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The purpose of this chapter is to propose a unified analysis of a range of “second-position” phenomena that have been attested in various languages, and in so doing to motivate a more elaborated theory of Nominative Case assignment. Because our focus is on the interaction of clause structure with structural Case assignment, the authors concentrate almost exclusively on the processes and properties of S-structure. It is a classic tenet of generative grammar that inflectional affixes may be separate syntactic entities at pre-phonological levels of representation; see the analysis of the English auxiliary system in Chomsky. At the turn of the 1990s, this idea received new impetus, beginning with Pollock. Finally, the appendix is devoted to the discussion of Stylistic Fronting. The authors also added a postscript to this version of the paper, explaining its rather unusual and protracted prepublication history.

In this article we undertake a systematic study of the Itinerarium Egeriae, one of the best known late Latin texts, to determine the proper characterization of the word order of the text and to consider in particular whether the Itinerarium Egeriae can legitimately be considered to present a verb-second (V2) grammar on the par with the well-studied grammars of medieval Romance. The results, based on detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the text and, where relevant, appropriate comparisons with medieval Romance, confirm the innovative nature of the syntax of the Itinerarium Egeriae whose word order patterns are shown to follow an asymmetric V2 constraint. The article therefore offers valuable original evidence for the often claimed, but hitherto unproven, hypothesis that the V2 syntax of medieval Romance represents the continuation of a parametric setting already well established in the grammar of late Latin. En aquest article duem a terme un estudi sistemàtic de l'Itinerarium Egeriae, un dels textos del llatí tardà més ben coneguts, per tal de determinar la caracterització adequada de l'ordre de mots del text i veure, en particular, si l'Itinerarium Egeriae es pot considerar legítimament que presenta una gramàtica de verb segon (V2) de manera semblant a les gramàtiques ben estudiades del romànic medieval. Els resultats, basats en detallades anàlisis quantitatives i qualitatives del text i, on és pertinent, en comparacions adequades amb el romànic medieval, confirmen la naturalesa innovadora de la sintaxi de l'Itinerarium Egeriae, els patrons d'ordre de mots de la qual es demostra que segueixen una restricció asimètrica de V2. L'article, per tant, ofereix evidència original i valuosa a favor de la hipòtesi sovint proposada però fins ara no demostrada que la sintaxi V2 del romànic medieval representa la continuació d'una fixació paramètrica ja ben establerta en la gramàtica del llatí tardà.