Jakob Wackernagel is well known for the observation that clitic elements generally appeared in second position in their clause in early Indo-European languages. It is less well known that he also proposed this as the basis of the ‘Verb Second’ phenomenon. Finite Verbs in main clauses were apparently accentless in Indo-European, and he suggested that they were therefore treated as clitics and located in second position. This paper examines the possibility that there is indeed a fundamental relationship between Verb Second and clitic placement.

I first argue that accounts of Verb Second do not extend correctly to the placement of clitics: if there is something common to these phenomena, it must involve generalizing clitic behavior to inflected Verbs, rather than vice versa. The range of clitics in the languages of the world is examined, and a set of parameters for the rules that locate them is formulated. I argue that these rules form a class with the rules of morphology that introduce affixes (and other phonological changes) into words. A unitary generalization is suggested: rules that provide formal markers of what Sapir called ‘relational’ or ‘derivational’ concepts realize these categories at a prominent anchor point (the beginning, the end, or the structural head of the material being marked). This class of rules also includes processes that transfer morphosyntactic features to an anchor position in the phrase, where they are reflected formally. I then suggest that existing accounts of why Verbs should move to their surface position in Verb Second languages lack independent justification; furthermore, they incorrectly miss the generalization that the Verb in such cases is always in second position. Icelandic constructions are discussed that suggest this position is not structurally uniform. Treating Verb Second as the result of a rule which says ‘realize the inflectional features of a clause immediately after its initial element’ unifies several cases and also expresses the connection between Verb Second and other second-position phenomena. I conclude that Wackernagel was right in proposing a unification of Verb Second and cliticization, though the generalization involved is not based on properties of word accent.

This paper has been inspired by ideas contained in W. P. Lehmann's work on syntactic typology (1978). It discusses a set of factors held to be relevant for the ways subject, verb, and object may be linearized in various languages: these are sentence depth, the cognitive factor, and relative structural independence. Various linearization patterns, i.e. SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV conform to these factors in different degrees. A hypothesis is tested concerning the statistical correlation between the distribution of various linearization patterns among the languages of the world and their degree of conformity to the set of above-mentioned factors.

One component of D. Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis is here empirically tested by reviewing studies of children's comprehension and production of articles. Seven studies reporting relevant data in English and French were reviewed. Two of them provide clear empirical support for the hypothesis that children are universally sensitive to the specific/non-specific distinction of referential meaning. Moreover, findings of all reviewed studies were generally consistent with a four-stage hypothesis of the acquisition of English and French articles, characterized by (a) the use of the indefinite and/or definite article(s) for specific referents, and zero article for both non-specific referents and naming; (b) the use of the indefinite article for non-specific referents, and the definite article for specific referents whether or not they are presupposed; (c) an increase in the correct use of the indefinite article for specific, non-presupposed referents, with a concomitant decrease in the correct use of the definite article for specific, presupposed referents; and (d) the correct use of the definite and indefinite articles.

In previous work on cliticization, it has been assumed that two and only two strategies are available for clitic positioning: sentential second-position cliticization (Wackernagel's Law) and cliticization to a specified lexical class, most commonly V. Moreover, it has been assumed that the host in terms of which the clitic is positioned, i.e. the structural or lexical host, must also necessarily be the phonological host. This paper shows that the structural and phonological hosts need not be the same; i.e., clitics can simultaneously attach syntactically to a structural host, while attaching independently to a different phonological host. Thus the two-strategy assumption of clitic positioning and attachment is inadequate. Instead, three independent parameters are required. These binary parameters encode two structural notions—dominance and precedence—and one phonological notion—liaison. The values of the parameters constrain possible clitics to eight types, each of which is illustrated in this paper. These parameters are encoded in the lexical subcategorization frame for clitics. It is shown that clitics are phrasal affixes. Although languages appear to differ widely in types of clitics and cliticization, this paper shows how a unitary analysis of apparently diverse clitic types is possible in terms of the three-parameter system. Languages analysed include Classical Greek, Spanish, French, Ngiyambaa, Nganhcara, and some Uto-Aztecan languages.