Verb Raising, Object Shift, and Word Order

Abstract

There are two main approaches to the question: How are the various surface linear orders (precedence) derived in the most plausible and economical way? One is the Parameter Approach (Chomsky 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995), which implies that languages are partly defined by the head parameter that sets the positions of the head of a phrase either initial or final. In this approach, languages are divided into two types according to the position of the head. English, for example, is head-initial and Korean is head-final. The other is the Universal Base Hypothesis (Kayne 1994 and Zwart 1997). This hypothesizes that "since structure is all languages essentially the same, so is word order" (Zwart 1997: 249). This is the hypothesis that will be pursed in this paper. This paper is an attempt to show that the basic word order across languages is SOY, contrary to a recent claim by Zwart (1997). He claims that the universal basic word order is SVO, or more generally, head-initial. As a consequence, he allegedly claims that the head initial/head-final parameter is superfluous and it is a theoretical consequence of two movement operations like object shift and verb raising. However, the tenability of a version of Universal Base Hypothesis in the domain of rigid SOY languages like Korean/Japanese has never been investigated or testified before him In this paper, it will be argued that both English, which has overt object shift and verb raising (contra Chomsky 1995) and Korean, which has no verb raising (contra Koizumi 1995), have SOY as the basic word order.