THE ROLE OF THE VERB POSITION IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN SENTENCES STRUCTURE

Abstract

The verb is the central grammatical element of a sentence, as it encodes predication, determines argument structure, and anchors tense, mood, and agreement relations. In syntactic theory, the position of the verb is crucial because it reflects underlying clause architecture and governs how subjects, objects, and modifiers are structurally related. In Germanic languages, verb position is particularly significant, as it serves as a primary indicator of clause type and grammatical well-formedness. This article investigates the role of verb position in English and German sentence structure, focusing on how verbal placement shapes word order patterns and syntactic interpretation. While German systematically employs verb movement, most notably through the verb-second (V2) constraint in main clauses and verb-final order in subordinate clauses, English relies largely on a fixed subject–verb–object structure with limited verb displacement. Drawing on a qualitative review of recent linguistic research published between 2023 and 2025, the study examines verb movement, word order variation, and non-canonical constructions in both languages. The findings demonstrate that German verb position is strongly regulated by morphosyntactic principles and information structure, whereas English compensates for reduced verb movement through rigid linear order and auxiliary-based constructions. These differences have important implications for syntactic theory, second language acquisition, and contrastive linguistic analysis.