The complex relation between SF and null subjects

In the present section the problematic relation between SF and specific settings of the pro-drop parameter is illustrated. This section is meant to be introductory and motivate the discussion which is put forward in the remainder of the chapter. A more detailed

discussion of the pro-drop setting in the history of Swedish and Icelandic is presented in Sections 4.4. and 4.5.

Crosslinguistic facts reveal that SF is favored in varieties where the positive setting of the pro-drop parameter is constrained in some manner, so that pro-drop turns out to be partial in some way or another. As previously mentioned, I do not accept many of the SF options reported by Cardinaletti (2003) in my variety of Italian, whereas I accept some of them only in a very formal register. Other Italian speakers share my judgment, which seems a clear indication of the residual character of SF in Modern Italian, by contrast to Old Italian (see the Appendix for an overview of possible/impossible cases of SF in Modern Italian and some Sub-Standard Italian). For sure, the few possible cases of SF in Modern Italian are not reported in the prescriptive school grammars, contrary to what happens in Iceland (cf. Rögnvaldsson 1994). Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be SF in other null-subject Romance languages either, which contradicts the expectation that SF be productive when the pro-drop parameter has a positive setting. Given the analogous evolution of Old Catalan, Old Spanish and Old Italian104 _{into the respective modern}

varieties, the presence of productive SF only in Italian among other modern Romance varieties would be unexplained. I do away with this issue by simply claiming that Modern Italian SF is a residual phenomenon, limited to formal speech and to some varieties of Central and Southern Sub-Standard Italian (mostly involving copular constructions)105_.

Let us turn to the conditions favoring the adoption of the SF strategy. If there were a bijective correlation between the positive pro-drop setting or the richness of verbal inflection and SF, one would expect the latter to obtain in Modern Italian as well, given that this language has full pro-drop and rich inflection. Since this is not the case, it seems that the favorable environment for the appearance and productivity of SF is not simply associable to a positive setting of the above mentioned parameters, but the picture of its syntactic licensing conditions is more complex.

In summary, I make the preliminary hypothesis that the relation between the licensing conditions for SF and the occurrence of the latter is univocal, as illustrated in (265) (the arrow indicates entailment):

(265) a. * [(at least partial) pro-drop / rich verbal inflection ↔ SF] b. SF → (at least partial) pro-drop / rich verbal inflection

(265)a. indicates that there is no entailment between the syntactic conditions to the left of the biconditional and SF, whereas the generalization in (265)b. indicates that the occurrence of SF presupposes that the language has a positive setting of the pro-drop parameter and rich verbal inflection. The extent and nature of the pro-drop setting may

104 _{Albeit displaying SF (Mathieu 2006), Old French has a different evolution, see Roberts (1993; 2008).} 105 _{Evidence of the non-productivity of SF in Italian is given in (i), where SF is restricted to one nominal}

predicate but not another, interpretively analogous one: (i) a. Certo è che Gianni sa molte cose Certain is that John knows many things “It is certain that John knows many things” b. *?Sicuro è che Gianni sa molte cose Sure is that John knows many things “It is sure John knows many things”

vary: what seems relevant is that a pro subject be to some extent available in the grammar. For instance, Old Italian has full pro-drop in main clauses, whereas only quasi-argumental and expletive pro-drop (but not referential pro drop) in subordinate clauses (without V-to-C, cf. Chapter 2., and Section 4.5. below). Modern Icelandic doesn’t exhibit a main-subordinate asymmetry of this kind, and has expletive pro-drop but not referential pro-drop. On the contrary, Old Icelandic has full pro-drop (Faarlund 2008; Fischer, to app.). According to Faarlund (2008):

“The subject is not an obligatory category in Old Norse. Finite sentences may be lacking a subject.[…]” (pp.199).

As Faarlund (2008) observes, generic subjects, as one, and non referential subjects may be omitted. However, Faarlund argues that Old Icelandic is not a regular pro-drop language because referential subjects cannot be omitted unless recoverable from the context. The same restriction applies in Old Swedish as is confirmed by Håkansson (2008). As mentioned above, Modern Icelandic does not allow for referential pro-drop, and in some cases the conditions licensing expletive/semi-argumental pro-drop seem to be the same that Old Icelandic applies to referential pro-drop. Indeed, Sigurðsson (1990) observes that in Modern Icelandic it is possible to drop the expletive/quasi-argumental það in embedded declaratives provided that it conveys some information recoverable from the context, as the contrast between (266)-(267) shows:

(266) a. Því er sennilegt [að __ rigni meira á morgun] (Modern Icelandic) Thus is likely that rains more heavily tomorrow

“Thus it is likely that it will rain more heavily tomorrow” b. Ég vissi ekki [að __ færu til Grænlands svona mörg skip] I knew not that went to Greenland so many ships

“I didn’t know that so many ships went to Greenland”

[“Tilhugalíf”, Ch. 5, in Maling 1990, 75: (7)d.] (267) a. ?Þeir segja [að __ verði dansað í brúðkaupinu]

They say that will-be danced in wedding-the b. Þeir segja [að það verði dansað í brúðkaupinu] They say that there will-be danced in wedding-the

