Second-position is first-position: Wackernagel’s Law and the role of clausal conjunction

• Published in: Indogermanische Forschungen Vol. 115; no. 2010; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Authors: Agbayani, Brian, Golston, Chris
• Format: Book Chapter Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, New York DE GRUYTER 12.12.2010; Walter de Gruyter GmbH
• Series: Indogermanische Forschungen
• Subjects: Ancient languages; Garrett, Andrew; Greek civilization; Latin language; Law; Linguistics; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax; Taylor, Ann; United States > US; Massachusetts
• ISBN: 9783110222807; 3110222809
• ISSN: 0019-7262; 1613-0405
• DOI: 10.1515/9783110222814.1.1

[...]syntactic movement from the complement of a head (=que) to a position within that head's maximal projection is also banned across languages under constraints on Extreme Locality or Anti-locality (Grohmann 2001, Abels 2003, Kayne 2005). [...]there is the problem of where noctes would move to if it did move to a syntactic position. [...]the apparent host for a postpositive is often prosodically as light or lighter than the postpositive itself and not all postpositives in these languages are phonologically enclitic, as we have seen. [...]the host may be the same prosodie weight as the postpositive, and both may bear pitch accent, as shown below (L = light syllable, H = heavy): Or the host may be the same prosodie weight as the postpositive element, but lack pitch accent: Once this is granted, it turns out that "second-position clitics" are uniformly found in clause-initial position, except of course for the postpositive conjunctions (de, =te; enim, =que; =ya, =ma), which surface in situ between their conjuncts. [...]a proper understanding of conjunctions eviscerates the notion second-position because the relevant elements are demonstrably clause-initial.