Lack of evidence for the expansion of the VP

Simon’s written narratives do not provide (unambiguous) evidence for the projection of an additional structural layer above the VP and verb raising to INFL. The analysis reveals that none of the diagnostic criteria used to establish the availability of the IP is fulfilled.

Target inflectional morphology is not productive by the end of the recording time. Main verbs appear with the infinitive marker -en or a default -e suffix (cf. (487) an example from file 3), and, at times, with no suffix at all (compare find, ‘find’, in example (488)) and there is no apparent reason why one form is preferred over the other (we will come back to verb inflection in Simon’s narratives in the next sub-section). Apart from one construction with the verb mag (‘like’) (cf. (489)), produced in file 1, and one with the verb mussen (‘have to’) (cf.

(490) ), produced in file 2, Simon does not use periphrastic verb constructions with modal or auxiliary verbs in subsequent files. Finally, adverbs (cf. example

(491) from file 5) and the negator (cf. (488)) continue to appear in the preverbal position (there are only two exceptions, one in file 1 and the other in file 3, both of them in constructions with non-finite verb forms). Based on these observations we are led to conclude that Simon has not expanded the VP structure by the end of the recording time.