Morphosyntax of verb movement and Afrikaans verbal constructions

Abstract

In his Morphosyntax of verb movement: a minimalist approach to the syntax of Dutch (1997) zwart argues for an alternative analysis to the traditional analysis2 of the word order variation that exists in West Gennanic subject initial main clauses and embedded clauses. This alternative analysis is a heavily revised version of the one Zwart presented in his 1993 dissertation. The revised version focuses on a smaller section of Dutch syntax than the preceding work and revolves crucially around a proposal of feature movement and the interaction between syntax and morphology. It also deviates from the traditional analysis in the assumption that the underlying word order for Dutch is SVO and that all functional projections are head initial. Zwart (1997) furthermore claims that the analysis presented for Dutch can be carried over to the other West Germanic languages. At least one of these languages, Afrikaans, is not discussed by Zwart and my main interest in this article is to see whether Zwart's proposed analysis holds when applied to this language.