TY - JOUR AU - Sobin, Nicholas AU - Zavala, S. Regina PY - 2021/05/07 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - The VOS Puzzle JF - Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics JA - Borealis VL - 10 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.7557/1.10.1.5760 UR - https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/borealis/article/view/5760 SP - 131-144 AB - <p>The subject (S) in Spanish sentences may appear post–verbally and even sentence–finally following an object (O). Further, in post–verbal SO/OS pairs, the first element asymmetrically c–commands the second element. Previous analyses of the VOS phenomenon encounter difficulties in accounting for this asymmetric c–command relation and/or for Case and subject–verb agreement involving the VOS subject. We argue here that these Spanish SO/OS pairs operate in parallel to English double–objects (Larson 1988). Based on the work of Phillips (1997) and others, we propose a top–down approach to sentence derivation which resolves the problems with VOS sentences encountered by other analyses and which obviates the need for devices such as <em>pro</em> to account for ‘<em>pro</em>–drop’ sentences.</p> ER -