Constraining Predicate Fronting

Abstract

A number of languages have been argued to establish basic word order by means of VP-fronting (e.g., Kayne 1994, Massam 2001). However, many such analyses overgenerate: some material thought to be VP-internal never appears fronted and must apparently always be stranded (Chung 2005, Massam 2010). Here, I provide novel evidence for VP-fronting in an SVO language, the understudied Polynesian outlier Imere (Vanuatu), motivated by the placement of adverbial particles. But this analysis too faces the stranding problem: VP-fronting cannot drag along any DPs, PPs, or CPs. To solve this issue, I propose that VP-fronting is accompanied by distributed deletion (Fanselow and Ćavar 2001), driven by a constraint that favors realizing only the verb. I extend this analysis to eight other VP-fronting languages, from five language families. In all these languages, what remains in the fronted VP is a structurally reduced dependent, like an adverbial particle or a determinerless object. Building on Clemens 2014, 2019, I adopt a constraint that requires dependents of a head that spell out in the same phase to remain adjacent, thus surviving distributed deletion.