Typological guidance in the acquisition of V2 Dutch

Abstract

The main issue of the paper will be the identification of the clause-initial finite verbs as Co in Celtic as well as in Germanic. Framing Co as the core point of V1 and V2 types of languages will here be justified by an acquisitional analysis of V<+fin>-to-Co in Dutch. The background of this argument will be Jakobson's (1942) thesis that there is a hierarchy of typological features and that this hierarchy will show up in language acquisition. Some properties of grammar are of course acquired before others, but, more interestingly, the major typological properties of grammar are invariably the first to be acquired. They happen to serve as the acquisitional basis for the more language-specific properties of grammar. Typological properties survive so well in the history of grammar, because they are the system's bootstrap for learnability. The successive acquisition steps indicate how grammar is built up by input-control in a flexible way. In a first step, Celtic V1 and Germanic V2 share the basic property of a clause-typing head V<+fin> in Co. The acquisition data suggest that finiteness, not tense, must be the trigger for verb movement. The subject obligation, as well as tense and agreement markings come in after verb movement. The subject obligation seems to get underlined, rather than to be derived from uninterpretable phi-features. The last section discusses the growing importance of Spec.C in Dutch and the typological difference this will cause between V1 and V2 languages.