V2 and Topicalization in Germanic and Romance

The paper discusses the relation between Verb Second and the derivation of topics in a comparative and diachronic perspective. It is argued that internally merged topics in Germanic led to the generalization of the V2 rule, while the predominant presence of externally merged topics in Romance led to the loss of the V2 rule in declarative clauses. The paper is based on a fine-grained analysis of the C-domain as envisaged by the cartographic approach (cf. Rizzi 1997), a detailed analysis of topic types and their syntactic properties as well as on a novel approach to V2 that proves to be more flexible than the traditional EPP-based to the V2 rule.