1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Linguistic Variation
  4. Volume 26, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 26, Issue 1
  • ISSN 2211-6834
  • E-ISSN: 2211-6842
EPUB
PDF

Abstract

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.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
2025-07-17
2026-03-08

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/lv.24062.pin.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Lio Mazor = Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh
    (ed.) 1999 Atti del podestà di Lio Mazor, edizione critica. Venezia: Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Adams, Marianne
    1987 From old French to the theory of pro-drop. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 5(1). 1–32. 10.1007/BF00161866
     https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00161866 [Google Scholar]
  3. Belletti, Adriana
    2001 Inversion as focalization. InHulk Aafke, Pollock Jean-Yves (eds.), Subject inversion in Romance and the theory of Universal Grammar, 60–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195142693.003.0003
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195142693.003.0003 [Google Scholar]
  4. 2004 Aspects of the low IP area. InLuigi Rizzi (ed.), The structure of CP and IP. The cartography of syntactic structures, Vol.2, 16–51. New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195159486.003.0002
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195159486.003.0002 [Google Scholar]
  5. 2015 The focus map of clefts: extraposition and predication. InUr Shlonsky (ed.), Beyond functional sequence, Vol. 10, 42–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210588.003.0003
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210588.003.0003 [Google Scholar]
  6. Benincà, Paola
    1983a Osservazioni sulla sintassi dei testi di Lio Mazor. InChristian Angelet, Ludo Melis, F. J. Mertens & Franco Mussara (eds.), Langue, dialecte, litterature. etudes romanes à la mémoire de Hugo Plomteux, 187–97. Louvain: Leuven University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. 1983b Un’ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze medievali. Quaderni Patavini Di Linguistica4 (April). 3–19.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. 1995 Complement clitics in medieval romance: The Tobler-Mussafia law. InIan Roberts and Adrian Battye (eds.), Clause structure and language change, 325–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195086324.003.0012
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195086324.003.0012 [Google Scholar]
  9. 2004 The left periphery of medieval Romance. Studi Linguistici E Filologici Online2 (2). 243–97.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. 2006 A detailed map of the left periphery of medieval Romance. InRaffaella Zanuttini (ed.), Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics: Negation, Tense and Clausal Architecture, 53–86. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. 2013 Caratteristiche del V2 romanzo. lingue romanze antiche, ladino dolomitico e portoghese. InErmenegildo Bidese & Federica Cognola (eds.), Introduzione alla linguistica del mòcheno, 65–84. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Benincà, Paola & Guglielmo Cinque
    1985 Lexical subjects in Italian and the pro-drop parameter. Paper presented at theComparative Generative Grammar Fiesta, Salzburg, August 1985.
  13. Besten, Hans den
    1983 On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. InWerner Abraham (ed.), On the formal syntax of the Westgermania, 47–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/la.3.03bes
     https://doi.org/10.1075/la.3.03bes [Google Scholar]
  14. Breitbarth, Anne
    2022 Prosodie, Syntax und Diskursfunktion von V>2 in gesprochenem Deutsch. Deutsche Sprache, 2022 (1). 1–29. 10.37307/j.1868‑775X.2022.01.02
     https://doi.org/10.37307/j.1868-775X.2022.01.02 [Google Scholar]
  15. Cinque, Guglielmo
    1990 Types of Ā-dependencies. Boston (Mass.): MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. 1999 Adverbs and functional heads. A crosslinguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195115260.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195115260.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  17. Giupponi, Elena
    1988 Pro-Drop-Parameter und Restrukturierung im Trentino. Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades, University of Vienna.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Goux, Mathieu & Francesco Pinzin
    2024 Challenges of a multilingual corpus (Old French/OVen): The example of the MICLE project. InEnrico Castro, Aris Della Fontana & Enea Pezzini (eds.), Venezia e la Francia tra medioevo ed età moderna. Similitudini, specificità, interrelazioni, 153–175. Firenze: Franco Cesati.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Greco, Ciro & Liliane Haegeman
    2020 Frame setters and microvariation of subject-initial verb second. InRebecca Woods & Sam Wolfe (eds.), Rethinking Verb Second, 61–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780198844303.003.0004
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198844303.003.0004 [Google Scholar]
  20. Haegeman, Liliane & Ciro Greco
    2018 West Flemish V3 and the interaction of syntax and discourse. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics211. 1–56. 10.1007/s10828‑018‑9093‑9
     https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-018-9093-9 [Google Scholar]
  21. Holmberg, Anders
    2015 Verb Second. InTibor Kiss and Artemis Alexiadou (eds.) Syntax — Theory and analysis, volume 1, 342–38. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Kayne, Richard & Jean-Yves Pollock