“They say that people will dance at the wedding” [Thráinsson 2007, 335: (7.35)] Fischer (to app. b) observes that:

“In Old Icelandic all different pros were possible, whereas in Modern Icelandic only quasi-subjects and expletives can be dropped (cf. Falk 1993: 131ff). Furthermore það in Old Icelandic could only be used together with stylistic inversion, as a topic marker, whereas in Modern Icelandic it is used as a referential subject, i.e., if það appears in a sentence, it is the only subject of this sentence” (p. 17)

Some remarks on Fischer’s observations follows:

(i) no overt expletive form is attested in Old Icelandic (cf. section 4.5). Notice that Old Icelandic það is not even semi-argumental, and it is never found with weather verbs (cf. Rögnvaldsson 1991).

(ii) the Old Icelandic það to which Fischer refers is a referential topic marker, and appears together with verb-subject inversion.

Indeed, in a footnote, Fischer (to app. b) observes a similarity between Old Catalan and Old Icelandic SF. According to the data provided by an anonymous reviewer of her work, in Old Icelandic an overt subject could cooccur with SF and follow the finite verb. However, contrary to Old Catalan and Old Italian, the only possible linear order attested for Old Icelandic clauses presenting both SF and overt subject is SF – V- Subject as illustrated in (268) below:

(268) Sagt hefi eg ___ það er eg mun segja SF – V- Subj (Old Icelandic) said have I that which I will say

“I have said what I will say…” [Svarfdæla saga p. 1812] In Old Catalan and in Old Italian overt subjects are possible also in pre-SF position and are analysed as dislocations. Instead, Old Icelandic preverbal subjects are in complementary distribution with SF.106 _{The different restrictions on the availability of}

pre-SF positions can be related to the different nature of V2 in Scandinavian and Old Romance, albeit such descriptive generalization doesn’t tell much about the properties of the left periphery in these two language groups.

It is worth observing that the SF in (268) occurs in a main clause and does look like V2 topicalization, despite the fact that the fronted element is a past participle. Fischer does not report any observation on the interpretation of (268), but one might as well hypothesize that this instance of SF contributes to the information structure to some extent, given its similarity to Old Romance SF, which Fischer claims to be a pragmatically marked phenomenon. This idea would not contradict the analysis of Old Italian presented above and the distinction between different types of SF, but support the argument that SF targets the CP. Analogously, further evidence that SF targets the CP comes from other Old Icelandic cases, where it is possible to have SF in relative clauses with a postverbal subject pronoun in the order SF – V- Resumptive Subj pro. This type of clauses are also evidence of V-to-Fin (see Section 4.7. for data).

The distribution reported in (203) above and repeated below for clarity indicates a “preference”, rather than a sharp contrast:

(269) SF satisfaction of the Subject Criterion:

a. SF of Negation/Adverbials/Phrasal Adverbs/Degree Modifiers/Nominal predicates/Predicative adjectives/Nouns  parasitically, on the way to ModP b. SF of Past Participles/Infinitives  as a syntactic realization of FinP

Nonetheless, facts like the cooccurrence of subjects and SF given in (268), and much similar to a V2 structure, seem to invalidate the generalization in (269). In light of these facts, I propose to “adjust” the analysis of SF as a way to satisfy the Subject Criterion after exploring some further diachronic facts. Basically, the intuition is that, in a great number of contexts, SF used to be a pragmatically marked phenomenon in Old

106 _{Whereas preverbal subjects cooccurring with SF in Old Icelandic can only be clitics, according to}

Fischer (to app.)b. However, the only examples she provides in support of this claim are from Hrafnbjargarson (2003), which are controversial, according to Höskuldur Thráinsson (p.c.). Cf. Chapter 1.

Scandinavian, as well as in Old Romance (as proposed by Fischer and Alexiadou (2001) and Fischer (to app.)a., b.), but then underwent a reanalysis according to which, in many cases, it lost its capacity to contribute to the information structure: a loss which seems related to the shift from OV to VO (cf. Rögnvaldsson 1994). The outcome of such reanalysis is visible in present-day SF in Icelandic, adopted as a strategy to satisfy the Subject Criterion, as proposed in (269). When fronting the subject is not possible or desired, phi-features are simply not specified on Fin. Instead, the intepretation of other features may be required on Fin, given that this projection behaves as a “gateway” where all the syntactic features contributing to the information structure must be interpreted. In this sense, which type of features can be encoded on Fin may depend on discourse prominence factors (cf. Sigurðsson 2008), but the specific properties of Fin are still under investigation. As suggested by Rizzi and Shlonsky (2006), following Stowell (1982), Fin can be endowed with a [locative] feature in locative inversions. Another feature that requires to be interpreted on Fin is [mood], as discussed in Damonte (2008) (cf. Chapter 5). One tentative proposal for the analysis of SF of (remnant) vP/VP/PP is that what is interpreted on Fin is a feature related to the eventive content of the clause. This mechanism obtains in absence of an agent (or, more generally, a subject) checking a “subject-of-predication” feature in the IP-peripheral position.