The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

112 The syntax of early Englishallow embedded Verb-Second in the sentential complements of ‘bridge verbs’.These are verbs which can be understood to quote a statement and allow adouble CP complement, in the sense that there is a new Verb-Second structurefollowing a that-complementizer (see e.g. Vikner (1995)). This is illustratedwith (29) from Danish:(29) a. Vi ved at Bo har ikke læst denne bogwe know that Bo has not read this bookb. Vi ved at denne bog har Bo ikke læstwe know that this book has Bo not readc. *Vi beklag at denne bog har Bo ikke læstwe regret that the book has Bo not readWe follow current work in analysing this type of embedded Verb-Second asCP-recursion, which captures the intuition that these embedded clauses areactually quoted main clauses. German also allows this type of embeddedVerb-Second, though only with a subset of bridge verbs and not with the overtcomplementizer dass ‘that’.Since cases like this are embedded clauses with V-movement, the term ‘mainclause’ does not quite seem a felicitous one; Verb-Second clauses of this typeare therefore often referred to as root clauses (clauses that are main clausesfrom an illocutionary point of view, and do not have a filled complementizerposition at D-structure). Non-Verb-Second clauses are called non-root clauses.Verb-Second languages of the type discussed above are variously referred toas C-Verb-Second languages or asymmetric Verb-Second languages. Crucial forthis notion is that Verb-Second is restricted to root clauses: there is a root/nonrootasymmetry for Verb-Second. In this language type, Spec,IP is the canonicalposition for the nominative subject.The second type of embedded Verb-Second is represented by languages likeYiddish and Icelandic. In these languages, embedded Verb-Second occursmore or less freely and is compatible with a base-generated complementizer.This is illustrated in (30) with some Icelandic examples from Rögnvaldson andThráinsson (1990):(30) a. Jón efast um a á morgun fari María snemma á fæturJohn doubts that tomorrow get Mary early up‘John doubts that Mary will get up early tomorrow’b. Jón harmar a essa bók skuli ég hafa lesiJohn regrets that this book shall I have read‘John regrets that I have read this book’There does not seem to be an asymmetry between root and non-root clauseswith respect to V-movement in Icelandic and Yiddish, and it seems that V-movement is not related to the presence of a complementizer. According to