1 On the Bottleneck Hypothesis of V2 in Swedish Anders Holmberg 1. Introduction 1 On the basis of a review of research on the V2 condition Holmberg (2015) put forward the hypothesis that Germanic V2 is a condition on movement, not linear order or structure. More specifically the proposal was as in (1); the statements apply specifically to root clauses. (1) a. C attracts the finite verb. b. One maximal constituent, which can be any category, must move across C. c. Only one maximal constituent can move across C. This concurs with the view put forward in Roberts (2004). To say that V2 is a condition on movement, not structure, is to say that V2 cannot be satisfied by a category externally merged (‘base-generated’) in the C-domain. This concerns specifically Germanic. Breton is European V2 language where it seems that V2 may indeed be a condition on linear order, also counting constituents which have not moved; see Borsley and Kathol (2000), Anderson (2000), Legendre (2001), Jouitteau (2005, 2008). (1c) is based on the observation that V- more-than-two orders occur in Germanic V2 languages, but only one of the preverbal constituents is internally merged, i.e. moved to preverbal position; the other constituents are externally merged there. (2) would be a typical example. (All examples in the paper are Swedish unless indicated otherwise.) (2) a. Vargen ja, nu är den tillbaka igen. wolf.DEF PRT now is it back again ‘The wolf, now it’s back again.’ b. Vargen ja, den är tillbaka igen nu. wolf.DEF PRT it is back again now ‘The wolf, it’s back again now.’ c. *Vargen ja, är den tillbaka igen nu. wolf.DEF PRT is it back again now 1 Part of the research for this paper was funded by the the European Research Council Advanced Grant No. 269752 “Rethinking Comparative Syntax”. Thanks to the audience at the V2 workshop organised by ReCoS in 2016. Thanks to the ReCoS team, especially Theresa Biberauer and Sam Wolfe. Special thanks to Sten Vikner for comments on the first version. Finally, thanks to two anonymous reviewers whose very detailed comments helped considerably to improve the paper.