One sentence structure and XP-movement in the West Germanic Languages

Within the framework of modern syntax theory (Chomsky 1993, 1995), the proposed research explores the possibilities and limits of a unified mininalist account of XP-movement in modern German, Dutch, Afrikaans and English. It will be argued that the Minimalist Program in its present state is too restrictive to account for the cross- linguistic data in the Germanic languages in question. In particular, a critical position will be taken against the extensive inflation of functional clausal structure and against the exclusion of true optionality from the computational system. Based on an alternative theory of lexicalization, proposed in Molnarfi (1998), it will be argued that XP-movement to the left is not driven by the mechanical elimination of strong or weak features, but by a general distribution principle, requiring argument licensing to take place in the highest possible phrasal position. This allows one to keep the functional dimension minimal and to unify two seemingly unrelated phenomena,. licensing of structural case and scrambling, under the same concept of lexicalization. The main empirical argument of the proposed research is that sentence structure in West-Germanic languages has to be seen as shaped-by licensing requirements of both grammatical and discourse functional relations. I will argue that in these languages discourse functions can be fully integrated into clausal syntax, making the postulation of a distinct module for these relations theoretically superfluous. I will show that natural word order variation reflects conflicting demands between such dynamically interacting components of grammar, to be resolved in favour of the one or the other component.