Providing a study of three salient phenomena of West Germanic, namely scrambling, remnant movement and restructuring, this book discusses their interrelatedness. In particular, restructuring is shown to break down into remnant movement of the major phases of the infinitival clause, and the transparency of restructuring infinitives.

In this book, Hinterholzl provides a comprehensive study of three salient phenomena of West Germaic, namely scrambling, remnant movement and restructuring, and discusses their interrelatedness. In particular, restructuring is shown to break down into remnant movement of the major phases of the infinitival clause, accounting for the formation of verb clusters and the transparency of restructuring infinitives.

The volume presents new approaches to explaining word order variation and change in the Germanic languages and thus relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the theory of language change and diachronic syntax.

The novelty of our approach consists in three main points. First of all, we aim at describing functional variety in the field of word order and verb placement in the early Germanic languages not as a result of language contact, but rather as a language-internal phenomenon related to stylistic and grammatical conditions in information packaging....