Verbal breakups and the interaction between syntactic structure and processing

Abstract

This thesis reports on a study of verb cluster interruptions; a phenomenon that shows great variation across languages. This variation will be shown to be fairly systematic, as it is the direct result of interactions of different components of human cognition; namely syntactic structure and processing. It will be argued that different types of elements that are allowed within verb clusters in different languages can be predicted from a Verb Cluster Interruption Hierarchy, which follows directly from a combination of syntactic and processing principles.