica Cognola, “On the syntax
of fronted adverbial clauses in two Tyrolean dialects: The
distribution of resumptive semm” (chapter 3, p. 81-112). The two
dialects under consideration are Meranese, a strict V2 language with
the same kinds of constraints than Standard High German and Standard
Dutch, and Mocheno, a “relaxed V2” language which, in cartographic
term, alternates between FinV2 and ForceV2 (strict V2 languages are
usually considered to be ForceV2). The focus is on the resumptive form
sèmm, originally a distal deictic, which has bleached into a sort of
generalized resumptive, with the important exception that, unlike
canonical generalized resumptives, it can be modified and also appears
in post-finite positions, meaning that it is not fully
grammaticalized. This resumptive is licit only with central adverbial
clauses. This shared feature is all the more interesting since the two
languages otherwise represent two distinct subtypes of V2.

Chapter 4 (“A generalized resumptive in the Ghent variety of East
Flemish?” by Karen De Clercq and Liliane Haegeman, p. 113-144), deals
with a construction in which a temporal adjunct is followed by a
resumptive die, which is a bleached demonstrative article (“that”). An
initial hypothesis would be that die is a generalized resumptive. The
specialized resumptive for temporal adjuncts would be dan. Generally,
Flemish specialized resumptives are phrasal, modifiable and also licit
in post-finite position. None of this is true of die, which can also
co-occur with a specialized resumptive. Further, die does not resume
extrasentential elements, nor does it target topical constituents: it
is actually dubious that it is a resumptive at all. The authors claim
that die is a root complementizer, distinct from the subordinate
complementizer dat by a variety of features.

The next contribution, authored by Barbara Vance, turns to medieval
Romance (Chapter 5, “Resumptive adverbs in Old French and Old
Occitan”, p. 145-164). The chapter is devoted to the distinction
between resumptive adverbs displaying a discourse link to the
subordinate, such as Old French lors or donc, or Old Occitan pueis or
donc, and those which are not linked discursively to the subordinate
clause, such as si (in both languages). The author’s claim is that
D-linked resumptives behave like specialized resumptives, whereas si
is a generalized resumptive. The study pays particular attention to
the placement of argument clitics in the clauses introduced by
resumptives: in both languages, D-linked resumptives occupy the
pre-finite slot alone, and other clitics appear after the verb; si can
be followed by a pre-verbal clitic – an important exception being
concessive contexts expressed by a conditional clause resumed with si:
in that case, si then behaves as a specialized resumptive.

Part III, “Adverbial resumption and the syntax of V2”, begins with a
series of three chapters entitled “Resumption and the syntax of
(non-)integration”. These chapters deal with Germanic languages
(German, Old English, Norwegian) and the resumptive forms under
investigation are etymologically related. The first chapter, authored
by Katrin Axel-Tober, deals with “Adverbial resumption in German from
a synchronic and diachronic perspective” (Chapter 6, p. 167-194). The
starting point of the contribution is the fact that resumptives like
da, dann and so are still quite widely used in the pre-finite slot
after hanging topics or left dislocations, especially when the initial
constituent is a subordinate clause. So is acceptable after speech act
conditionals, which is hardly compatible with the most frequent
analysis as a left-dislocation. So also blocks anaphoric binding
between the subordinate clause and the matrix clause and may have to
be interpreted as an expletive rather than a resumptive. The second
half of the chapter is devoted to a diachronic reconstruction, where
the author argues that instead of left-dislocation, the historical
basis for adverbial resumption in German lies in Old High German
correlative constructions.

The Old English cognates of da and dann, þa and þonne, are at the
heart of the next chapter, “V3 in true V2 contexts and adverbial
resumption in Old English”, by Eric Haeberli and Susan Pintzuk
(Chapter 7, p. 194-220). However, as the authors recall, the syntax of
V2 in Old English is rather complex. Most notably, pronominal subjects
often occur after an initial adverbial constituent and before the
finite verb. Still, clause-initial þa and þonne trigger the
verb-subject order, even in their non-resumptive uses. In resumptive
contexts, þa and þonne tend to be preceded by adverbial clauses, but
also by dislocated nominal arguments or by a combination of
adverbials. Subordinate clauses resumed by þa / þonne are mostly
introduced by gif “if” or by þa or þonne themselves, this time as
subordinators – a pattern strongly reminiscent of Axel-Tober’s claims
in Chapter 6. From the perspective of the volume, the main takeaway of
the study is that Old English þa and þonne still behave as specialized
resumptives.

