By Melani Wratil

Such a lot usual languages exhibit a list of pronominal components that obligatorily or optionally stay phonologically null in a couple of, in lots of or maybe in all syntactic atmosphere. The authors of the papers compiled during this publication examine such null pronouns in a synchronic and diachronic means and get better the explicit morphological and syntactic necessities for his or her foundation and insertion.

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56. ) (in cooperation with Elisabeth De FelipJaud). Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1994. References Abraham, Werner 1993 Null subjects in the history of German: From IP to CP. Lingua 89: 117–142. Adams, Marianne Patalino 1987 Old French, null subjects and verb second. PhD thesis University of California, Los Angeles. Axel, Katrin 2005 Null subjects and verb placement in Old High German. In Linguistic Evidence. Empirical, Theoretical and Computational Perspectives, S. Kepser & M. ), 27–48. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Note that in Masser’s edition the n in uuizunmes is absent, but was originally present in the manuscript and then erased later, see Masser (1994: 454). 21. We do not think that the explanation given in the main text requires total similarity between -me#s and the pronoun uuir ‘we’. The remaining di¤erences may have even been less dramatic given the not implausible hypothesis that the -r in which the pronoun ended might have been already vocalised in Old High German times. g. was vs. were in English).

The overt and the null variant systematically co-occur even within individual texts. As can be seen in Table 1, in Isidor and Tatian, roughly 40 per cent and in the Monsee Fragments about two thirds of main clauses with pronominal subjects exhibit subject omission (cf. Axel 2005, 2007: Chapter 6; Axel and Weiß 2010). 24 Katrin Axel and Helmut Weiß Table 1. Overt/null-subject pronoun use in main vs. subordinate clauses in three 8th and 9th century prose texts4 Isidor Monsee Fragments Tatian pronoun subject pronoun subject pronoun subject overt null overt null overt null main 61 (56%) 48 (44%) 48 (36%) 84 (64%) 1434 (60%) 960 (40%) subordinate 85 (91%) 8 (9%) 73 (85%) 13 (15%) 1180 (92%) 95 (8%) clause type In subordinate clauses null subjects are much rarer.

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