In:Language Change at the Interfaces: Intrasentential and intersentential phenomena
Edited by Nicholas Catasso, Marco Coniglio and Chiara De Bastiani
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 275] 2022
► pp. 123–162
On the role of information structure in the licensing of null subjects in Old High German
An analysis of null subjects in inti coordinated clauses in the Old High German Diatessaron
Published online: 21 April 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.275.04cog
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.275.04cog
Abstract
This paper focuses on the distribution of null subjects in inti coordinated clauses in the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron and shows that the presence of null referential subjects in this construction should not be analysed as a case of Topic drop of the same type of present-day German, but as a case of pure pro-drop of Romance type, involving the presence of a silent category pro licensed via a matching relation with a null Topic in CP (cf. Frascarelli 2007, 2018). The analysis will be shown to be able to also account for the presence of V1 main clauses with free-inversion (Inversion nach inti sentences, cf. Coniglio & Schlachter 2013) and to offer a novel scenario on the loss of both the Inversion nach inti construction and pro-drop in the history of German.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Null subjects in Old High German
- 2.1On the null subject phenomenon
- 2.2Derivation of null subjects
- 2.3Old High German as an asymmetric pro-drop language
- 2.3.1General overview
- 2.3.2The Topic-matching analysis
- 3.The present investigation
- 3.1Data collection and overview
- 3.3.1Inti + V2 clauses
- 3.3.2Inti + V1 clauses
- 3.3.3Inti + OV clauses
- 3.3.4Partial conclusions
- 3.4The distribution of null subjects in sentences introduced by inti
- 3.1Data collection and overview
- 4.Proposed analysis
- 5.Conclusions
Acknowledgements Notes References
References (132)
Primary sources
Codex Sangallensis 56, Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen, <[URL]> Last access 26 November 2020.
Thesaurus indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (TITUS). <[URL]>
Secondary sources
Adams, Marianne. 1987. From Old French to the theory of pro-drop. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 1–32.
Alexiadou, Artemis & Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 1998. Parametrizing AGR: word order, V-movement and EPP checking. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 491–539.
Axel, Katrin. 2005. Null subjects and verb placement in Old High German. In Linguistic evidence: empirical, theoretical and computational perspectives, Stephan Kepser & Marga Reis (eds), 27–48. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
. 2007. Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-Second. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Axel, Katrin & Weiß, Helmut. 2011. Pro-drop in the history of German from Old High German to the modern dialects. In Null Pronouns, Melani Wratil & Peter Gallmann (eds), 21–52. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Barbosa, Pilar. 1995. Null Subjects. PhD dissertation, MIT.
. 2011a. Pro-drop and theories of pro in the Minimalist Program, part 1: consistent null subject languages and the pronominal-Agr hypothesis. Language and Linguistics Compass 5(8): 551–570.
. 2011b. Pro-drop and theories of pro in the Minimalist Program, part 2: pronoun deletion analyses of null subjects and partial, discourse and semi pro-drop. Language and Linguistics Compass 5(8): 571–587.
Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche Syntax. Eine Geschichtliche Darstellung. Vol. 4. Wortstellung. Periodenbau. Heidelberg: Winter.
Benincà, Paola. 1984. Un’ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze medievali. Quaderni Patavini di Linguistica 4: 3–19.
. 1988. Costruzioni con ordini marcati degli elementi. In Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione, vol. 1, Lorenzo Renzi (ed), 115–195. Bologna: Il Mulino
. 1995. Complement clitics in medieval Romance: the Tobler-Mussafia law. In Clause Structure and Language Change, Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts (eds), 325–344. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2001. The position of Topic and Focus in the left periphery. In Current Studies in Italian Syntax: Essays Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds), 39–64. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
. 2006. A detailed map of the left periphery of Medieval Romance. In Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics: Negation, Tense, and Clausal Architecture, Raffaella Zanuttini, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger & Paul H. Portneret (eds), 53–86. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
. 2010. L’ordine delle parole e la struttura della frase. In Grammatica dell’italiano antico, Giampaolo Salvi & Lorenzo Renzi (eds), 27–59. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Bentley, Delia & Cruschina, Silvio. 2018. The silent argument of broad focus: typology and predictions. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1): 118.
