Verb-initial word order
[1] Some languages are ordered strictly as verb-subject-object (VSO), for example Q’anjob’al (Mayan).
Rather than try to find ways to derive the structures of verb-initial languages from underlyingly SVO structures, functional linguists would look at how cognitive principles make it possible for languages to have different word orders and why certain word orders are more common, less common, or almost non-existent.
This prediction roughly corresponds to the real frequencies observed in the world's languages: There are a number of different solutions proposed for deriving V1 word order in the generative framework.
These solutions include the movement of the verb or verbal phrase from traditional SVO sentences, lowering the subject from a higher position, such as Spec-IP to adjoin to a projection of the verb, or stipulating that the specifier is right branching instead of the more common left branching specifiers found in X-bar theory.
A common analysis for V1 word order is the head-raising of the verb from a base-generated SVO sentence into a position higher than the subject.
The common solution is scrambling, which has been proposed for deriving Tongan (Otsuka 2002) and Tagalog (Rackowski 2002) sentences.
The scrambling mechanism involves the object moving to a high position, such as Spec-TP (Otsuka 2002), in order to check information structure features.
In Irish, eliding all postverbal arguments is possible, suggesting that the subject and the object belong to one functional projection, and the verb is outside of it (McCloskey 1991).
[1] Accounts on phrasal movement differ on 1) the highest maximal projection that moves (VP, vP, or TP), 2) the landing site of the moved phrase (Spec-TP or higher), and 3) the motivation for movement (generally agreed to be the EPP).
VOS order can be derived straightforwardly by raising the VP to a specifier position in a higher projection, such as the TP.
VSO order, on the other hand, has to be derived by remnant movement of the VP after evacuating the object from the phrase first.
[1][6] Toba Batak,[7][8] Tagalog,[1] and Malagasy[1] on the other hand, have this restriction only for VP-internal arguments, while allowing adverbs and indirect objects to surface clause-initially.
[9] For such cases, it has been proposed that the object evacuates before the phrasal movement to a higher position than the subject, and thus can undergo WH-movement later.
[9] Some researchers have proposed deriving verb-initial word order by modifying the basic X-bar structure to permit right ward specifiers.
VOS word can be derived from the base positions of a VP with a right-specifier (note that the majority of this literature assumes the VP-Internal hypothesis).
Movement of either the subject or object arguments was originally motivated by positing an EPP feature on the landing site.
Modern analyses are more likely to argue that movement is motivated by a need to give the argument case or for purposes of information structure.
[1] Different languages are said to feature subject lowering, namely Berber (Choe 1987), Chamorro (Chung 1990, 1998), Tagalog (Sabbagh 2005, 2013).
