Talk:V2 word order

Re: V2 in English

I doubt that the locative inversion construction displays V2 structure, as the article currently says. Since English full verbs can never "move" otherwise, it rather seems that the locative is sitting in the standard subject position and the nominative subject occurs in some kind of displaced position? --84.160.88.97 (talk) 22:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Theory wars...

Nice try to use V2 as an argument for dependency and against transformational grammar - but I'm afraid it is flawed for it ignores the phenomenon of separable verbs. Only the minimal finite part of the verb occurs in the v2 position, all else is left behind (by the movement operation ;-) ... e.g. verbal particles. The point is that the form in the v2 slot may be non-existent as a verbal lexical item on its own, it would be a lexical entry only in combination with the stranded particle. I gave an example in the German entry on v2. So the claim that there is no discontinuous constituency involved is factually wrong and I took the liberty to remove it.

For another thing, there's a wikipedia principle that an entry should represent what is known (including what the things are that are under discussion somewhere), but it's not about conducting an argument for a controversial position, right. - Oh, wait, I think I did the same thing in my German v2 article... --84.160.72.4 (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello Bob (I'm calling you Bob because all that is available for you is your ping address). Separable verbs are less of a problem for the DG analysis of V2 than you may think. The verb and particle form a catena, and it is catenae that are stored in the lexicon (not necessarily constituents).

I agree that the theoretical account in the article is at present lopsided toward the DG point of view. In this regard, I will not object if you add some information on the movement analysis. You might produce the point that you mention here, i.e. particle verbs support the movement analysis. If you know how, you might add a tree illustrating the movement-type analysis.

Finally, I will seek to find appropriate citations at the points that you indicate. --Tjo3ya (talk) 12:17, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Great! (Sorry for being anonymous, but the username which I have elswhere is blocked in the English wikipedia by an older entry). — The "catena" approach, in other words, having discontinuous words, seems to mimick the movement approach, which likewise uses chains (and calling chains "movement" may be just a metaphor anyway...). So we can all agree in principle. No theory wars :-) --84.160.88.97 (talk) 22:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Older entries

In the final examples of Dutch word order, I'm quite sure there is an inconsistency. Dutch is my mother language.

It ought to be:

CP-V2, SOV

ex. German, Dutch I read the book yesterday. Yesterday did I read the book. <--- "Gisteren las ik het boek", Not "Gisteren ik het boek las." You know that I the book yesterday read. You know that yesterday I the book read.

However, I didn't change it because I don't know the situation in German. So someone who is fluent in German could clear this up.

It's exactly the same in German. The original writer appearently let the English construction with the auxiliary "did" slip in. I assume that Dutch also has ik zei dat ik gisteren dit boek las rather than ik zei dat gisteren ik dit boek las.

The other schemes need to be checked by someone who knows Swedish, Yiddish, Icelandic. I've remove the English auxiliary, but I'm not sure whether they're okay now. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 13:35, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

---

> The CP-V2 languages such as Swedish and German only allow the movement in main clauses. On the other hand, the IP-V2 languages such as Icelandic and Yiddish require movement in subclauses too.

Unless I've overlooked something, the examples of Swedish and Yiddish at the end of the article have exactly the same word order as each other. Maybe a different adverb would make things clearer? I haven't studied Yiddish at all, so I don't know if this would work, but I think the difference between main and subordinate clauses in the Scandinavian languages, at least, could be brought out with the negative, Swedish inte, Icelandic ekki, thus:

Swedish:

Jag läste inte den här boken. "I didn't read this book."

...att jag inte läste den här boken. "...that I didn't read this book."

Icelandic:

Ég las ekki þessa bók. "I didn't read this book."

...að ég las ekki þessa bók. "...that I didn't read this book."

What is the correct word order in a Swedish sentence if it has an auxiliary? If its base word order is SAuxVO and V2 is applied like German, it should be either SAuxVO or OAuxSV. Am I right? - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Jag har läst den här boken (I have read this book), jag borde läsa den här boken (I should read this book), SAuxVO; Den här boken har jag läst (This book I have read), Den här boken borde jag läsa (This book I should read) OauxSV. It seems you're right. 惑乱 分からん 13:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Inconsistency

There is an inconsistency between the V2 word order page and the Subject Object Verb page. The V2 word order page (this page) states, "in otherwise SOV languages, such as German and Dutch, the verb is placed after the object." The Subject Object Verb page states, "German is basically SVO, but employs SOV in subordinate clauses." Considering only main clauses, is German an SOV or SVO language?

I have placed a copy of this comment on the Subject Object Verb page.

SVO, unless the sentence contains a modal auxiliary verb, thus: "I drink beer" translates as "Ich trinke Bier" (SVO), while "I have drunk beer" translates as "Ich habe Bier getrunken" (SAuxOV). 惑乱 分からん 12:06, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The thing is that they always say German is "mostly" SVO and the like, which doesn't make principal sense, nor is particularly helpful even for learning in my opinion. German is at root SOV, with positioning the inflected verb to the second place in main clauses. This is precisely what V2 word order means. As first part of a German sentence, almost anything can, and regularly does, happen no matter how high or low the style is. The subject, sure, is somewhat frequent here, the object (especially where accusative and nominative have the same forms) somewhat infrequent... that much is correct. However, e. g. a temporal adverbial can rather frequently (and in some cases, such as "da", almost needs to) first place - this is not an inversion in the sense of setting special stress on the time. (Also, people tend to remember, as it were, that German is SOV when they have to make up a little poem and cannot fetch a rhyme otherwise. - German jokes, by the way, are - for what reason I don't know - told in a sort of "V1" order, as in "Enter a mathematician, a physicist and an engineer into a bar. Says the mathematician", etc.) --131.159.0.47 (talk) 20:12, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Reasons

Would it be possible to say anything about the reasons for this word order? Why is it necessary/practical? And why did English and French had this word order once but gave it up?

Case is the key. If you can't distinguish the subject and the object, the word order must be fixed. Transition seems like: SOVAux > SOVAux-V2 (ex. German) > SOAuxV-V2 (ex. Dutch) > SAuxVO-V2 (ex. Swedish) > SAuxVO (ex. English). Is it true that French had V2 word order? - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure but why the V2 order? I understand that languages like German allow a more flexible word order than e.g. English but IMHO they would allow an even more flexible word order so why that restriction to put the verb at the second positon? -- Mudd1 09:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the great mystery of language. German has certainly lost much of the syntheticness that would allow it to be free-word order (like Latin), this loss of syntheticness likely gave rise to the development of the V2 word order. (Or potentially, the othe way around. I suppose in truth, one can only say that they correlate.) --Puellanivis 22:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

English

I removed:

As with all verb movement in Modern English, only modal verbs can move, and so the dummy do is added when necessary.

Things like here comes another one, up jumped the swagman, out popped the genie show this isn't true. They aren't *here does another one come, *up did the swagman jump, *out did the genie pop. --Ptcamn 02:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

They are different constructions. Subject-auxiliary inversion must occur when:

1. a question is formed,
2. or a negative expression is moved to the beginning,
3. or so is moved to the beginning,
4. or should/were/had is moved to the beginning for a conditional clause.

ex.

1. What did the dog bark at?
2. At no time in my life have I been busier than I am today.
3. So fiercely did the dog bark that it kept everyone away.
4. Were I younger, I would exert every effort toward finding another more profitable job.

The sentences above are remnants of V2 word order.

On the other hand, Subject-verb inversion may occur when:

1. a movement verb is used,
2. and the phrase for the goal, the source, the direction, or the passing point of the movement is moved to the beginning,
3. and the subject is not a pronoun,
4. and the subject is a new information.

ex.

1. Into the woods ran the rabbit.
2. Out of the house stepped Norman.
3. Toward the beach ran the children.
4. By the grocery store passed the car.
5. ^*Away ran they! (wrong) cf. Away they ran! (OK)

If you go to Norman's house and he comes out from the door, you can't say the second sentence, because Norman is not a new information.

Source: 英文法 Q&A (an English grammar site for Japanese) - TAKASUGI Shinji 12:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a couple of quibbles with the foregoing. If you go to Norman's house and he comes out the door [or out at the door, or out of the door, but never out from the door], and you thought he wasn't at home, or you expected Mrs. Norman, you can say the second sentence. Similarly, the fifth sentence sounds a bit old-timey, but it isn't wrong if it mentions them by way of contrast to somebody else: "Some ruffians were blocking the road, but up came a policeman and away ran they!" The unexpected Norman could count as "new information", but the ruffians have been mentioned already, so another rule seems to be needed.

J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:56, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Swedish

The fourth example from Swedish (my mother language) sounds very unnatural, and I 'm not sure it could be considered correct, at least not in written language. You know that I read this book yesterday as well as You know that yesterday I read this book both are best translated Du vet att jag läste den här boken igår (You+know+that+I+read+this+book+yesterday). The only possible word order alternation, I think, would be Att jag läste den här boken igår vet du (That+I+read+this+book+yesterday+know+you - main clause after subordinate clause) for changing the focus a little, making it mean That I read this book yesterday (is something that) you know).

Some of the German translations sounds quite unusual also. German is fairly strict about TMP (time manner place) order for it's auxillaries. While English allows somewhat free motion of one of the TMP auxillaries to a position in the front, this is done for intonation, and stress upon that word. Meanwhile, the same function is performed by moving that auxillary to the start of a V2 sentence. Basically, valid German word-orders expanding TMP are, SVOTMP, OVSTMP, TVSOMP, MVSOTP, PVSOTM. Note that the ordering of each of the S-O-T-M-P is always maintained after the marked and highlighted element is moved forward. A similar system follows in Swedish.

Meanwhile, in English, the ordering is typically PMT (place manner time), with the subject just proceeding the verb. Thus the most common orderings are SVOPMT, SVPOMT, SVMOPT, SVTOPM, with also PSVOMT, MSVOPT, TSVOPM. So, while it may seem alright for an Anglophone to jiggle with some of the auxillaries after the verb, in a V2 language, that is a strict no-no. --Puellanivis 22:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"Den här" explanation

The pretty long explanation about Swedish usage of this/that/these/those equivalents seems more than a little out of place in this article. First, it takes up a big part of the paragraph dedicated to Swedish examples of word order and, second, I think "den här" could be safely replaced with "denna" in the example sentences, or even just left as "den här" with no particular explanation; or, as a third possibility if "denna" is considered too formal, "den boken".

Especially Swedish native speakers are encouraged to comment on which form to use; in any case, I will remove the explanation in a couple of days.

LjL (talk) 19:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Kashmiri

I added some data from Kashmiri to round out the survey of kinds of V2 word order. The "IP/CP" designation may not pass muster on theoretical grounds. But it does get at the idea that Kashmiri's V2 word order is somewhat like German/Dutch and also somewhat like Yiddish. --Peh6n 00:23, 29 June 2006 (UTC) 29/June/2006

CPs and IPs

I do know what an IP is, but I'm not sure at all that it helps the exposition that it is used in the classification in the article. Same for CPs. The terms are only useful to people who already know what they are supposed to hint at, which would probably mean they wouldn't look up V2 on Wiki anyway. I'm also not sure what to replace them with. One might think that the more traditional "mittelfeld V2" and "vorfeld V2" would be better, but I'm not sure. Neither 05:47, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to understand what a CP and an IP are: those are used as the names for the two kinds of V2 even by people who don't subscribe to the phrase-structure theory that that names suggest, right? So we should use the names merely because they're the mainstream names. It would help, of course, to describe the theory the names are based on more clearly, anyway. AJD 16:10, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

This is not true for two reasons. (i) People not working in the generative framework would not necessarily put the difference in these terms, as many of those theories wouldn't postulate IPs and CPs to begin with. It is certainly not the case that the IP and CP label are the usual labels to refer to the distinction between Dutch and Icelandic. (ii) Even people that in principle subscribe to a theory that adopts the notions IP and CP (say, people working in the generative field) would not use the labels to refer to the contrast. The reason is that casting the distinction in these terms refers to one approach of the problem of how to describe the difference (namely the one proposed by Diesing 1990 and Santorini 1992, articles in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory) and this is not at all a generally accepted theory. There is a way of referring to the intended contrast in a theory-neutral way, however, namely through the notion root phenomenon. This is what I would propose as a change. In Dutch and German V2 is a root phenomenon (meaning that it only takes place in root clauses) whereas in Yiddish and Icelandic it also takes place in non-root (or embedded) clauses. Put differently, Dutch displays a root/non-root asymmetry with respect to V2, Yiddish doesn't. By the way, this distinction has been challenged empirically, as people have pointed out that Yiddish and especially Icelandic does not allow V2 in embedded clauses quite so freely as was previously thought. Recent articles by Bentzen et al in Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics is a reference here. onc70 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Onc70 (talk • contribs) 15:59, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Glosses

Would it be possible to put in glosses of all of the examples? As is, it's presumed that people are already familiar with the languages presented. If one is well familiarized with Germanic words, and their variations in the first place, then the structure of the sentences can be easily obtained, but if you aren't familiar with them, you will just stare at them and say, "sure... I can totally see where things moved around." --Puellanivis 22:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm a ditz, the glosses were already there, just not clearly marked. Glosses should normally be given all caps, or in other way clearly distinguished to prevent them from being viewed as possibly normal speech. They should also be word for word, even if that wording sounds awful in English: "I KNOW AT YOU READ THAT HERE BOOK." "att" != "THAT", and "den här" != "THIS". If there are two words, each should be translated seperately in a gloss, unless it's compound word, like "Butterfly". --Puellanivis 22:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Better Examples?

Do you think it would be possible to pick a verb for the examples in this article that are not strong? It's difficult at a glance to see the difference between "read" (past tense) and "read" (present tense) in English.

If we picked a weak verb, then at least it would be clear in English/German/Dutch/Swedish/etc what is past tense and what is not. --Puellanivis 00:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Recent Reverts to the Glosses

The Swedish word "den" => "that", "här" => "here". I realize that "den här" => "this". Also, yes, "att" is used the same as English "that", but it means "to". This is not a translation, it is a GLOSS.

When glossing Sign Language, I don't gloss "THINK THINK" => "thinking", I gloss it to "THINK THINK", because the reduplication is a part of the language. The same situation would apply if I were glossing German: "Er hat mir um Hilfe gebietet" => "He has me-DAT about help pleaded." Not "He has me for help pleaded." The German word "um" does not gloss to "for", neither does Swedish "att" gloss to "that", nor Swedish "den här" gloss to "this".

I don't understand the point of glossing, myself. Even when literally translated, it makes the sentences seem unnecessarily weird. Also, since the this/that distinction in Swedish is made with the here/there words (den/det reflects gender), I don't see why the words "that here" would make a better choice than "the here" or "this here". ("That" has a connotation of something already referred, a connotation den/det in itself, lacks.) It just seems an arbitrary choice, trying to push one language's system into another. 惑乱 分からん 13:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of Glossing is to give a word-for-word and even sometimes lexeme-for-lexeme/morpheme-for-morpheme translation in position that gives a good indication of the grammatical usage of the language, not the meaning of that sentence. As such, you run into problems, where a language would translate "this" with "den/det här", and you can't just say "det här" => "this", because there are two words there. "That" actually is a demonstrative pronoun, in a gloss the non-linguistic usages of a word are not as important as their linguistic uses. As such, giving a gloss of "den/det" => "the" would be incorrect, as "the" is the definitive article, where as in Swedish the definitiveness of a word is indicated by a suffix "boket" => "book-DEF". Thus, "the" is certainly the wrong choice, "this here" is just an arbitrary choice, and may be more linguistically appropriate, as in English they both agree in location (near the Speaker, as opposed to the two other possibilities, near the Listener, and far from both, since you use Japanese in your signature, "kore" vs "sore" vs "are"). However, "this" is just as much a demonstrative pronoun and is the same as the use of the word "that" in this sentence (where as in English "that" serves the double purpose of "sore" and "are".) So, switching "that here" for "this here" may have merits since they agree better, but they are functionally the same linguistic elements.

trying to push one language's system into another. This is pretty darn close to exactly what a gloss's purpose is. Rather than "pushing" one language's system into another, it's rather representing one language including grammatical usage in the language system of another. I will note that you're not complaining about the word ordering of the German above, although that is just as much a "pushing one language's system into another" as your complaints about Swedish "det här" => "that here". --Puellanivis 19:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Besides, wouldn't glossing need describers when the words contain grammatical information lost in a direct English translation, anyway? For instance, THE-(non neuter gender) BOOK-(non neuter gender, definite tense). 惑乱 分からん 14:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Typically that information is required, but the goal of this gloss is not to actually describe the usage of "den här ___-en / det här ___-et" usage of Swedish but to show the word order of Swedish in order to demonstrate the V2 word order. I briefly considered just changing the sentence to English translation "the book", in order to avoid this whole two word gloss problem that so many people seem to take issue with, but then, we run into the problem of having to provide a gloss of BOOK-definite, which would then cause confusion about why we're not glossing it as "THE BOOK" as this is what the sentence really means, then I'm stuck explaining the opposite problem, and avoiding a one word to two word gloss, instead of a two word to one word gloss. I suppose the best solution would be to just make the entire thing indefinite and go with "et bok" and then give a gloss of A BOOK, which would then avoid people coming in every few weeks and attempting to "fix" the gloss. --Puellanivis 19:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Reverted edits

I reverted again, I have a hard time to see how German and Dutch could be considered SOV, especially in sub-clauses compared to main clauses (as is described here), but if you give a good linguistic explanation of the reasoning, I probably would admit my mistake. The other problem, glossing of "att" as "to"/"at" seems more problematic, since both sources I checked up on Elof Hellman's etymological dictionary and Svenska Akademiens Ordbok considered the two meanings of "att" as distinct words with different etymological origin, the etymology of both words were actually quite close to the English evolution, att (to)=åt (towards), att (that), probably related to words like that or it. 惑乱 分からん 23:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

From the article itself

The usual analysis of the Dutch (and German) V2 phenomenon is that the "normal" position of the verb is at the end of the clause (SOV) and that in main clauses, the inflected verb moves to the second position.

This is supported by the fact that in sentences with verb clusters, only the auxiliary appears in the second position:

Ik	heb	dit	boek	gelezen.
I	have	this	book	read
"I've read this book."

Ik	heb	dit	boek	willen	lezen.
I	have	this	book	want	read
"I've wanted to read this book."

Ik	heb	dit	boek	willen	kunnen	lezen.
I	have	this	book	want	can	read
"I've wanted to be able to read this book."

In German these phrases have different word order for the auxiliaries, that closely resemble the SOV word order (auxiliaries following the main verb.) Presented below for contrast with the Dutch above.

Ich	habe	dieses	Buch	gelesen.
I	have	this	book	read
"I've read this book."

Ich	habe	dieses	Buch	lesen	wollen.
I	have	this	book	read	want
"I've wanted to read this book."

Ich	habe	dieses	Buch	lesen	können	wollen.
I	have	this	book	read	can	want
"I've wanted to be able to read this book."

Also from the original verson of the paragraph in question, the article says:

in otherwise SOV languages, such as German and Dutch, the verb is placed after the object.

Now, if one were to take a minute and examine that sentence, it would say that if German and Dutch were not V2 languages, then they would be SOV, and in fact, examining their placement of auxillary verbs, and the position of the negation adverb (at the end of the sentence, but before any verbs) you would see that they are in fact SOV languages, except that they take the inflected verb and then move them to the second position of the clause.

Thank you, then. It still seems strange to me, that simpler sentences are considered the exception and more complex sentences the norm... 惑乱 分からん 01:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

As for the issue of "att" glossing to "that", the assertion you make, is in fact reasonable, and I will no longer be reverting that change. If you take a quick look above this secton, you'll note that the first time that I reverted that change, I posted in the Talk page for discussion abot it:

Also, yes, "att" is used the same as English "that", but it means "to". This is not a translation, it is a GLOSS.

I was expecting a response regarding that revert, and a defense of their positon, not simply a revert war, where you try and assert your position without evidence or support.

Alright, sorry, then. But at least it's fixed, now... 惑乱 分からん 01:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I continued (and continue in the case of the SOV change) to assert these reverts because no validation of their verifiability had been made, and in the case of the SOV change, in fact make the article self-contradictory. --Puellanivis 01:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. The self-contradiction was my bad... My instincts tell me that German and Dutch should be considered SVO languages "in general", since that's the word order in the simplest sentences, but I'm willing to accept a mainstream linguist analysis on why that assumption is wrong... 惑乱 分からん 01:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of hard, many different languages do stuff "in general" even though there is linguistic evidence to show that the most common case is actually the exception. Most people do consider German and Dutch SVO, since their simple sentence structure indicates as such, but as this article is intended to point out, they are V2 languages, that do not actually correspond well into the SVO, SOV, etc ordering. But as completely off-topic for this discussion, but a demonstration about how the exception can actually be the most common form, German's current regular plural is "-s", just "-s". (This is indicated by asking native speakers to plralize something that has no established plural. Such, as a last name, "The Schmidts" -> "Die Schmidts") Now, as anyone who actually speaks German will tell you, this is actually the most uncommon plural ending of all, being used only for new words. This means that "in general" one might assume that the regular plural is which ever is the most common one, but as with physics, common sense can often get you in trouble.  ;)

Oh, and I'd like to thank you for giving evidence to support the gloss of "att" => "that", I am already quite aware of how two words can look the same, but come from COMPLETELY different etymological backgrounds. heh. --Puellanivis 06:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Very weird, in that case -s should quite possibly be the most common plural form in Swedish as well, although it's not even considered a native plural...

And, just wondering, how come you thought "at" was the best choice in this case, "att"(to) and "at" is plausibly cognates, but it still seems a strange choice for a gloss?... 惑乱 分からん 14:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

http://lexin.nada.kth.se/swe-eng.shtml <-- reports that "att" translates to "to". Also, while speaking Swedish, my understanding has been that "att" means "to", and in the case of occurring before an infinitive word, the gloss would be "to". A bit confusing sometimes for me, because I typically don't like to gloss things with more than one word, when depending on their situation. I was also unaware that "åt" is the preposition, and not "att" *shrug* learn new stuff everyday. --Puellanivis 15:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

What? Lexin gives both translations, correctly... In none of the examples given here, "att" is followed by a verb. 惑乱 分からん 16:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I did say that it gives the two meanings. But in my mind, collapsing words together, "att"=>"to", not "att"=>"that", and phrases were internally understood to use "att" to start a dependent clause. It's basically a difference in learning a language. You learned that "att" translates to two different words in English, depending on where it occurs. I learned that Swedish has one word for both, and through natural collapse and genericization, I ended up with only one word, neglecting the fact that the two words map to one word. It's a difference of perspective. --Puellanivis 02:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, it's not true that all new German words take -s in the plural. The productive plural endings are -s for all genders, -e for masculine and neuter and -en for feminine. Colloquial German even sometimes replaces the correct s-plural with one these other two, e.g. Sandwiche instead of (standard) Sandwiches.

Standardizing the Glosses

From the wikipedia page regarding Glosses, there's a link to the Leipzig Glossing Rules. I intend to change the glosses, which do not match with these rules to match with these rules, which will include the Swedish section. Hopefully, once each morpheme is vertically alligned with each other, people won't attempt to change the "that here" into "this".

Also, no such note explaining the Swedish construction "this" => "den här" is necessary. Many languages treat demonstratives different from English, this is a natural variation of language. Just because it "sounds weird" when glossed, is... look at the German gloss: "I SAID THAT I THIS BOOK YESTERDAY READ"... do you think that doesn't sound weird in English? These complaints about a 1-to-1 morpheme gloss from Swedish to English is fairly frustrating as it is standardized linguistic doctrine, under which this article certainly fits! --Puellanivis 18:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think if it's meant to be glossing, it's insufficient since a lot of grammatical information is left out. If it's only meant to show word order, it's unnecessary and confusing. Even your Leipzig Glossing Rules gives out examples of glossing with grammatical function markers (or whatever they're called) included. Also, I found at least one example of a linguist using "this here" [1], he is also using "this there", though. 惑乱 分からん 13:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe that I have stated that I don't have a problem with the particular words used, but rather only that there needs to be two words. Yes, we are dismissing a lot of grammatical information, but when showing word order, it's important to give a gloss for each individual word. As an example from an arbitrary language that you are quite unlikely to know, if I were glossing the phrase "I EnDonGabaKapKi" ("I cannot be understood") as "I understood can't." You would have no idea what the individual morphemes of the sentence mean, and be unable to assess really anything about the word order, as I've arbitrary divided a five-lexeme group into two words. How can you distinguish between the possible interpretations: "En" (understand) "DonGabaKapKi" (can't), "EnDon" (understood) "GabaKapKi" (can't), "EnDonGaba" (understood) "KapKi" (can't), or even "EnDonGabaKap" (undstood) "Ki" (can't). There's no way to tell where the proper division is supposed to take place, unless you already have special knowledge of the language.

This is the reason why I'm enforcing a 1:1 correspondance of words to words in the gloss. So that people, who don't know the languages can pick up which words correspond to which words by simple ordering, rather than requiring the special knowledge that "det här" means "this". --Puellanivis 18:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Puellanivis about the glosses: the basic principle is the one-to-one mapping. But the most important thing is choosing a good example in the first place, that avoids interesting but irrelevant details that will draw attention away from the issue at hand. So why not change the Swedish examples to "your book"? Or "two books"? Something that would have the same structure as in English. And remove this totally off-topic footnote about "den här". CapnPrep 21:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's suitable to me, I just think that the translation was just a half-hearted mix between glossing and translating, ending up as neither. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 17:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

German example sentence d.

In my opinion, sentence d. (Im Park spielen die Kinder Fußball vor der Schule) is ungrammatical or at least on the edge. One would say: Im Park spielen die Kinder vor der Schule Fußball. I don't know if there's a rule for this, but temporal adverbials usually precede the object. For example: Wir spielen vor der Schule Fußball means "We play football before school." But Wir spielen Fußball vor der Schule is more likely to be understood as "We play football in front of the school." It's not a 100% thing, more a tendency, but the above sentence sounds odd to me. Maybe other speakers agree?

I agree, so I changed it. I also need to change the tree diagram lower in the article. --Tjo3ya (talk) 06:09, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree too. Being Bavarian may throw off my perception of "standard German" but the way I have always looked at German temporal adverbials is this: They must be one of the first three constituents, since the verb is second they must therefore be in the one spot left over that is not taken up by the subject, since subject can only be adjacent to the verb, either in position 1 or 3. I personally also feel that in German a temporal adverbial before the verb and with subject after the verb is actually the unmarked construction. But that is another debate. I therefore feel that having vor der Schule anywhere other than 1st or 3rd position removes it from being understood as being temporal and instead causes it to be analyzed as a locative adverbial. If the temporal aspect were therefore important but not important enough to be marked within the first 3 constituents, the only real option left would be to introduce the temporal idea with a prepositional phrase like bevor die Schule anfaengt 99.21.194.218 (talk) 07:13, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Origin of V2?

Is anything known about the origin of V2 and why it is shared by almost all Germanic languages? I remember once reading something that connected it to Wackernagel's law, which was an Indo-European rule that placed sentence clitics in second position. The idea was that at some point auxiliary verbs came to be treated as sentence clitics too, and thus were forced into second position. As such, Dutch and German preserve the original system best (except that they apply V2 to all finite verbs, not just auxiliaries). I don't remember where I read this, so I don't have any sources to offer, but I think some information about the history of the V2 phenomenon would be good to have in the article. CodeCat (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that some history about the principle would be a good addition. I don't have the time at present to research the matter, though. If you do, I suggest taking the initiative. --Tjo3ya (talk) 16:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I can look for sources but I don't know enough about this subject to really be of use in adding it. I will link to what I find here, hoping someone else can use it in the article. Here is at least one: [2] CodeCat (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

History of English

The information that has been added to the article recently appears to be correct and informative. However, the emphasis of the article has shifted to the analysis of V2 in the history of English. That is not what the main content of the article is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about V2 word order in general. I hope that nothing more is added to the article about V2 in earlier stages of English, and I am in favor of removing some of what is there now in this regard. --Tjo3ya (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Surely the solution to the problem of imbalance is to add information, not to subtract. There's plenty of 'correct and informative' information out there on V2 in other Germanic languages. For example, the Cambridge Syntax Guides series has books on German, Dutch and Icelandic which must surely address the question of V2 analysis. DavidCrosbie (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Really long articles are daunting in my view. I know there are plenty of them in Wikipedia, but I don't think that is a good thing. I prefer articles that can be read at one sitting. In other words, consider branching out to produce other articles that touch on aspects of V2.

Unwieldy article

I've just revisited this article again after a long while. As a whole, the article is now intimidating and unwieldy. Too much information that is is too detailed and difficult to manage. This saddens me. I may step in here to (help) redo it, to improve organization, to provide overviews of sections, to redo the glosses so that they take up less space, to create coherent paragraphs, etc. I may start with the data and glosses. As they are, they take up too much space. The following format, which I've take from another Wikipedia page would be more manageable. --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:02, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

a.	Gestern	wurde	versucht,	den	Wagen	zu reparieren.
	yesterday	was	tried	the-ACC	car	to repair	'One attempted to fix the car yesterday.'

b.	*Den	Wagen	wurde	gestern	versucht	zu reparieren.
	the-ACC	car	was	yesterday	tried	to repair	'One attempted to fix the car yesterday.'

c.	Der	Wagen	wurde	gestern	versucht	zu reparieren.
	the-NOM	car	was	yesterday	tried	to repair	'One attempted to fix the car yesterday.'

Norwegian

The sentence "Den gangen hadde han dessverre ikke ville sende sakspapirene før møtet." sounds wrong to me. Shouldn't it be "villet", not "ville"? And the english translation "This time..." should be "That time..." (or if "This time..." is used, the norwegian sentence should start with "Denne gangen..."). I'm not changing anything, because I'm not 100% sure that I'm right. But maybe someone else knows if the sentence is correct?FijaLa (talk) 03:14, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm in similar doubt about the Faroese portions. The "problem" is that Faroese can apply both insular and continental syntax (this article seems to group Faroese with continental which is of course incorrect), so pretty much anything from both the Continental and the Insular part applies to Faroese. I might, once I get some sources, edit the page and write something more about the Faroese parts. 212.55.53.51 (talk) 03:18, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

X-bar analysis of German V2

What is the source for the IP/CP-analyis of German that is presented here? It strikes me as unusual. To my knowledge, there is no evidence for an I°-position in front of the German VP or for a structural difference between V2-clauses fronting the subject or fronting an adverbial. A reputable source for an analysis would be: Hubert Haider: The Syntax of German, Cambridge University Press, 2010 ( = Cambridge Syntax Guides). Haider presents strong arguments for not having an IP in German at all, and this is now the majority view among German linguists, as far as I can tell. --Alazon (talk) 08:43, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

I have now adapted the text as far as I was able to, including two references. However, this section still looks incomplete. --Alazon (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Dutch clitic pronoun

Rather than "In 1642 ontdekte die Nieuw-Zeeland." I would suggest the spelling "In 1642 ontdekte-n-ie Nieuw-Zeeland." when using "ie" ("he") after a vowel. Using "die", rather than "-n-ie" with euphonic "n", in this example might cause confusion with another phenomenon, namely substitution of "hij" ("he") with "die" ("that"). (Or am I the one who is confused here?) Another example of enclitic "ie", this time with euphonic "t", is "Daar ging-t-ie!" (*"There went-he!" i.e. "There he went!". Any objections?Redav (talk) 20:02, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Negation and Inversion

I am intrigued with the Middle English example on negation in wh- sentences, and its persistence into modern usage. Specifically,"why shulde he not?" The construction, "Why should he not go to the party?" is proper in current usage; "Why should not he go to the party?" is not. However, in contracted form that is no longer true; thus, "Why shouldn't he go to the party?" I found a single line in English Grammar: On inversion of subject and verb... the subject may be placed after a contracted negated form: Should he not pay? or Shouldn't he pay? Is this a relict V2 form or something else? Is there a term for that 'jumping negative'? I can't find an article that addresses it. 159.53.46.142 (talk) 16:45, 28 October 2016 (UTC) - Kevin posting without login.

I'm not a syntactician, but you might want to have a look at this paper from the '80s, which argues that -n't functions more like an inflectional affix on the modal than like a contracted not. AJD (talk) 23:18, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

That is PRECISELY what I was looking for! Thanks, ADJ. I love Wikipedia. 19:03, 2 November 2016 (UTC) Kevin posting without login. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk)

"major"?

Read the first sentence of this article. It uses the term "major constituent", and there is no clearly stated qualifications anywhere in the article for what makes a constituent a "major constituent". Not only that, but I can't find the term "major constituent" anywhere in the Wikipedia article "Constituent (linguistics)". I can't even find anything online for it outside of Wikipedia. Due to the potential for this word to cause confusion, I'm just deleting it.--Ντόναλντ (talk) 06:11, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

V2 vestiges in Modern English

The section V2 word order#Vestiges of V2 in Modern English is lengthy, and as far as I could see it is entirely about subject-verb inversion and not about V2. If there’s something there about V2, it’s very hard to find. I think the section should be dramatically shortened to include only the vestiges of V2, to abide by what the article is about. Loraof (talk) 21:04, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Last call—If I see no objection, I’m going to remove the apparently irrelevant material on inversion in modern English. It takes up a tremendous amount of space, and it’s not relevant to this article, which is about V2. (And near its beginning it admits this point: However these norms are observed irrespective of the number of clause elements preceding the verb.) Loraof (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Done. Loraof (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

"It is entirely about subject-verb inversion and not about V2." What is that even supposed to mean? Subject-verb inversion is what V2 is all about. In V2, the subject moves behind the verb whenever its place before the verb is already taken. Vestiges of V2 exist especially with the adverb "only", as in: "Only last year was he brought to justice." This is perfect V2 word-order. I'm putting the section back up. It could be replaced with something better, but simply deleting it is not an option. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.4.151.28 (talk) 23:50, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

The sentence: "However these norms are observed irrespective of the number of clause elements preceding the verb", does not in any way say that the section is irrelevant. It merely says that modern English normally doesn't have V2, which nobody disputes. The point of the section is the vestiges that do exist, that is the cases where English still features V2. Apart from such cases as the one I mentioned before, wh-questions are relevant. For example: "Who saw you?" and "Whom did you see?" (instead of: "Whom you saw?") Yes-no questions have nothing to do with V2, but that's obvious because not any Germanic language has V2 in yes-no questions. 178.4.151.28 (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Typical Germanic yes-no questions can be analyzed as V2 sentences whose "forefield" (that is a literal tranbslation of the German term "Vorfeld") is void. 2A0A:A540:DDF6:0:5519:CF52:1962:9CB3 (talk) 20:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Introduction a bit technical

I'm wondering if I can suggest here that the introduction be made a little less technical. It uses jargon that non-linguists won't understand, I've read the article and the linked topics, but I'm no closer to knowing what a finite verb, constituent, or clause topic even mean, only barely understanding what V2 could be referring to.

Perhaps the introductory paragraph could be written more in the lines of: In syntax, verb-second word order refers to a certain variation in sentence structure where the verb is placed in the sentence's second position, before the subject, and with a word (or a group of words) coming before it. V2 word order is uncommon in English, but can be seen in sentences such as "Neither do I" where the verb comes before the subject, unlike in "I do". In more technical terms, V2 word order places the finite verb of a clause or sentence in second position with a single constituent preceding it, which functions as the clause topic. (yes I am very aware that my suggestion is inadequate / woefully incorrect, but maybe this is a direction someone could aim at)

With regards, 130.208.182.75 (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Too technical notice

Hello, I have added the Template:Technical notice to this article as it appears to use heavy amounts of jargon and has little explanations of the technical terms used, which make it hard to understand for people who do not know much about the subject. I do not understand very much of the article myself, so I unfortunately cannot help to fix it. Thank you, Redtree21 (talk) 13:20, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Reorganizing current article and adding New sections

As this article appears to use heavy amounts of jargon, we will attempt to define V2 in a simpler way while keeping all the content that has already been contributed. We will also do some restructuring of the content as there seem to be a lot of contributors which we are thankful for. In addition, we will be adding new sections in this article. A new section will be on romance languages such as Welsh, Wymysorys and Norwegian in which V2 applies. We also think it would be interesting to add a little about V2 in older languages such as Old French because we can learn about how V2 has changed over time. As there are variations of V2, we will be adding sub-topic on a variation called V3 (verb third). We hope our upcoming contributions will help people understand the topic of V2. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OnceAMillion (talk • contribs) 21:15, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

glüklich?

An example contains the sentence "Maria denkt, dass Peter glüklich ist." If that is supposed to be German, then "glüklich" is spelled wrong (should be "glücklich" --- ref: https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/gl%C3%BCcklich). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fph (talk • contribs) 21:49, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Verb second vs. verb-second

Hi,

I came here to find out whether verb-second or verb second (without the dash) is what is usually used. But this article actually uses both. I think this should be fixed.

Best

Stefan — Preceding unsigned comment added by StefanMülller (talk • contribs) 07:54, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

V2 subject-object inversion "without exception" in Old English after ne

Per Ringe 2014 subject-verb inversion only "frequently" occurred after ne, not "without exception" as the article claims. Even a cursory examination of the Old English corpus yields hundreds upon hundreds of examples of ne failing to trigger subject-verb inversion such as the following line from Aelfric:

"He ne mihte (not ne mihte he) nan þing to gode gedon, ne he nolde (not ne nolde he) nan god gehyran."

Fryyu (talk) 03:35, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

German example sentences „vor der Schule“

I feel like the the „vor der Schule“ is too easily read as meaning „infront of the school“. „vor dem Unterricht“ or „bevor die Schule anfängt“ would in my opinion work better. 217.239.252.250 (talk) 10:43, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Possible wrong example

I'm not a native German speaker, and I don't know if this is the correct place to correct this since the example is taken from a published paper, but I only have access to the pre-print and don't know if this is in the final version, so here goes:

In the example:

"Maria denkt, Peter ist glücklich."

shouldn't the konjuctiv be used, as in:

"Maria denkt, Peter sei glücklich."?

It even says so a few lines above. Antondimak (talk) 14:52, 24 January 2024 (UTC)