Abstract:
In the North Frisian dialects, sentences like the one in (1) occur:
- Diar mei'k nä&aunl;n panang ütjfördu
There may-I not-a penny out-for-give
'I won't spend a penny for something like that'
In this sentence, a stranded preposition (för) is sandwiched between the particle
(ütj) and verb part (du) of the particle verb (ütjdu). The phenomenon of a stranded
preposition appearing between a secondary predicate and the verb is well known from other
West Germanic languages, but North Frisian seems to be the only language in which the
preposition may follow a verbal particle. In my talk, I will try to account for this state
of affairs by relating it to another unique property of North Frisian: it is the only
Germanic language, in which the Verb Phrase and the Particle Phrase are asymmetrical, i.e.
it has a left-branching VP and a right-branching PartP (at least at the surface).
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