In this work the underlying word order of German is investigated. Previous proposals for SOV and SVO bases are discussed in detail, and derivational possibilities for a variety of transformational rules from SOV and SVO as well as VSO bases are presented, analyzed and compared. It is proposed that a body of data exists that offers support for a (Prefield) VSO hypothesis over an SOV or SVO hypothesis for German to account for the extremely diverse surface configurations of verbal and non-verbal elements.weiterlesen