An interface account of word-order variation in Old High German

The paper addresses the issue of whether word-order properties can be reduced to interface properties. Dispensing with the Head Complement Parameter (cf. Kayne 1994, Chomsky 1995), the unmarked order in a language is not basic property any more and the question arises as to which other properties in the grammar word order properties can be related to. I will argue that word-order properties follow from the interaction between prosodic and information-structural conditions. In particular, I will look at word order variation in Old High German and show that the factors that determine this variation are either prosodic or information-structural in nature.