Afrikaans directionality switch in ‘triple’ V-clusters with the auxiliary het

Abstract

The general perspective of the paper is that all (dis)harmonic branching orders within the West-Germanic V-clusters imply a different categorization by the acquisition procedure that should be independently motivated. More specific, the paper discusses the directionality switch with the temporal auxiliary het (‘have’) in Afrikaans. Afrikaans has a right-branching V-cluster 1-2-3. The directionality switches in subordinate clauses when V₁ is the auxiliary het, which seemingly gives rise to the a-typical order 2-3-1 [[leer ₂ swem ₃] het ₁]. V₂ is in this case an IPP (Infinitivus-pro-participio) infinitive. I propose to derive the directionality switch as a matter of category assignment by an acquisition procedure that is unaware of underlying structure followed by movements. I argue that sentence-final het has been reanalyzed as a morphological suffix on the V₃. This leads to a simplification of the apparent 2-3-1 V-cluster into a binary 1–2 V-cluster [leer ₁ [swem het]₂].