On “XP” in Heavy XP Shift

In this presentation, I examine the properties of “XP” that appears at the right-edge of a sentence mainly in German and English. My central claim is that the interaction of general prosodic and syntactic properties (such as weight and V-finality/initiality) of a language determines what constitutes legitimate “XPs” in the language. I argue against the alleged generalization that German does not allow NP-shift, showing that an NP does appear in sentence-final position in German when the NP is prosodically heavy. I further argue that the difference in frequency of NP-shift between German and English follows from the difference in headedness of the two languages (V-final vs. V-initial).