This chapter takes as its point of departure the discussion in 9.2, which has shown that finite verbs can be found in basically two positions: the clause-final position in embedded clauses and the verb-first/second position in main clauses; the latter position is normally occupied by a complementizer in embedded clauses.

On the basis of these two positions, the clause can be divided into various "topological" fields: the clause-initial position, the middle field and the postverbal field. This is illustrated in Figure (2), repeated from Section 9.2. This chapter will focus on the placement of the verbs; the core observation is that complementizers and finite verbs compete for the C-position; because embedded clauses are obligatorily introduced by a complementizer normally, verb second is restricted to main clauses.

2

Section 10.1 starts by introducing the rule of verb-first/second which places finite verbs in the C-position in main clauses. Section 10.2 continues with a complicating issue, namely that verbal collocations may exhibit different behavior under verb-second: there are verbal, compound-like collocations that undergo verb-second as a whole, collocations that are split under verb-second, and collocations that resist verb-second altogether. In (3), we illustrate this for N+V collocations, but copious similar examples can be found with, e.g., particle verbs. We will discuss a number of properties that distinguish the three types of collocation.

Section 10.3 concludes with a discussion of verb-first/second in a limited set of supposedly embedded adverbial clauses. Prototypical cases are conditional adverbial clauses such as (4b), which alternates with the regular embedded clause introduced by the complementizer-like element als'if' in (4a).