den Besten, Hans. 1983. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. In On the formal syntax of the West Germania, Werner Abraham (ed), 47–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 1989. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. In Studies in West Germanic Syntax, Hans Den Besten (ed), 14–100. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Biberauer, Theresa, Holmberg, Anders, Roberts, Ian & Sheehan, Michelle. 2010. Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Broekhuis, Hans & Corver, Norbert. 2016. Syntax of Dutch. Verbs and Verb Phrases, vol. 3. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2004. Toward a cartography of subject positions. In The Structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 2, Luigi Rizzi (ed), 115–165. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cardinaletti, Anna & Starke, Michael. 1999. The typology of structural dependency. A case study of three classes of pronouns. In Clitics in the Language of Europe, Henk van Riemsdijk (ed), 145–233. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Cognola, Federica. 2013. Syntactic Variation and Verb Second. A German Dialect in Northern Italy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2014. On asymmetric pro-drop in Mòcheno. Pinning down the role of contact in the maintenance of a root-embedded asymmetry. STUF – Language Typology and Universals – Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 67(4): 511–532.
. 2015. On the null subject in diachrony. A comparison between the Old High German and the Old Italian translations of the Diatessaron. Talk given at the 48th SLE Conference, University of Leiden, 2–5 September 2015.
. 2019. On the structure of the left periphery of three relaxed V2 languages. New insights into the typology of relaxed V2 languages. Linguistic Variation 19:2: 82–118.
. under review. Free inversion in Old High German and Cimbrian. On the status of thô/da as CP-expletives and their connection with pro-drop. Journal of Historical Syntax.
Cognola, Federica & Bidese, Ermenegildo. 2016. On language acquisition and language change. Is transmission failure favoured in multilingual heritage contexts? In Theoretical Approaches to Linguistic Variation, Ermenegildo Bidese, Federica Cognola & Manuela Moroni (eds), 337–369. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cognola, Federica & Casalicchio, Jan. 2018. On the null-subject phenomenon, In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar. A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 1–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cognola, Federica & Walkden, George. 2019. Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives. A parallel study of Old High German and Old Italian. Linguistik Online 7: 95–140.
. 2021. Pro-drop in interrogatives across older Germanic and Romance languages. In Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance, Christine Meklenborg Nilsen & Sam Wolfe (eds), 97–136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coniglio, Marco & Zegrean, Iulia. 2012. Splitting up Force: evidence from discourse particles. In: Main Clause Phenomena. New Horizons, Lobke Aelbrecht, Liliane Haegeman and Rachel Nye (Eds.), pp. 229–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Coniglio, Marco & Schlachter, Eva. 2013. Inversion after und as a V1 pattern in Middle High German: Information and Discourse-Structural Aspects. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 25(3): 199–246.
D’Alessandro, Roberta. 2015. Null subjects. In Contemporary Linguistic Parameters, Antonio Fábregas, Jaume Mateu & Michael Putnam (eds), 201–226. London: Bloomsbury.
Dentschewa, Emilia. 1987. Zur sprachlichen Eigenständigkeit der althochdeutschen Tatian-Übersetzung in Bezug auf den Gebrauch des Infinitivs. Beiträge zur Erforschung der deutschen Sprache 7: 207–232.
Dittmer, Arne & Dittmer, Ernst. 1998. Studien zur Wortstellung: Satzgliedstellung in der Althochdeutschen Tatianübersetzung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
Eggenberger, Jakob. 1961. Das Subjektpronomen im Althochdeutschen: Ein Syntaktischer Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte des Deutschen Schrifttums. Grabs: self-published.
Ferraresi, Gisella & Weiß, Helmut. 2011. >Al die wîle und ich lebe< Und nicht nur koordinierend. In Satzverknüpfungen mehrdimensional. Zur Interaktion von Form, Bedeutung und Diskursfunktion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Eva Breindl, Gisella Ferraresi & Anna Volodina (eds), 79–106. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Filiaci, Francesca, Sorace, Antonella & Carreiras, Manuel. 2013. Anaphoric biases and null overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: a cross-linguistic comparison. Language and Cognitive Processes 28: 1–19.
Fleischer, Jürg, Hinterhölzl, Roland & Solf, Michael. 2008. Zum Quellenwert des althochdeutschen Tatian für die Syntaxforschung. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 36: 211–240.
Frascarelli, Mara. 2007. Subjects, topics and the interpretation of referential pro: an interface approach to the linking of (null) pronouns. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25: 691–734.