This is in sharp contrast with Norwegian, which is the focus of
Chapter 8, by Christine Meklenborg and Terje Lohndal (“Adverbial
resumption and scope: A case study of Norwegian”, p. 221-241). The
Norwegian resumptives da and der are specialized ones. The third
resumptive, så, is a generalized one and is not restricted to the
resumption of clausal constituents. The authors show that when the
matrix clause itself contains several verbs, the presence of the
generalized resumptive restricts the validity of the preposed
adverbial modifier to the highest verb of the matrix clause. They
argue that there is a phasal constraint on så-resumption: this kind of
resumption is possible only with movement within the same phase.

The final block in the volume is a series of five chapters entitled
“Adverbial resumption and the articulated left periphery of V2”. In
each of these five chapters, one resumptive is taken as a guiding
thread for the exploration of micro-variation in the fine structure of
the left periphery. Sam Wolfe’s contribution is devoted to the syntax
of the resumptive si across medieval Romance languages (ch. 9,
“Resumption in medieval Romance: Reconsidering si”, p. 245-266).
Wolfe’s central claim is that the variation in the syntax of si bares
witness of the fine typology of V2 systems (and corresponding, of the
microvariation in the hierarchy of left-peripheral triggers for V3). A
thorough examination of si-clauses leads to a fine hierarchy (p. 264)
and more generally to the conclusion that the nature of the V2
“bottleneck” in a given language does not account for the entire
spectrum of possibilities: one also has to take into account the
syntactic mapping of information-structural mechanisms, especially
those surrounding topics. In Chapter 10, Cecilia Poletto zooms in to
one of these language-specific si-markers: Old Italian sí (“Why is it
so? An analysis of the V3 cases after sí in Old Italian”, p. 267-286).
Poletto’s claim is that the V3 typology of Old Italian is determined
by the fact that the Old Italian left periphery is split into three
great fields: the finite verb, she claims, targets a position in the
lowest of these three field, and V2 violations are licensed by the
presence of framesetters or topics in a higher position. Poletto
defends an adverbial reading of sí, against interpretations as an
expletive or a continuity marker. For her, adverbial sí resumes
scene-setting elements and its categorial status explains why it
operates from the lowest layer of the left periphery.

Chapter 11, by Anders Holmberg, is devoted to “The syntax of the V3
particle så in the Swedish left periphery” (p. 287-312). In Swedish,
så can resume any adjunct while being placed in the prefinite slot,
yielding a V3 surface order. Interestingly, så is in complementary
distribution with clitic left dislocation. This leads Holmberg to
sketch an analysis where så is the morphological realization of a
complex head in the left periphery, which is also active in clitic
left dislocation. The various features proposed for the head account
for the diversity of phenomena investigated in the chapter, which
concludes with a small set of data from Fenno-Swedish and elements of
interpretation for the micro-variation observed there. Moving on to
Icelandic, Chapter 12 discusses “the XP-þá-construction and V2” (by
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson, p. 312-326). While presenting similarities
with the så-construction discussed above, the þá-construction is
characterized by further restrictions, most notably on locative
adjuncts. Jónsson argues that þá cannot be taken as a grammatical head
(unlike så). Still, the þá-constructions rely on exactly the same
mechanisms as clitic left dislocation, similarly to så in Chapter 11.

The final chapter (Chapter 13, by Benjamin L. Suckin and Olivier Bunk,
p. 327-354) discusses “noncanonical V3 and resumption in Kiezdeutsch”,
the urban vernacular dialect of German attested in Berlin. Kiezdeutsch
is well-known for its capacity to build declarative utterances with
the order Topic – Subject – Verb. But the authors also document the
existence of adverbial resumption with da or dann, including after
hanging topics and framesetters. This leads them to affirm that
Kiezdeutsch is a ForceV2 system like Standard German, but with a
different structure of the left periphery, presented on p. 351. The
key difference between Kiezdeutsch and Standard German concerns the
FrameP slot of the left periphery and it accounts for the Kiezdeutsch
resumptive patterns and for the specific resumptive constructions
documented in the chapter.

