V2 order in Old Portuguese: revisiting the issue of periodization

The discussion on the periodization of Portuguese is generally based on morphophonological factors. The periodization proposed in Galves, Namiuti and Paixão de Sousa (2006, henceforth GNPS) suggests an alternative segmentation, which is based in syntactic factors, among them, the position of verb. They argue that Portuguese had, in previous phases, a V2 syntax. Nevertheless, there are no consensus about it in the literature. Besides, the issue also involves an important theoretical question: GNPS's proposal is based on Chomsky's (1985) notion of grammar. According to this perspective, grammatical change is the result of the relation between the individual's innate capacities and language knowledge experienced by the successive speaker's generations. Linguistic change consequently takes place in the language acquisition. This notion of grammatical change presents an important consequence on the criteria to divide the language's different phases: since the emergence of a new grammar is analyzed as part of the acquisition process, a relevant criterion should be the date in which the author of the document was born and not the date in which the text was written. Consequently, GNPS's periodization has a different division than the traditional ones. However, the discussion on the verb position in Old Portuguese barely look on the periodization issue. Given these facts, this paper aims to review the most relevant analyses on Old Portuguese verb syntax, relating the discussion to the periodization issue.