Workshop at ICHL 2027 – The Same, but Not Equal: Cross-Linguistic Insights Into the Diachrony of the Prefield Position

Date: 26-Jul-2027 – 30-Jul-2027
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Contact: Łukasz Jędrzejowski
Contact Email: lukasz.jedrzejowski@uia.no
Meeting URL: https://ichl28.hi.is/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Syntax

Submission Deadline: 01-Dec-2026

The prefield has received considerable attention in both synchronic and diachronic research on verb-second (V2) languages. Although these languages share the characteristic placement of a constituent before the finite verb, the grammatical properties of this preverbal domain are far from uniform. In German, for instance, the prefield can host constituents of different syntactic categories and is characterized by considerable categorial flexibility (Blümel 2017). At the same time, prefield occupation is not reducible to a single syntactic operation. Frey (2006) argues that the German prefield can be filled by different mechanisms, including Ā-movement, formally triggered movement and base-generation. Such categorial flexibility has also figured prominently in comparative accounts of V2: Holmberg (2015: 348), for instance, states that “[a]ll of the V2 languages allow preposing of adverbs and any kind of adverbial phrases and clauses.” Yet categorial flexibility does not necessarily imply uniformity in the syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic conditions governing prefield occupation.

Historical research has further demonstrated that the grammatical properties of the left-peripheral domain are themselves subject to change. Work on older Germanic and Romance has documented changes not only in verb placement, but also in the inventory, distribution, derivation and discourse properties of preverbal constituents (Hinterhölzl & Petrova 2010, Ledgeway 2012, Wolfe 2018, Klævik-Pettersen 2019). The history of Icelandic, for example, shows changes in both the inventory and information-structural properties of preverbal constituents, with Old Icelandic licensing types of prefield occupation that differ from those found in the modern language (Booth & Beck 2021). Similarly, comparative work on Old English and Old French demonstrates that superficially comparable left-peripheral expressions need not have the same derivational status: topics may be movement-derived in one language but base-generated in another and the availability of these strategies may itself change historically (van Kemenade & Meklenborg 2021). Importantly for the present workshop, Hinterhölzl (2021) relates such differences to the historical integration of formerly clause-external expressions, arguing that changes in prosodic integration may correlate with a reanalysis of their derivational status.

These findings raise a broader comparative and diachronic question: how do languages that share an apparently similar preverbal configuration come to differ in the types of expressions they license there and in the mechanisms by which these expressions are integrated? A particularly revealing synchronic contrast is found between German and Norwegian. Both languages display V2 in declarative main clauses, but they differ in the integration of speech act modifiers. Under the intended speech act reading, the German purpose clause Um es klar zu sagen (‘to put it clearly’) cannot itself function as the integrated prefield constituent and remains outside the matrix CP, resulting in linear V3. Its Norwegian counterpart For å si det klart, by contrast, can occupy the prefield, as in (3), whereas the corresponding linear V3 pattern is at best marginal and requires a strong prosodic break. The resulting contrast is illustrated in (1)–(4):

(1) Um es klar zu sagen, [CP [Spec,CP ich] [C0 hätte] keine bessere Entscheidung treffen können]. (German)
(2) *[CP [Spec,CP Um es klar zu sagen], [C0 hätte] ich keine bessere Entscheidung treffen können]. (German)
(3) [CP [Spec,CP For å si det klart], [C0 kunne] jeg ikke ha tatt en bedre beslutning]. (Norwegian)
(4) *For å si det klart, [CP [Spec,CP jeg] [C0 kunne] ikke ha tatt en bedre beslutning]. (Norwegian)
‘To put it clearly, I couldn’t have made a better decision.’

Previous studies have illuminated individual dimensions of this variation in particular languages, language families and historical periods. What is still lacking is a systematic comparative perspective on how these dimensions interact in shaping the historical development of the prefield. This workshop proposes to bring these strands of research together by taking the diachrony of the prefield itself as the central comparative problem. Rather than assuming that the preverbal position has a uniform grammatical profile across V2 languages, we ask how language-specific restrictions on its occupation arise, change, and interact with different areas of grammar.

The workshop seeks to address, among others, questions such as the following:

– Which syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic types of expressions can occupy the prefield in different languages and at different historical stages?
– How does the inventory of expressions licensed in the prefield change over time and what kinds of expansion or restriction can be identified?
– How do mechanisms responsible for prefield occupation, such as movement and base-generation, change historically and what role does reanalysis play in these developments?
– To what extent do syntax and information structure in the prefield go hand in hand, where do mismatches arise, and how does their relationship change over time?
– Why are some prefield constituents syntactically integrated, while others occur in dislocation?
– To what extent can synchronic differences between closely related languages be traced back to different historical developments of their preverbal domain?
– Are there recurrent pathways by which clause-external or discourse-related expressions become integrated into the prefield or conversely become less integrated and cease to be licensed there?

By bringing together work on different languages and historical periods, the workshop aims to treat the prefield as a domain of cross-linguistic and diachronic variation in its own right. Its purpose is not to propose another general account of V2 or to investigate the emergence and loss of verb-second word order as such. Rather, V2 languages provide a particularly revealing comparative domain in which an apparently similar clause-initial position can be shown to have different grammatical properties. The central question is therefore not simply what these languages share, but how their prefields came to differ.

We particularly welcome contributions that compare languages or varieties, reconstruct changes in the grammatical properties of the prefield, investigate the historical emergence of language-specific restrictions or connect changes in prefield occupation to developments in syntax, discourse structure and information structure.

Organizers:
Łukasz Jędrzejowski (lukasz.jedrzejowski@uia.no) University of Agder, Norway
Espen Johan Klævik-Pettersen (espen.klavik-pettersen@uia.no) University of Agder, Norway

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should include a descriptive title, main text, and references and must not exceed 500 words, excluding references. All abstracts must be submitted through EasyAbs. When submitting, please indicate Workshop W12.

https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/ICHL28/

Submission deadline: December 1, 2026.

Papers not accepted for the workshop may also be submitted to the General Session.

References:
Blümel, Andreas. 2017. Exocentric root declaratives: Evidence from V2. In: Leah Bauke & Andreas Blümel (eds.), Labels and Roots (Studies in Generative Grammar 128), 263–289. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Booth, Hannah & Christin Beck. 2021. Verb-second and verb-first in the history of Icelandic. Journal of Historical Syntax 5(28): 1–53.
Frey, Werner. 2006. Contrast and movement to the German prefield. In: Valéria Molnar & Susanne Winkler (eds.), The Architecture of Focus (Studies in Generative Grammar 82), 235–264. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2021. V2 and topicalization in Germanic and Romance. In: Sam Wolfe & Christine Meklenborg (eds.), Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance, 195–222. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinterhölzl, Roland & Svetlana Petrova. 2010. From V1 to V2 in West Germanic. Lingua 120(2): 315–328.
Holmberg, Anders. 2015. Verb second. In: Tibor Kiss & Artemis Alexiadou (eds.), Syntax – Theory and Analysis. An International Handbook, vol. 1 (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 42/1), 342–383. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Klævik-Pettersen, Espen. 2019. What is Germanic and what is not about Old French V2. Linguistic Variation 19(1): 141–198.
van Kemenade, Ans & Christine Meklenborg. 2021. Issues in the left periphery of Old French and Old English. Topic types and the V2 constraint. In: Sam Wolfe & Christine Meklenborg (eds.), Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance, 248–274. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam. 2012. From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic Typology and Change (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 1). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wolfe, Sam. 2018. Verb Second in Medieval Romance (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 34). Oxford: Oxford University Press.