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A question from someone who has only done a timy bit of linguistics: > 3) Some Scandinavian languages have V-to-T movement (where temporal adverbs occur before
by dbaupp 14y ago
A question from someone who has only done a timy bit of linguistics:
> 3) Some Scandinavian languages have V-to-T movement (where temporal adverbs occur before verbs); English lost that a long time ago.
Is this like "Nu ska jag gå" (in Swedish)? If so, I don't understand that English lost it because "Now I will walk" is a fine translation.
- kylebgorman 14y agoA simple diagnostic for V-to-T movement is that an adverb occurs after the subject and a tensed verb. Compare French "Jean embarasse souvent Marie" to English "John often kisses Mary". Linguists have hypothesized since at least the 1950s that verbs are introduced into derivations at a position adjacent to their complements: if they occur between subject and temporal adverb, they presumably got their by raising (because syntax is a tree structure and both Scandinavian and English are largely head-initial, "earlier" in the sentence is also higher in the tree) from base position to the tense (T) position above verbs. Hence "V-to-T movement". If you want to learn which Scandinavian languages have V-to-T and which don't, and you can handle the jargon, check out this paper by Jonathan Bobaljik, a specialist in comparative Germanic syntax and prof at UConn: http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/papers/RealizingGI.pdf http://bobaljik.uconn.edu/papers/RealizingGI.pdf