On the relation between V2 and the second position cliticization

Following the standardly adopted hypothesis of a uniform diachronic source of V2 in Germanic and second position cliticization (2P), the paper investigates both operations in order to verify common claims concerning the motivation for the V2 and 2P movement. It shows that neither of them can be analyzed as a PF-driven phenomenon, nor is it possible to attribute them to a uniform syntactic trigger, such as Tense or Illocutionary Force feature checking. Special attention is given to the 2P effect in Slavic, whose properties show that it is necessary to draw a distinction between the “generalized” 2P, which is a syntactic process but seems unrelated to any feature checking mechanism, and Force-related 2P, which occurs for Force/Operator feature checking. The findings concerning 2P are applied to draw conclusions about the trigger of V2 in Germanic. It is argued that V2 covers a number of unrelated cases of movement or base generation, whose only common property is the position of the verb after the first constituent. Therefore, it seems incorrect to attribute all cases of V2 to a uniform syntactic trigger, in particular to Force marking.