At least since the seminal works on the clause structure of German (Bierwisch 1963, Thiersch 1978, Den Besten 1983 in the generative framework; Drach 1963 and Höhle 1986 within the Topological Field Model), much attention has been devoted to cases of apparent violation of the strict Verb-Second (V2) word order that characterizes matrix but not embedded clauses in German. In particular, phenomena such as multiply-filled prefield (Müller 2003, 2005, 2013; Speyer 2008; Bildhauer 2011; Müller et al. 2012) and so-called postinitial adverbial connectors (Métrich & Courdier 1995, Pasch et al. 2003, Breindl 2008, Volodina & Weiß 2010) in main clauses have been discussed. In this paper, I propose a novel approach to the nature and formal status of V2 in German, showing that a slightly different postulation of its structural features solves the problem of finding ad-hoc solutions to each “deviant” phenomenon.

In this study, we address the ways in which nouns can give rise to new adjectives in Dutch and German. More specifically, the focus is on words with an evaluative meaning that can be used in a wide range of morphological and syntactic constructions in recent (and informal) language. For example, the German noun Hammer ‘hammer’ can be used in Hammervorstellung ‘very good performance’ or hammer film ‘fantastic film’. In the literature, two distinct hypotheses can be found to account for the adjectival uses of such evaluative nouns. The debonding hypothesis states that the intensifying bound morpheme has developed into a free morpheme. The conversion hypothesis suggests that the new adjectival uses are the result of a syntactic reanalysis of an N as an A that takes place in the predicative position. In our case study, we analyze the synchronic bound and free uses of Dutch top, and we compare them with German top and spitze. We conclude that the emergence of the adjectival uses of these morphemes points toward an interaction between both processes involved, conversion and debonding.