A long farewell: What the loss of V2 made briefly visible

The verb second word order (V2) is known to have been present in some Medieval Romance languages, and to have been lost. The loss is however a gradual process that we propose to relate to the decreasing height of the verb movement in the left periphery through the Medieval period: whereas in the initial period the verb could move to a high position (CP Topic/Focus projection), in the final period only lower peripheral positions are accessible. This means that the ongoing change will make visible constructions involving verb movement to a lower position. Such constructions are studied here in parallel texts calibrated for provenance and text type from two Romance languages for the period from the beginning of the 14th century to the 16th century. More specifically, we investigate Participle and Infinitive Fronting in French and Venetian, showing that these structures involve low movement and correlate with a V2 of the low type.