The repercussions of OV > VO shift in Hungarian: Variation and change in syntactic complex predicate formation

Abstract This paper investigates the diachronic development of Hungarian word order, focusing on the syntactic position in front of the finite verb in light of the syntactic shift from OV to VO order. The so-called Verb Modifiers (VMs), which precede the verb in Modern Hungarian, showed significant word order variation in earlier periods. It is examined how this variation, and especially the difference between verbal particles and other VMs, can be accounted for. The study concludes that the VM–V order is not a syntactic remnant but a result of a syntactic change that affects all VMs already in the early texts.