EVALUATION

Verb-third phenomena in Germanic and Romance verb-second languages
have drawn considerable attention in the last years, at least since
the publication of Wolfe (2020)’s monograph and the studies collected
in Woods & Wolfe (2020). In many cases, the border between V3 with
adverbial resumption and clitical dislocation is hard to draw. This
has important consequences, because dislocated, clearly
extrasentential elements do not raise the same theoretical issues as,
for instance, the topic – subject – verb construction documented in
several languages like Kiezdeutsch, or the stacking of arguments moved
together from a lower part of the clause into the pre-finite slot.

For that reason, the present volume is a very useful contribution to
the clarification of the field, as it isolates and thoroughly
discusses a matter whose theoretical relevance should not be mixed up
with other V3 phenomena. The question whether adverbial resumption can
be reduced to clitic left dislocation is directly addressed throughout
the volume, from a variety of perspectives. Several contributions show
framesetters and hanging topics, which do not exactly behave like left
dislocations, are also eligible to this construction. The common
denominator is the fact that these are all extrasentential elements
with a specific discourse status. Note, however, that some varieties
evoked here also allow non-topical, non-framesetting material in the
initial slot of the V3 pattern, such as foci (in Old Sicilian).

Another fruitful strain of thought is to oppose specialized to
generalized resumptives. It is still tempting to dismiss V3 with a
specialized adverbial resumptive as an unspectacular, well-described,
information-structurally driven pattern that does not raise particular
questions for the analysis of V2. But for generalized resumptives, the
stakes are much higher, as shown by several contributions in this
volume: some of them are hardly resumptive at all, and show properties
that are reminiscent of positional fillers. They are grammaticalized,
and their status as constituents can be cast into doubt: while this
formal deficiency could make the trouble for V2 less urgent, it leads
to further question on the function and the status of these items.
This is certainly the most important takeaway of this volume:
adverbial resumption, far from being a trivial phenomenon, can be used
as a test revealing significant micro-variation in the fine structure
of the clause – for that reason, non-generativists shouldn’t shy away
from the consistent cartographic mantle used in the volume. This is
also the single thing I actually missed in the volume: the
introduction is a very useful and very clear panorama of current
theoretical issues surrounding adverbial resumption in V2 languages,
except for the fact that the debates on the typology of V2 are not
addressed that much. One may or may not be convinced by the
distinction between ForceV2 and FinV2: the fact is that most
contributions of the volume use it or discuss it. To some extent, it
is the guiding thread of the last series of five chapters. While
presenting the general problem of V2, the introduction would have
benefited from a more straightforward discussion of that typology.

The second desideratum is a natural consequence of the fact that many
contributions in the volume rely on synchronic data taken from
varieties where correlative constructions are rather scarce: the link
between adverbial resumption and correlation is addressed mostly in
one chapter, by Katrin Axel-Tober. But she actually shows that
correlation and adverbial resumption are most likely linked at least
historically. This matter has already drawn some attention in the last
years (see, for instance, Catasso 2021 or Links’s 2018 dissertation).
This should be a point of interest for future work: one might think of
correlation as a plausible ancestor or cousin to specialized
resumption, arguably the less interesting type of resumption. But at
least in Germanic, given the ubiquity of tha/da/þa,
thonne/dan/dann/þonne or so/så in the patterns investigated, all of
which could also be used as subordinators at some time, including
correlation into the picture could reserve further surprises.

REFERENCES

Catasso, Nicholas. 2021. How theoretical is your (historical) syntax?
Towards a typology of Verb-Third in Early Old High German. Journal of
Comparative Germanic Linguistics 24, 1–48.
Links, Meta. 2018. Correlative constructions in earlier English:
Clause structure and discourse organisation. LOT Publications.
Meklenborg, Christine. 2020. Adverbial resumptive particles and Verb
Second. In Woods & Wolfe (2020), p. 90-125.
Wolfe, Sam. 2020. Verb second in Medieval Romance (Oxford Studies in
Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 34). Oxford : Oxford University
Press.
Woods, Rebecca & Sam Wolfe (eds.). 2020. Rethinking verb second.
Oxford :  Oxford University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pierre-Yves Modicom is a full professor of Germanic linguistics at the
University of Lyon 3, France. His research is devoted to grammatical
semantics and the interface between syntax, pragmatics and information
structure in Germanic languages



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