Evolutionary Linguistic Theory - Current Issue

This paper challenges the received wisdom on the diachronic development of expletives in Germanic and contributes to the increasing crosslinguistic evidence that expletives can be related to discourse-pragmatic properties, even at an early stage in their development. I examine the status of expletive það in Early Icelandic saga narratives (1250–1450) in time-clefts (‘It was one time that…’) via corpus data from MIcePaHC (Ingason 2020). The MIcePaHC data indicates that time-clefts have special status in Early Icelandic as the only context where það is already obligatory. Moreover, það is robustly attested not just in the prefinite position but also postfinitely, thus contributing to the growing evidence against the standard view that Germanic expletives are initially motivated by the verb-second requirement. Considering broader discourse-pragmatic factors which have generally been neglected in this context, I link the early establishment of það in time-clefts to the specific discourse functions of the construction (backgrounding, known-fact effect), and connect this with the Icelandic sagas’ special status as orally-derived narratives.

In this paper, I propose that a previously understudied lexical item with the polysemous form so (‘so’) in German can be classified as an adverbial expletive. While so has been extensively analyzed in functions such as modal adverb and discourse marker, this study focuses on its occurrence as a prefield element introducing elaboration or exemplification in formal written registers. Based on corpus data from journalistic and academic prose, I suggest that “this” so (labeled “soex” here) is inserted in Spec,FinP as one of the functional means that satisfy the computational requirements in order for the prefield not to be unfilled (syntactic function); additionally, it performs a grammatic-semantic function in that, similarly to other expletive elements, it anchors the introduced proposition to the preceding discourse while preserving syntactic well-formedness. This proposal positions this element within the broader typology of expletive constructions in Germanic languages, with the aim of advancing our understanding of its role in sentence structure and discourse coherence.

This paper addresses the question to what extent locative/situational proforms such as German da, Dutch er/daar and English there are to be considered expletives. It considers the main contexts of use for all three languages, their appearance as modifiers, in existential constructions and in other potential expletive positions, such as Spec,TP and Spec,CP, as well as the uses as correlates to clauses. The paper argues that all three locative-based proforms act as situation proforms, though they show differences in their syntax. English there is restricted to locative modifier uses and can only appear as situation proform in the existential constructions; German da appears in existential contexts, and it also has a situation proform use in modifier position. Dutch er has the broadest distribution ranging from existential to Spec,TP and — resulting from that — Spec,CP positions. Finally, Dutch er and German da occur as correlate with prepositional object clauses. The paper offers a comparative analysis in which the difference between those elements result from different base positions and other general differences between the languages.

The paper investigates the development of the system of non-referential elements in Low German from a cross-Germanic perspective. The data is taken from the currently available reference corpora, which cover the period from the beginning of the attestation in the late 9th century to 1700. The analysis of the corpus data suggests that the equivalents of the neuter pronouns it and that act as cataphoric elements already in the earliest Low German records, and that they gradually acquire additional non-referential functions, including that of an existential expletive. This contrasts with the assumed situation in the contemporary Low German varieties which, according to traditional descriptions, lack pronominal expletives comparable to German es but rather display adverbial expletives, comparable to existential there in English and er in Dutch. Examining the distributional properties of the pronominal expletive it in the history of Low German, the paper observes that this type of expletive is prototypically present in formal written registers and likely remains outside the domain of spoken, colloquial style, which is the focus of the traditional dialectal descriptions.

The first aim of our contribution is to revisit Brugmann’s (1917) tripartition of expletive subjects from the perspective of modern parametric theory, particularly with regard to the parametric values of [±Verb Second] (henceforth V2) and [±Null Subject] (henceforth NS). Karl Brugmann was the first scholar to address the phenomenon of expletive subjects in German, which he called Scheinsubjekte (‘apparent subjects’), from a syntactic point of view, distinguishing between a positional expletive on the one hand and impersonal subjects on the other. His distinction receives important confirmation when reconducted to the basic parameter values of [+ Verb Second] and [−Null Subject] that characterise German. The second aim of our contribution is to show that Brugmann’s typology is useful not only for German, but also for languages with different parametric choices, such as English [−V2; −NS] and Italian [−V2; +NS]. Furthermore, we aim to determine whether Brugmann’s typology of expletives also holds for minority languages like Cimbrian, and for Romance varieties such as Northern Italian dialects. As we will show, Cimbrian and the Northern Italian dialects not only confirm Brugmann’s tripartition of expletive subjects, but also allow for a fine-grained distinction between expletives related to the syntax of the finite verb, that is to the parameter [±V2], which involves the C-domain, and to those related to the syntax of the subject, that is to the parameter [±NS], which involves the T-domain.

Locative Inversion (LI) in English is a broad-focus inversion structure in which a spatio-deictic XP seemingly occupies the canonical subject position. An analysis of LI must explain EPP-satisfaction: previous approaches take either a silent expletive pro (Bruening, 2010; Coopmans, 1989; Postal, 2004) to value EPP or they consider the locative element to do so like expletive there. Indeed, LI resembles inversion under there, showing pragmatic, lexical-semantic, and syntactic restrictions, being limited mostly to unaccusatives of speaker-directed movement/orientation, while verbs of disappearance or change-of-state are largely unacceptable. However, unlike inversion under there, LI does not trigger definiteness effects which are associated with expletives. Moreover, LI is incompatible with negation, do-support and the present perfect. We propose that LI is an inherently evidential construction. This behaviour results from an EPP-satisfying logophoric covert perceiver argument dubbed Exploc (Sluckin, Cruschina & Martin, 2021) which provides an alternative to the typologically anomalous expletive pro. Exploc moves from a vP-internal position scoping over a Small Clause to Spec,TP and is licensed only by contexts and verbs which can presuppose a perception event on the part of a perceiver. This explains previous observations that LI involves a visual experiential component (Breivik, 1989; Brinton & Stein, 1995). Importantly, Exploc derives known pragmatic and lexical-semantic restrictions on LI, e.g., no disappearance unaccusatives, negation (which negates a perceivable event), and the English present perfect which is infelicitous in reports of direct perception. Furthermore, we show that all unergative verbs participating in LI are coerced into an unaccusative structure.