The relation between information structure, object type and word order: a variationist approach to verb-object variation in the history of English De Engelse titel van mijn masterthesis is:

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2015-09-30
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en
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The variation in verb-object order in the Germanic languages has first of all raised the question of how to account for this in structural terms. More recently, however, research has become interested in the mechanisms that govern the change. This has led to the now well-established consensus that information structure plays an important part. This thesis will be mainly interested in verb-object order variation in the history of English. The seemingly simple hypothesis that objects are post-verbal iff they are new and pre-verbal iff they are given has been shown to be too simple and also the given/new distinction has proven to be too crude. Furthermore, object type seems to affect object position as well. The present work will combine the findings so far in a fine-grained analysis and will focus specifically on the type of objects that occur in OV-VO orders.
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Faculteit der Letteren