Espen Johan Klævik-Pettersen

• Cournane, Ailís & Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). The role of the conservative learner in the rise and fall of verb-second. Journal of Historical Syntax. ISSN 2163-6001. 7(6-19), p. 1–48. doi: 10.18148/hs/2023.v7i6-19.160. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This paper argues that the diachronic rise and fall of verb-second grammars is tied to the conservative nature of child structure projection and movement postulation, within a Minimalist syntax. For the rise of V2, we propose that children bundle features on a single head in the left periphery, only unbundling (adding projections) with unequivocal input evidence. For the loss of V2, we appeal to the theory that children avoid verb movements, only postulating additional movements with unequivocal input evidence. Interim grammars along the developmental path – with bundled left peripheries or less-moved Vs relative to the input grammars – prescribe latent diachronic pathways available to actuate into community grammars. We assess our predictions for child interim grammars against the acquisition literature and find data consistent with both fewer projections and less movement in child language, relative to adult input grammars. We appeal to changes in the learning context, namely bilingualism in language contact, as the external impetus for the actuation of change, in both our V2 case studies (Rise: Old French, Loss: Germanic Urban Vernaculars). In language contact situations we suggest children are more likely to continue to use interim grammars for longer periods among their peer-groups, inviting innovative syntax to catch-on (or actuate) among young speakers in those speech communities.

• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2022). Full V2, no V2, residual V2: Exploring variation through phases. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics. ISSN 2385-4138. 8(3), p. 1–25. doi: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.199.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2021). V2, phases, et périphérie gauche : remarques sur la topicalisation en français et en norvégien . Oslo Studies in Language (OSLa). ISSN 1890-9639. 12(1), p. 87–104.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan & Callegari, Elena (2020). Les sujets disloqués en trévisan : étude pragmatique. Scolia. ISSN 1253-9708. doi: 10.4000/scolia.1321.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2019). What is Germanic and what is not about old French V2. Linguistic Variation. ISSN 2211-6834. 19(1), p. 141–198. doi: 10.1075/lv.00011.kla.

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• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). Hva er "la Françafrique", og hvorfor snakker så mennesker i Afrika fransk?
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). No V-to-Force, no Bottlenecks: Two ways to derive V2.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). Verb movement and phasehood in French clausal syntax.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). The coarse structure of the left periphery : Towards a new model of the clause.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). Deriving V2 and V3 without bottlenecks: Evidence from Modern Germanic and Old Romance.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2023). Sam Wolfe, Syntactic Change in French. Journal of French Language Studies. ISSN 0959-2695. doi: 10.1017/S0959269523000017.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2022). Verb movement and phasehood in French clausal syntax.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan & Wullum, Ida Marie (2022). L'omission de que chez les apprenants norvégiens de français langue étrangère.
• Cournane, Ailís & Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2021). The role of the conservative learner in the rise and fall of verb-second .
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2021). Norsk og fransk politikk : Likheter og forskjeller .
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2021). Full V2, Residual V2, no V2 : Exploring Variation through Phases.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2018). Why we still don't have a theory of V2 that (really) works.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2018). One head, many features: Why `strict' V2 languages defy (strong) cartography.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2017). Late Latin word order: a precursor of Old Romance verb-second?
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2017). Latin and Old Romance: When information structure becomes syntax.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2017). L'ordre des mots en latin tardif.
• Klævik-Pettersen, Espen Johan (2019). Inversion, V-to-C, and verb-second: An investigation into the syntax and word order of Old French and Late Latin. 07 Gruppen. Show summary

  In this thesis, l investigate the phenomenon of inversion in Old French and Late Latin, with a particular focus on V-to—C movement and the verb-second (V2) construction. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The introductory chapter provides background to the Old Romance V2 debate and states the research objectives. Chapter 2 is devoted to theory and provides a fairly comprehensive overview of the development in verb—second theory within the transformational generative paradigm from its inception and until today. Empirically, this chapter focuses primarily on the Germanic V2 languages. l show that there is significant variation within the family, and I explore the consequences of this variation for the definition of V2. Considerable attention is devoted to cartographic approaches to V2, in particular 'bottleneck' approaches (Roberts 2004). it is argued that bottleneck theories suffer from several conceptual problems while at the same time being unable to derive the restricted nature of the prefield in modern Germanic. I conclude that a distinction must be made between the phenomenon of V-to-C movement (which generates certain inversion patterns) and V2, which includes strong restrictions on the prefield. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to a detailed quantitative and qualitative assessment of two Old French prose texts from the early 13th century. It is demonstrated that the consensus view of Old French as a V-to-C language is fundamentally correct, and that models that attempt to derive the word order by positing V—to—l movement run into serious empirical problems. Furthermore, I show that Old French had strong restrictions on the prefield, almost parallel to modern Germanic, and that the notion of V2 language is therefore well—founded for Old French. l also demonstrate that the Force-V2 analysis developed by Wolfe (2015) does not make the right predictions for Old French, since it runs into several contradictions related to the nature of root and embedded data. It is suggested that the restricted prefield is best captured in a ‘syncretised’ left periphery (Hsu2017) that bundles the various features onto a single head. Chapter 5 investigates the origins of Old Romance inversion by analysing a Late Latin witness that has attracted much attention in the literature, the Itinerarium Egeriae dating from the late 4th century. It is shown that the text displays an innovative verb-first grammar with high degrees of inversion. At the same time, it is argued, against Ledgeway (2017), that these inversion patterns do not arise through V-to—C movement, but through a symmetric V-in-T setup of a Celtic kind. Main and embedded asymmetries are argued to be the result of the relatively stronger tendency for head— finality in the IP in embedded clauses. Chapter 6 briefly summarizes the findings from previous chapters, and then goes on to explore the potential diachronic link that unites Late Latin with Old Romance in general and with Old French in particular. A stagewise evolution of the inversion system is reconstructed. It is argued that Old French is unique in displaying a final stage in this evolution that brought about strong restrictions on the prefield, turning Old French into a V2 language. The potential influence of the Frankish superstrate in this process is considered, and it is argued that interference effects in the period of bilingualism led the prefields of the Frankish and Gallo-Roman languages to converge, a process which led to the elimination of left-peripheral projections and to the rise of a multifunctional CP.

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