Learning and Unlearning V2: on the Robustness of the Triggering Experience in a Historical Perspective

In this paper I consider both the acquisition and loss of V2 (verb-second) word order, discussing some historical evidence from English and present-day data from Norwegian dialects. In both cases, there is a certain word order optionality, in that there are some clause types which require V2, while others require or allow non-V2. Furthermore, within the same clause type there are certain elements (adverbs or wh-words) which display an exceptional behavior with respect to word order. Within a cue-based approach to acquisition and change, I consider the following questions: How can the word order of mixed V2 systems be learnable? And what is the critical level of robustness of the cue? Based on frequencies in some adult and child data from Norwegian, I show that very little input seems to be needed for children to acquire mixed word orders, and that the critical level for acquisition must be considerably lower than what has previously been suggested.