Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English

The use of object topicalization declined in Middle and Early Modern English because with the loss of V2, topicalization easily led to prosodically ill-formed sentences with focal accents in clash. The book presents and discusses the effects of this 'Clash Avoidance Requirement' in present-day English and German as well as in Old English, where it plays a crucial role in subject movement.


Augustin Speyer, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Germany.