The licensing of verb-third main clauses in the history of German

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Main clauses in which the finite verb is preceded by more than one constituent, so called verb-third clauses, are attested throughout the entire history of German, and because they are problematic for the verb-second analysis of these stages, they have been subject of intensive research. Up to now, the structural equivalence of the various verb-third patterns attested over time has been rejected. It has been assumed that the historical verb-third clauses are not identical with the modern German ones and must be therefore derived within a diachronically older grammar, which is subject to change. The present project aims at a unified explanation of verb-third clauses, i.e., they are derived within a historically constant grammar. The differences observed in the data are attributed to changes in the constraints licensing optimal word order patterns over time, without enforcing a change in underlying structure of the clause.