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The main objective of this article is to discuss word-order phenomena in Old French, Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, and Old Occitan from a comparative perspective. In particular, the following are examined: (i) the empirical evidence in order to assess the theoretical arguments for and against a verbsecond analysis of the Old Romance languages; (ii) verb movement in Old Romance; and (iii) whether the changes in the word-order patterns in the history of the Romance languages can be captured as yet another instance of grammaticalisation. By means of a uniform methodology and statistical analysis of novel data, it is claimed that: (a) Old Romance does not possess a Germanic V2; (b) there is variation in terms of word order among Old Romance languages, which is shown to be linked to the individual history of the languages; (c) V2 order is mostly an epiphenomenon of the discourse mechanisms and the nature of the left functional field in these languages.