. 2018. The interpretation of pro in consistent and partial null subject languages: an interface analysis. In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 211–240. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Frascarelli, Mara & Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2007. Types of topics in German and Italian. In On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across Languages, Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds), 87–116. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Fuß, Eric. 2011. Historical pathways to null subjects: implications for the theory of pro-drop. In Null Pronouns, Melani Wratil & Peter Gallmann (eds), 53–98. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Fuß, Eric & Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2019. On the historical development of pronouns referring to situations: the case of (expletive) da, es and das. Talk given at the University of Oslo, 25 October 2019.
Givón, Talmy. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Crosslanguage Study, Talmy Givón (ed), 5–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Haegeman, Liliane & Greco, Ciro. 2018. West Flemish V3 and the interaction of syntax and discourse. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21: 1–56.
Håkansson, David. 2008. Syntaktisk Variation och Förändring. En Studie av Subjektslösa Satser i Fornsvenska. PhD dissertation, Lund University.
Heycock, Caroline & Kroch, Anthony. 1994. Verb movement and coordination in a dynamic theory of licensing. The Linguistic Review 11: 257–283.
Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36: 533–564.
. 2010. Null subject parameters. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 88–124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2015. Verb second. In An International Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Research, Tibor Kiss & Artemis Alexiadou (eds), 342–382. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Holmberg, Anders, Nayudu, Aarti & Sheehan, Michelle. 2009. Three partial null-subject languages: A comparison of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish and Marathi. Studia Linguistica 63(1): 59–97.
Holmberg, Anders & Sheehan, Michelle. 2010. Control into finite clauses in partial null-subject languages. In Parametric Variation. Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 125–152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huang, C.-T. James. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 15: 531–574.
Jaeggli, Osvaldo & Safir, Kenneth J. 1989. The null subject parameter and parametric theory. In The Null Subject Parameter, Osvaldo Jaeggli & Kenneth J. Safir (eds), 1–44. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kinn, Kari. 2016. Null Subjects in the History of Norwegian. PhD dissertation, University of Oslo.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1995. Indo-European origins of Germanic syntax. In Clause structure and language change, Battye, Adrian & Roberts, Ian (eds), 140–169. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam. 2008. Satisfying V2 in early Romance: Merge vs. Move. Journal of Linguistics 44: 437–470.
Madariaga, Nerea. 2018. Diachronic change and the nature of pronominal null subjects: The case of Russian. In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 171–198. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mathieu, Éric. 2013. The left-periphery in Old French. In Research on Old French: The State of the Art, Deborah Arteaga (ed), 327–350. Amsterdam: Springer.
Munaro, Nicola. 2010. La frase interrogativa. In Grammatica dell’italiano antico, Giampaolo Salvi & Lorenzo Renzi (eds), 1147–1185. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Perlmutter, David M. 1971. Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Petersen, William L. 1994. Tatian’s Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship. Leiden: Brill.
Pinto, Manuela. 1997. Licensing and Interpretation of Inverted Subjects in Italian. PhD dissertation, Utrecht University.
Poletto, Cecilia. 2002. The left-periphery of V2-Rhaetoromance dialects: a new view on V2 and V3. In Syntactic Microvariation, Sjef Barbiers, Leonie Cornips & Susanne van der Kleij (eds), 214–242. Amsterdam: Meertens Institute.
. 2013. On V2 types. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax, Silvia Luraghi & Claudia Parodi (eds), 154–164. London: Bloomsbury.
Reis, Marga. 1985. Satzeinleitende Strukturen im Deutschen. Über COMP, Haupt- und Nebensätze, w-Bewegung und die Doppelkopfanalyse. In Erklärende Syntax des Deutschen, Werner Abraham (ed), 271–311. Tübingen: Narr.
. 1991. Residual verb second and the wh-criterion. In Parameters and Functional Heads, Adriana Belletti & Luigi Rizzi (eds), 63–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar, Liliane Haegeman (ed), 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
. 2004. Locality and left periphery. In Structures and Beyond. The Cartography of Syntactic Structure, vol. 3, Adriana Belletti (ed), 223–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2005. On some properties of subjects and topics. In Contributions to the 30th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, Laura Brugè, Giuliana Giusti, Nicola Munaro, Walter Schweikert & Giuseppina Turano (eds), 203–224. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.
Roberts, Ian & Holmberg, Anders. 2010. Introduction: Parameters in Minimalist Theory. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 1–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2018. Null subjects and Distinct Agreement in modern Germanic. In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 211–239. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ross, John Robert. 1982. Pronoun-deleting processes in German. Talk given at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Diego, California, 27–30 December 1982.
