Verb placement in Canadian English and the cartography of syntactic structures

Abstract

The present study consists of an analysis of the verb placement in Canadian English within the cartographic approach of the Principles and Parameters theory. The goal is to determine if the lexical verb does in fact move in Canadian English, as little as it may. The hierarchy developed in Cinque (1999) favors the idea that functional projections within the middlefield find themselves in a fixed order and, within these projections, adverbs occupy the specifiers of their respective heads. Given the fact that adverbs, therefore, are found in fixed positions, they serve as an effective diagnostic for verb movement. A series of grammaticality judgment tests were carried out with each of the functional projections of the hierarchy. Based on the results of the tests, it was possible to scrutinize verb movement and shed light on which position the verb may raise to.