Labeling by type

Abstract The primary goal of this article is to take advantage of some recent theoretical innovations in syntactic theorizing to propose a novel characterization of some of the basic word-order types isolated by typological research. In the minimalist framework, a necessary condition for a derivation to converge is that the structure it generates should be appropriately labeled. This requirement in particular holds for the major syntactic structures displayed by the various linguistic types. It will be argued that labeling theory, combined with phase theory and the variable syntax of inflectional and discourse features, offers contrasting characterizations of these structures and, as such, provides a window on how exactly SVO, V1 and V2 grammatical systems differ: they differ precisely in the strategy that each type selects in order for neutral declarative root clauses to satisfy the labeling requirement. It will also be shown that the topic and focus structures involving phrasal movement to the periphery, although different parametric choices are made by the various grammatical systems considered here, basically conform to the same requirement.