(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Carnie, Andrew; Bobaljik, Jonathan
We claim that the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1993) predicts VSO to be the
unmarked word order in a language which has both verb raising and Object Shift (in the sense of Holmberg (1986)). This paper has two sections: In section l, we will show that object shift entails a subject positions lower than the specifier of AgrS. Thus, in a language with verb raising to AgrS, VSO order would be derived trivially. In section 2, we will show how this works in Irish, a language with both overt object shift and VSO matrix ordering.