Verbstellung und Verbstellungswandel in den romanischen Sprachen

The study engages with the theory that verb position change in most Romance languages is traceable to the (near total) loss of what was originally a strict, universally valid >verb-comes-second< rule. This assumption is refuted here on the basis (a) of a critical discussion of traditional and generative studies on the question and (b) of an empirical study by the author based on a diachronic comparison of Bible translations. These investigations reveal that, contrary to previous suppositions, the Romance languages (with the exception of Rhaeto-Romanic) should invariably be analyzed as non-"verb-second" languages.