Verb second in weil-clauses: Embedded V2 and the syntax ...

Verb second in weil-clauses:
Embedded V2 and the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface
Mailin Antomo
The canonical distribution of Verb second (henceforth V2) and V-final in German is as
follows: The finite verb appears in the sentence final position in subordinate clauses and in
the second position in main clauses. Yet, in spoken German V2-clauses can replace the
standard V-final clauses in certain well-defined contexts:
(1) a. Daniel kommt zu spät, weil er den Bus verpasst hat.
Daniel comes too late, because he the bus missed has.
b. Daniel kommt zu spät, weil er hat den Bus verpasst.
Daniel comes too late, because he has the bus missed.
The V2 realisations of weil-clauses are subject to numerous syntactic restrictions: verb
raising is blocked if the weil-clause is clause initial; furthermore, V2 is impossible if the weilclause
is in the scope of negation or in case of variable-binding by a quantifier. Along with
Uhmann (1998), I interpret these observations as providing sufficient evidence to treat V2
weil-clauses paratactically. Following Gärtner’s (2001) analysis of V2 relative clauses, I
propose a paratactic phrase πP whose head π 0 is occupied by the conjunction weil:
πP
CP1 π`
π 0 CP2
weil
Hence, V2 weil-clauses are syntactically disintegrated structures since they are not element
of the matrix CP. Both arguments of the conjunction weil are full CPs.
V2 weil-clauses do not only differ in their syntactic behavior from standard V-final weilclauses.
The syntactic differences go hand in hand with systematic interpretational
differences between V2 weil-clauses and V-final weil-clauses. My analysis concentrates on
two main issues:
a) the connection of the sentence final V2 clause to the preceding clause
b) the internal structure of the embedded V2 clause
a): Especially the epistemic reading of the V2 clauses has drawn the attention of numerous
linguists (cf. Uhmann 1998, Wegener 1993). In fact, V2 weil-clauses can be interpreted on
the illocutionary level instead of the propositional one. In this case, the causal V2 clause
gives a reason for the speaker’s attitude and not for the propositional content of the matrix
clause. In example (2a), the causal clause justifies the speaker’s conclusion expressed in the
anteceding clause. If the finite verb appears in the sentence final position as in (2b), it is
difficult to reconstruct the epistemic reading.
(2) a. Es hat geschneit, weil die Straße ist ganz weiß.
It has snown, because the road is totally white.
b. #Es hat geschneit, weil die Straße ganz weiß ist.
It has snown, because the road totally white is.
Despite the amount of literature about the epistemic reading of V2 weil-clauses, a convincing
theory of their mechanism is still lacking. The aim of my project is to investigate how the

functional properties of V2 weil-clauses can be derived from their syntactic structure. My
analysis focuses on the disintegrated structure of paratactic V2 weil-clauses. Carston (2002)
shows that syntactic disintegration leads to semantic and pragmatic disintegration. Since V2
weil-clauses are not part of the matrix assertion, the matrix CP doesn’t have scope over the
causal clause. Being sufficient detached, the V2 weil-clause is interpreted in isolation and it
can contribute its semantic part at the illocutionary level of meaning. Pragmatic enrichment
and implicatures are triggered. In contrast, V-final clauses are syntactic constituents of the
matrix CP. As a consequence, their meaning cannot apply on a level higher than the
propositional meaning (cf. Haegeman 2007, Scheffler 2005).
b): V2 weil-clauses aren’t an isolated, singular phenomenon. In certain contexts, object and
relative V-final clauses can be replaced by V2 clauses:
(3) a. Ich kenne einen Linguisten, der kann nicht lesen.
I know a linguist who cannot read.
b. Seine Freunde glauben, es wird morgen regnen.
His friends believe it will tomorrow rain.
The syntax, semantics and pragmatics of these non canonical sentence types are especially
investigated by Frank (2000), Gärtner (2001), Gärtner (2002), Meinunger (2004), Reis (1997)
and Truckenbrodt (2006). The discussion shows two main issues: The embedded V2 clauses
differ in their syntactic behavior and in their semantics and pragmatics systematically from Vfinal
clauses; on the other hand, all embedded V2 clauses share the same syntactic and
functional restrictions. For V2 object and relative clauses it has been shown that the
movement of the finite verb to C 0 triggers an assertional reading. As a consequence, verb
raising is blocked if the sentence has a presuppositional reading. Though V2 weil-clauses
are subject to the same restrictions as V2 object and relative clauses, a transfer of these
results to V2 weil-clauses is still in order. Hopefully, I will be able to show the assertional
nature of V2 weil-clauses.
References:
Carston, R. (2002): Thoughts and Utterances. The Pragmatics of Explicit
Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gärtner, H.-M. (2001): Are there V2 relative clauses in German? In: Journal of
Comparative Germanic Linguistics 3, 97-141.
Gärtner, H.-M. (2002): On the force of V2 declaratives. In: Theoretical Linguistics 28,
33-42.
Haegeman, L. (2007): Operator movement and topicalisation in adverbial clauses. In: Folia
Linguistica 41:279-325
Meinunger, A.(2004): Verb position, verbal mood and the anchoring (potential) of
sentences. In: Lohnstein, Horst/Trissler, Susanne (ed.), The Syntax and Semantics
of the Left Periphery. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 313-342.
Reis, M. (1997): Zum syntaktischen Status unselbstständiger Verbzweit-Sätze. In:
Dürscheid, Christa et al. (Hgg.), Syntax im Fokus. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 112-144.
Scheffler, T. (2005): Syntax and semantics of causal denn in German. In: Proceedings of the
15 th Amsterdam Colloquium.
Truckenbrodt, Hubert (2006): On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in
German. In: Theoretical Linguistics 22, 257-306.
Uhmann, S. (1998): Verbstellungsvariation in weil-Sätzen: Lexikalische Differenzierung mit
grammatischen Folgen. In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 17.1, 92-139
Wechsler, S. (1991): Verb Second and Illocutionary Force. In: Bouchard, D./Leffel, K. (ed.):
Views on Phrase Structure. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 177-191
Wegener, Heide (1993): Weil- das hat schon seinen Grund. Zur Verbstellung in
Kausalsätzen mit weil im gegenwärtigen Deutsch. In: Deutsche Sprache 21, 289-235.