No Motivation For Subject Movement to Spec. CP Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that in verb second languages the verb always moves to C in main clauses, perhaps because of some feature of C. Then the following question arises: Why does there always have to be a constituent preceding the verb?11 NPs move in order to get their features checked in a designated Spec-Head configuration. When this checking has taken place, no additional movement is allowed, unless other features need checking in another Spec-Head configuration. Topics and Wh-elements by assumption have a [+operator] feature in addition to their Case/agreement feature. Assuming that for instance a subject moves to Spec,AgrS to check its Case/agreement feature, it can only move on if it has an additional [+operator] feature. This would explain the preposing of topics in (2) and wh-elements in (3). However, it would not explain the hypothesized movement of the subject to Spec,CP in (1). As can be seen in (7)-(9), the subject does not have to move beyond Spec,AgrS in embedded clauses in Dutch. Moreover, the subject in Dutch has none of the properties of a topic, as can be seen in (16)-(17), and also by looking at the semantic/pragmatic properties of preposed subjects and non- subjects. In short, there would be no reason for the subject to move to the Spec,CP, and therefore we must assume that this movement does not take place.12 It follows that the hypothesis that the verb is always in C in verb second language main clauses is untenable. By consequence, there must be a functional head below C and to the left of the VP in Dutch which hosts the verb in subject initial main clauses such as (1).
