Exercise 14-2

A.

B. Of the following sentences, (2b) is expected to be grammatical. (2a) should be ungrammatical since it does not involve the topicalizing of a phrasal constituent. In fact, (2a) is grammatical, for reasons that go beyond the material in this course. What seems to be going on is that material can scramble leftward out of the VP, adjoining to IP, leaving a VP consisting only of the verb. This emptied out VP then topicalizes. (2c) is ungrammatical, as expected, since the topicalized material does not constitute a constituent.

(2) a.   Angerufen hat mein Onkel aus der Schweiz dreimal.
b.   Aus der Schweiz hat mein Onkel dreimal angerufen.
c.   Dreimal aus der Schweiz hat mein Onkel bei seinen Nachbarn angerufen.