Remnant Raising and VSO Clausal Architecture - A Case Study of San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec

San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec, an endangered and little-examined indigenous language of Mexico, shows a range of syntactic and morphological phenomena incompatible with standard Minimalist accounts of verb movement: verbs and clearly phrasal constituents behave identically in a number of syntactic constructions, and the ordering of verbal morphemes is problematic for standard assumptions of verbal head movement. This work proposes a VP-remnant raising account for these phenomena, motivated by Kayne’s (1992) Antisymmetry program. This work also examines consequences of phrasal remnant movement for negation constructions, question formation, and the interpretation of tense, aspect, and mood.