When Particles Won't Part - CUNY Graduate Center

Marcel den Dikken — When Particles Won’t Part
(51) a. ? *Peter misverstaat zijn vriendin (Dutch)
b. *Peter verstaat zijn vriendin mis-
But there nonetheless are cases in which splitting occasionally seems to slightly improve the result of
performing V2 on the entire [Prt–Prt–V] complex in Dutch as well — to the extent that anything goes at all
in examples like (44a) and (44b), the best result (relatively speaking) is achieved by stranding both particles
inside the VP and raising just the verb to V2–position:
(52) a. ? *ze melden hun dochter voor aan (Dutch)
they report their daughter pre- on
b. ?? ze drukken het artikel heraf
they print the article re-off
I hasten to add that neither of the sentences in (52) comes close to deserving the predicate ‘grammatical’ ;
but especially in the case of the b–examples in (44) and (52) there seems to be an improvement when the
particles are stranded.
Basically, however (setting this slight effect of stranding aside), what we are confronted with is
ineffability — cases in which nothing works. That is the conundrum that the West-Germanic double particle
verbs present us with. And beyond this ineffability problem, the even larger conundrum is that there is
variation within the set of double particle verbs in West-Germanic when it comes to V2–ability, and that the
Scandinavian languages have absolutely no problem with double particles undergoing V2. These are the
puzzles we have to face.
In our search for an account of the V2 restriction on double particle verbs, let us first draw up a fuller
picture of the empirical lie of the land for Dutch double particle verbs. 17 As the paradigm in (44) already
suggests, we need to distinguish four separate types of double particle verbs, with respect to the inherent
affixality of the particles involved. In Type I (the vooraanmelden type), neither particle is inherently affixal
— i.e., both voor and aan in principle occur as free-standing particles (though aspectual voor in the sense
of pre- is always prefixal). Type II involves a prefixal aspectual particle and a potentially free-standing 2-Prt.
Type III is the combination of a potentially free-standing left-hand particle (although, once again, in their
incarnations as aspectual particles they are in fact always prefixal) and a prefixal 2-particle. And finally, Type
IV features two inherently affixal particles. A look at the facts in (53) reveals that Types I, II and IV behave
uniformly with respect to V2–ability, but that Type III is a mixed bag: some verbs in this class (like oververwarmen
in (44c)) are quite infelicitous in V2–constructions, others forcing splitting or fronting as a complex. 18
(53) the four types of double particle verbs under Verb Second (Dutch)
DOUBLE PARTICLE VERB TYPE VERB SECOND OF COMPLEX VERB VERB SECOND WITH STRANDING
Type I (voor-aan-melden) r (cf. (54a)) ?r (cf. (54b))
Type II (her-af-drukken) r (cf. (55a)) ?? (cf. (55b))
Type IIIa (voor-ver-kopen)
Type IIIb (door-ver-kopen)
Type IIIc (over-ver-hitten)
r (cf. (56a))
r (cf. (57a))
? (cf. (58a))
?r (cf. (56b))
T (cf. (57b))
r (cf. (58b))
Type IV (her-ver-delen) T(cf. (59a)) r (cf. (59b))
16