IKER UMR5478 and the University of Konstanz are organizing a thematic workshop in Bayonne (France), in the context of the closing of the ANR-DFG project entitled Uncovering verb-second effects. An interface-based typology (UV2).

The workshop will feature talks by invited speakers and researchers from the UV2 project, as well as a Poster Session, around the topic of verb-second effects in interrogatives and related constructions.

Call for Posters.

Wh-movement, or other syntactic operations such as focus-movement, are often associated with leftward movement of the finite verb. The resulting pattern, a ‘V2 effect’, recalls that of Germanic-type ‘strict’ verb-second languages. V2 effects are associated with a variety of properties across languages, some of which correspond to those of strict V2 languages, but not necessarily (subject-verb inversion, enclisis, the impossibility for V1 and/or V3 orders).

We invite submission of abstracts on the syntactic, semantic and psycholinguistic aspects of this topic which address, but are not restricted to the following questions: 

- What can the syntax of interrogatives teach us about the nature of V2? And what can the syntax of interrogatives in strict V2 languages teach us about V2 in non-strict or relaxed V2 languages?

- What are the properties and the limits of V2 effects in interrogatives? Why are they so prevalent cross-linguistically?

- What is the rationale behind verb-movement in interrogatives? Does it involve verb-movement or rather movement of T/Infl, which pied-pipes the verb? In which position does the verb surface? Does the adjacency between the wh-phrase and the verb necessarily derive from a Spec-Head relationship?

- How do we account for the deviations from V2 order?

- In which position does the postverbal subject surface? Can variation in V2 effects be attributed to the subject’s placement?

- What can we learn from related constructions, such as focalization, dislocation, clefts?

- How can language change inform us about the V2 property?