Rusten, Kristian A. 2019. Referential Null Subjects in Early English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schlachter, Eva. 2010. Syntax und Informationsstruktur im Althochdeutschen: Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Isidor-Gruppe. PhD dissertation, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
. 2012. Syntax und Informationstruktur im Althochdeutschen: Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Isidor-Gruppe. Heidelberg: Winter.
Sheehan, Michelle. 2006. The EPP and Null Subjects in Romance. PhD dissertation, Newcastle University.
. 2010. “Free” inversion in Romance and the Null Subject Parameter. In Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan (eds), 231–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2016. Subjects, null-subjects and expletives in Romance. In Manuals of Romance Linguistics (MRL): Grammatical Interfaces, Susanne Fischer & Christoph Gabriel (eds), 329–362. Berlin: De Gruyter.
. 2018. On the difference between exhaustive and partial control. In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 141–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sigurðsson, Halldor Ármann. 2004. The syntax of person, tense, and speech features. Italian Journal of Linguistics 16: 219–251.
Sonderegger, Stefan. 2003. Althochdeutsche Sprache und Literatur: eine Einführung in das älteste Deutsch. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Tomaselli, Alessandra. 1995. Cases of verb third in Old High German. In Clause Structure and Language Change, Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts (eds), 345–369. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tortora, Christina. 1997. The syntax and semantics of the weak locative. PhD dissertation, University of Delaware.
. 2001. Evidence for a null locative in Italian. In Current Studies in Italian Syntax: Studies Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), 313–326. Elsevier, London.
Truckenbrodt, Hubert. 2006. On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in German. Theoretical Linguistics 32: 257–306.
Trutkowski, Ewa. 2011. Referential null subjects in German. In Proceedings of the Sixth Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics (CamLing), Chris Cummins, Chi-Hé Elder, Thomas Godard, Morgan Macleod, Elaine Schmidt & George Walkden (eds.), 206–217. Cambridge: Cambridge Institute for Language Research.
Vaccari, Alberto, & Vattasso, Marco. 1938. Il Diatessaron toscano. In Il Diatessaron in volgare italiano: testi inediti dei secoli XIII–XIV, Venanzio Todesco, Alberto Vaccari & Marco Vattasso (eds), 173–368. Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana.
Vance, Barbara. 1989. Null Subjects and Syntactic Change in Medieval French. PhD dissertation, Cornell University.
Vanelli, Laura, Renzi, Lorenzo & Benincà, Paola. 1986. Typologie des pronoms sujets dans les langues romanes. In Actes du XVIIème Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, vol. 3: Linguistique Descriptive: Phonétique, Morphologie et Lexique. Aix, Université de Provence 161–176.
Volodina, Anna & Weiß, Helmut. 2016. Diachronic development of null subjects in German. In Firm Foundations: Quantitative Approaches to Sentence Grammar and Grammatical Change in Germanic, Sam Featherston & Yannick Versley (eds), 187–205. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Walkden, George. 2012. Syntactic Reconstruction and Proto-Germanic. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.
. 2015. Verb-third in early West Germanic: a comparative perspective. In Syntax over Time: Lexical, Morphological, and Information-Structural Interactions, Theresa Biberauer & George Walkden (eds), 236–248. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weiß, Helmut. 2005. Inflected complementizers in Continental West Germanic dialects. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 72(2): 148–166.
. 2015. When the subject follows the object. On a curiosity in the syntax of personal pronouns in some German dialects. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 18(1): 65–92.
. 2018. The Wackernagel Position and Complementizer Agreement – The Emergence of a Syntactic Particularity at the Left Edge of the German Middle Field. In Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German, Agnes Jäger, Gisella Ferraresi & Helmut Weiß (eds), 132–154. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weiß, Helmut & Volodina, Anna. 2018. Referential null subjects in German: Dialects and diachronic continuity. In Null Subjects in Generative Grammar: A Synchronic and Diachronic Perspective, Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds), 261–284. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wurmbrand, Susi. 2012. The syntax of valuation in auxiliary-participle constructions. In Proceedings of the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 29), Jaehoon Choi, E. Alan Hogue, Jeffrey Punske, Deniz Tat, Jessamyn Schertz & Alex Trueman (eds), 154–162. Somerville, MA, Cascadilla Press.
