Don’t Rush to Rehabilitate: A Remark on Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014

Koeneman and Zeijlstra (2014) aim to rehabilitate the strong version of the Rich Agreement Hypothesis (RAH), according to which there is a bidirectional implication between “rich” agreement morphology in the verbal system and movement of the finite verb to a functional head above vP but below the C system (V-to-I movement). We show that one of the clearest empirical arguments raised in the literature against the strong RAH—the persistence of V-to-I movement in Early Modern Danish—is not addressed by any of the counterarguments raised by Koeneman and Zeijlstra and therefore still stands as evidence against the rehabilitated generalization and theory.