The Flexible Nature of Verb Movement

This thesis looked at differences in verb placement across languages. On the basis of
the data presented in chapter 1, I set out to develop an account of verb movement
parametrization in declarative clauses. In this attempt, I tried to formulate hypotheses
that not only account for the correlations observed but are falsifiable as well. The
central claim is that cross-linguistic differences fall out from the interplay of universal
constraints and language-specific factors that are independently motivated. Hence, the
extent to which the present theory improves over standard analyses in this respect
largely determines its success. This final chapter summarizes the main results and
spells out the most important conceptual and empirical advantages.

The main hypothesis of this thesis is that verb movement is an operation that
takes place in order to project a particular feature of the verb. There is no longer a
prefabricated head position that attracts the verb. Rather, it is the verb itself that takes
the initiative. Output conditions will force the verb to move. They can demand that a
particular feature be visible in a particular structural position that does not correspond
to the position in which the verb is initially inserted. Hence, verb movement becomes
inevitable. Irrespective of one’s formulation of output conditions, this view on
functional structure has a number of conceptual advantages.