NP Reversal in Old Italian: In Favor of Ground

This chapter investigates the internal structure of the DP and argues for the existence of a DP- internal left-peripheral edge hosting moved XPs via a remnant analysis à la Cinque. This approach argues that the only possible meaningless movements giving origin to the basic word order are those containing the head noun. It will also be shown that there exist cases where this restriction is not respected, i.e. it is possible to move only an adjective stranding the head noun and the modifier of the adjective. The empirical field the chapter analyzes is a peculiar set of DP-internal scrambling phenomena found in Old Italian (OI) from the XIII to the XIV century.