    2001 New thoughts on stylistic inversion. InAafke Hulk, & Jean-Yves. Pollock (eds.), Inversion in Romance, 107–162. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195142693.003.0005
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195142693.003.0005 [Google Scholar]
  23. Leonetti, Manuel
    2018 Two types of postverbal subjects. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 30 (2), 11–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. May, Robert
    1985 Logical form: Its structure and derivation. Boston (Mass.): MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Pinzin, Francesco, Cecilia Poletto & Pierre Larrivée
    . In preparation. On the evolution of the position of the subject in medieval Venetian and French.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Poletto, Cecilia
    1993 La sintassi del soggetto nei dialetti italiani settentrionali. Padova: Unipress.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. 2000 The higher functional field: Evidence from Northern Italian Dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780195133561.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195133561.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  28. 2005 ‘Si’ and ‘E’ as CP expletives in Old Italian. InMontserrat Batllori, Maria-Lluisa Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesc Roca (eds.), Grammaticalization and parametric variation, 206–235. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272129.003.0013
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272129.003.0013 [Google Scholar]
  29. 2006 Old Italian scrambling: The low left periphery of the clause. InPatrick T. Brandt and Eric Fuss (eds.), Form, structure, and grammar: A festschrift presented to Günther Grewendorf on occasion of his 60th birthday, 209–29. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 10.1524/9783050085555.209
     https://doi.org/10.1524/9783050085555.209 [Google Scholar]
  30. 2014 Word order in old Italian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660247.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660247.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  31. 2019 More than one way out: on the factors influencing the loss of V to C movement. Linguistic Variation19(1). 47–81. 10.1075/lv.16001.pol
     https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.16001.pol [Google Scholar]
  32. Reis, Marga
    1997 Zum syntaktischen Status unselbständiger Verbzweit-Sätze. InFranz D’Avis and Uli Lutz (eds.), Zur Satzstruktur des Deutschen. Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340 Nr90, 121–142. Stuttgart and Tübingen.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Rinke, Esther, & Jürgen M. Meisel
    2009 Subject inversion in Old French: syntax and information structure. InGeorg A. Kaiser, Eva-Maria Remberger (eds.), Proceedings of the workshop ‘‘Null-subjects, expletives, and locatives in Romance”, 93–130. Konstanz: Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft Universität Konstanz.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Roberts, Ian
    1993 Verbs and diachronic syntax: a comparative history of English and French. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Vance, Barbara
    1997 Syntactic change in medieval French. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 10.1007/978‑94‑015‑8843‑0
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8843-0 [Google Scholar]
  36. Vanelli, Laura
    1987 I pronomi soggetto nei dialetti italiani settentrionali dal Medio Evo a oggi. Medioevo RomanzoXII (1), 173–211.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Wolfe, Sam
    2015 Microparametric variation in lld Italo-Romance syntax: The view from old Sicilian and old Sardinian. InEnoch Oladé Aboh (ed.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2013: Selected papers from “Going Romance” Amsterdam 2013, 51–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/rllt.8.04wol
     https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.8.04wol [Google Scholar]
  38. 2018 Verb Second in medieval Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780198804673.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198804673.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  39. 2019 Redefining the typology of V2 languages: The view from medieval Romance and beyond. Linguistic Variation19 (1). 16–46. 10.1075/lv.15026.wol
     https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.15026.wol [Google Scholar]
  40. Wurmbrand, Susi
    2005 The merge condition: a syntactic approach to selection. InPeter Kosta, Steven L. Franks, Teodora Radeva-Bork & Lilia Schürcks (eds.), Minimalism and beyond: Radicalizing the interfaces, 130–166. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/lfab.11.06wur
     https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.11.06wur [Google Scholar]
  41. Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa
    1994 On some prosodically governed syntactic operations. InGuglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi, Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar: Studies in honor of Richard S. Kayne, 473–486. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. 1998 Prosody, focus and word order. Boston (Mass.): MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
Loading
On postverbal subjects in Old Venetian
Linguistic Variation 26, 132 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
/content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
/content/journals/10.1075/lv.24062.pin
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Italian Dialects; medieval Romance; subjects; Venetian; Verb Second

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error