Two Heads Aren’t Always Better Than One

We propose a novel theory of verb raising in which different surface positions of the finite verb across languages reflect differences in phrase structure in a principled manner. Assuming that the inventory of functional projections dominating VP is not universal (e.g., the presence of Agr-Phrases is a point of parametric variation) current assumptions about locality predict obligatory verb raising in a language with Agr-Phrases, but obligatory V in situ in a simple IP-VP configuration. We predict a correlation with other morpho-syntactic phenomena reflecting the presence/absence of AgrPs: ''extra'' subject and object positions, transitive expletive constructions, multiple infelectional affixes, etc. This prediction is borne out for the VO Germanic languages; for the OV languages we predict the existence of head-final Infl projections.