Abstract
Abstract
This article sketches a new analysis of the diachronic development found in many West Germanic languages from a
hybrid VO-OV order to a rigid OV or VO order. The discussion departs from the discussions in Struik & Van Kemenade (2020/2022) and Struik & Schoenmakers (to appear) on the diachronic development of English/Dutch, which focus on the
role of object shift and information structure. My interpretation of their data will be based on an earlier analysis of the
Germanic OV and VO languages in Broekhuis (2008: § 2.4; 2011). The main conclusions are the following. First, the change from the historical hybrid VO-OV systems
to the rigid OV and VO systems of the present-day languages is due to changing the “setting” [±V‑to‑v] to the
more categorical ones [−V-to-v] or [+V-to-v]. Second, the role of object shift in the diachronic
development is modest; it is not involved in the development of the OV-languages at all and involves only the (partial) loss of
object shift in the VO-languages (contra Struik et al.). Third, the encoding of the information-structural
new-given distinction remains constant in that the interpretation of (un)scrambled nominal objects does not
change over time (contra Struik & Schoenmakers).
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Food Science,Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics