Urgent X' question

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Qwynegold
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Urgent X' question

Post by Qwynegold »

Hi! I'm taking a course in grammar, and am studying for a big test that's tomorrow. I wonder if anyone can quickly answer this question. It's about Swedish, which is very similar to English when it comes to tree structures, although there are some differences, so I don't know how well non-Swedes can answer it. In Swedish tree structures, the verb moves to T to get tense, and the subject becomes the specifier in the TP to get nominative case. But then both of these move to CP. For what reason do they need to do that?

Here's an example of the sentence "Eva showed Kalle the house":

Code: Select all

   CP
   /\
 DP  C'
 Δ   /\
Eva₁/  \
   C    TP
visade₂ /\
      DP T'
      Δ  /\
     t₁ T  VP
        t₂ /\
         DP  V'
         Δ   /\
         t₁ V VP
           t₂ /\
             /  \
            /    \
          DP      V'
          Δ       /\
        Kalle    V DP
                 t₂ Δ
                  huset
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Curlyjimsam
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Re: Urgent X' question

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Movement from T to C is supposed to explain verb-second phenomena. The element in Spec,CP in main clauses in V2 languages doesn't have to be the subject (though it often is); it's just whichever element occurs preverbally.

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