The fundamental left-right asymmetry in the Germanic verb cluster.

Cinque (Linguist Inq 36(3):315-332, 2005; Universals of language today. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 165-184, 2009; Functional structure from top to toe. Vol. 9 of The cartography of syntactic structures. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 232-265, 2014a) observes that there is an asymmetry in the possible ordering of dependents of a lexical head before versus after the head. A reflection on some of the concepts needed to develop Cinque's ideas into a theory of neutral word order reveals that dependents need to be treated separately by class. The resulting system is applied to the problem of word order in the Germanic verb cluster. It is shown that there is an extremely close match between theoretically derived expectations for clusters made up of auxiliaries, modals, causative 'let', a main verb, and verbal particles. The facts point to the action of Cinque's fundamental left-right asymmetry in language in the realm of the verb cluster. At the same time, not all verb clusters fall under Cinque's generalization, which, therefore, argues against treating all cases of restructuring uniformly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]