Congratulations to Bernard Schwarz, whose article “Structure preservation in complex prefields: A note on Müller (2018)” has just been published in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.
Abstract: Cases of apparent V3 order in German finite main clauses are commonly attributed to remnant VP movement to SpecC. The remnant VPs posited in this approach are headed by a trace, left behind by a verb that evacuated from VP prior to the movement of VP. Müller (2018) argued that such remnant VPs are subject to a process of restructuring that removes the verb’s trace and reassociates the phrases that depended on that head prior to its removal. This commentary discusses novel observations about operator scope which lend further support to the remnant movement approach to apparent V3, but which at the same time are inconsistent with the assumption that remnant VPs in the German prefield are always subject to restructuring.
The full article is available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11049-023-09571-8