Microvariation

Chapter 5 investigates Spanish and Romanian marked orderings of verbs and adverbs, as well as the microvariation in verb placement emerging from the investigation of variously TAM-specified lexical vs functional and finite vs non-finite forms. First, the pragmatically marked orders of Romanian and Spanish present indicative verbs are considered. Second, the placements of the perfective auxiliary ‘have’ and of the active past participle are analysed and it is shown that the attested variation can be subsumed under the same licensing principle responsible for default movement. Subsequently, a unified analysis is provided to account for the high placement of infinitives and subjunctives. The chapter ends with the cases of Romanian and French, which seem to escape the proposed analyses, followed by a discussion about the role played by Tense and Aspect in verb movement and the residual patterns of microvariation exhibited by Brazilian Portuguese.