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Article published In: Italo-Romance Morphosyntax: Theoretical and empirical issues
Edited by Francesco Maria Ciconte and Michela Cennamo
[Linguistic Variation 26:1] 2026
► pp. 132–152

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On postverbal subjects in Old Venetian

ORCiD logo with link | Goethe Universtät Frankfurt am Main
 | Goethe Universtät Frankfurt am Main | Università degli studi di Padova
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Goethe University Frankfurt.

Published online: 17 July 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
Abstract
Postverbal subjects occupy different positions across languages, as they can result from V-to-C movement (e.g., German) or from the subject remaining low (e.g., Italian), either in a thematic or low focus position. We test postverbal subjects in Old Venetian and show that their frequency increases in (i) main clauses, and (ii) unaccusative/predicative/passive verbs. Postverbal pronominal subjects exclusively increase under (i), postverbal non-pronominal subjects under (ii). This indicates that Old Venetian lacked an active low focus subject position and that postverbal pronominal and non-pronominal subjects are different: pronominal subjects are postverbal due to V-to-C movement, while non-pronominal subjects are postverbal due to their low thematic position. We model this by proposing that pronominal subjects must leave their low thematic position for checking their Ground features in the low CP area, a position not available for non-pronominal subjects, which either stay low or move to the high Topic layers in the CP.
Article outline
  • 1.A fundamental problem
  • 2.The analysis of postverbal subjects
  • 3.Dataset and methodology
  • 4.The V2 system and the analysis of postverbal subjects
  • 5.Postverbal subjects in Lio Mazor
    • 5.1The asymmetry between pronominal and lexical subjects
  • 6.Solving the puzzle: Subject positions
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Statement of author contribution
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Larrivée, Pierre, Francesco Pinzin, Cecilia Poletto, Natalia Romanova & Papa Hamatt Touré
2025. The correlation of micro-cues: The case of medieval French verb second. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 10:1 DOI logo

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