German and Dutch verb constructions show a rich array of syntactic phenomena that have so far been underexposed in the literature, despite the fact that they have proved to be a source of substantial problems in theoretical grammar. The cross-linguistic study of verb constructions and complementation has been dominated by views deriving from English or, for that matter, Latin. The German and Dutch complementation systems, however, feature several important properties that are missing from English but occur in many other languages. Well-known but only partially understood examples are clause-final verb clusters and the so-called Third Construction. In the present book, these and related phenomena are addressed by leading representatives of various schools of linguistic thought, in particular Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Generative Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG), Performance Grammar, and Semantic Syntax. By bringing together the diverse theoretical analyses into one volume, the editors hope to stimulate comparative evaluations of the formalisms.

Table of contents

Introduction 1–4 1. Verb clusters and the scope of adjuncts in Dutch Gosse Bouma 5–42 2. Verbal clusters and cluster creepers Arnold Evers 43–89 3. V-clustering and clause union: Causes and effects Hubert Haider 91–126 4. West-Germanic verb clusters in LFG Ronald M. Kaplan and Annie Zaenen 127–150 5. Subjects in unexpected places and the notion of “predicate” Andreas Kathol 151–183 6. Dutch and German verb constructions in Performance Grammar Gerard Kempen and Karin Harbusch 185–221 7. Coherent constructions in German: Lexicon or syntax? Owen Rambow 223–246 8. Verb clusters and branching directionality in German and Dutch Pieter A.M. Seuren 247–296 References 297–307 Index 309–314