Variation and change in Germanic long-distance dependencies

PhD ceremony: Ms. A. Schippers, 11.00 uur, Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Dissertation: Variation and change in Germanic long-distance dependencies

Promotor(s): prof. J. Hoeksema

Faculty: Arts

Long-distance movement involves displacement of a constituent from a subordinate finite clause into a superordinate clause. It is highly restricted and differs from other types of syntactic displacement in crossing (more than) one clause boundary. A central assumption is that long-distance movement proceeds successive-cyclically, in other words: in small, clause-bound steps.

Ankelien Schippers’s dissertation broadens knowledge of long-distance movement by discussing corpus data and grammaticality judgment data on these constructions in Dutch and English. The focus is on synchronic as well as diachronic variation. Furthermore, attention is paid to a closely related language, German. As it turns out, the three languages under consideration differ in the availability of long-distance movement constructions: the construction appears to be most productive in English, and least productive in German, whereas Dutch is somewhat in between. In German and Dutch, long-distance movement has strongly receded from the second half of the 19th century onwards.

In cases where long-distance movement is not available or not preferred, alternative constructions are used. These alternatives include resumptive prolepsis, extraction from embedded V2 clauses, partial wh-movement and wh-copy constructions. Specific attention is paid to these latter two constructions and their availability in English, Dutch and German, since they have been considered to provide evidence for the existence of successive-cyclic movement. Novel grammaticality judgment data on these constructions in Dutch and English is presented. Schippers argues that they do not involve long-distance movement proper and therefore do not form positive evidence in favor of the idea that long-distance movement proceeds successive-cyclically.