Talk:V2 word order

message: 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)
thread_title:  Re: V2 in English 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Older entries 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Inconsistency 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Reasons 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  English 

message: 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)
thread_title: Swedish

message: 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)
thread_title:  "Den här" explanation 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Kashmiri 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: CPs and IPs

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Glosses 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Better Examples? 

message: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title: German example sentence d.

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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:  CodeCat (talk) 16:37, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of V2? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Norwegian

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  X-bar analysis of German V2 

message: 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)
thread_title: Dutch clitic pronoun

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: That is PRECISELY what I was looking for! Thanks, ADJ. I love Wikipedia. 19:03, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Negation and Inversion 

message: 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)
thread_title:  "major"? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Done. Loraof (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  "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)

text:  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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  V2 vestiges in Modern English 

message: 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:  (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)
thread_title:  Introduction a bit technical 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Too technical notice 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Reorganizing current article and adding New sections 

message: 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)
thread_title:  glüklich? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Verb second vs. verb-second 

message: 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)
thread_title:  V2 subject-object inversion "without exception" in Old English after ne 

message: 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)
thread_title:  German example sentences „vor der Schule“ 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Possible wrong example