What do you know, if you know that a language has 'Object Verb' structure rather than 'Verb Object'? Answering this question and many others, this book provides an essential guide to the syntactic structure of German. It examines the systematic differences between German and English, which follow from this basic difference in sentence structure, and presents the main results of syntactic research on German. Topics covered include the strict word order in VO vs word order variation in OV, verb clustering, clause union effects, obligatory functional subject position, and subject-object...

A new theory of grammar which explores the old distinction between OV and VO languages and their underlying basic asymmetry.