Polyadic fronting does not exist in German (but crowded CPs do): Cyclic internal Merge and multiple external Merge in the left edge of the clause

Abstract

Present-day German adheres to the Verb-Second (V2) rule, generating the finite verb in V before relinearizing it to C, with only one constituent targeting Spec,CP in main clauses. However, recent studies have identified several mismatches between structural and linear syntax in the CP domain. While various proposals have addressed these individual patterns, configurations with multiple intrasentential phenomena that violate the V2 constraint have been largely neglected. This paper proposes a model within the cartographic framework to derive complex CP linearizations in German. This approach excludes polyadic – i.e., dyadic or multiple – fronting, integrates cyclic movement (internal Merge) and multiple base-generation (external Merge), and effectively applies the bottleneck effect to account for the observed derivations. The findings reveal that all possible linearizations are complex variants of the basic V2 pattern, offering a nuanced understanding of the CP domain’s structural complexities.