Navigation Maps Modeling – NMM

Let us see how this reanalysis may have proceeded, by looking at facts from Old Swedish for comparison.

On a par with other Old Scandinavian languages, Old Swedish exhibits SF of a wide range of categories. By contrast, Modern Icelandic SF has a more restrictive character as for the types of frontable items (e.g. cf. example (225)). Old Swedish had a basic OV order until about 1350, (cf. Table 13. below). Moreover, Falk (1993); Platzack (1996); Delsing (2001) and Håkansson (2008) confirm that subjects are often not spelled out in Early Old Swedish (1225-1375). Håkansson (2008) argues that Early Old Swedish pro- drop is related to pragmatically determined movement strategies, and motivates his analysis with the observation that the loss of pro-drop occurs prior to the loss of person agreement (dated around 1500)107_{. Delsing (2001) defines the subject omissions of Early}

Old Swedish as “modal pro-drop” found “quite frequently with subjunctive main verbs and with modal verbs […] primarily found in main clauses”. After this period, pro-drop becomes less and less frequent.

An interesting similarity with Old Italian can thus be drawn: SF coexists with null pro subjects at least for a certain period in the history of Swedish, specifically from 1225 to 1375, the Early Old Swedish period. Following Delsing (2001), the preference for dropping subjects in main, rather than in subordinate clauses, suggests that Early Old Swedish pro-drop exhibits a main-embedded asymmetry similar to that of Old Italian. Specifically, Old Swedish pro-drop seems to be licensed by verb raising, given that it occurs mostly with modals. Despite this similarity in the distribution of null subjects,

107 _{Another case where a direct correlation between verbal morphology and pro-drop is problematic or at}

least controversial is that of French. Old French has pro-drop, whereas Modern French doesn’t, despite the fact that the verbal morphology hasn’t (apparently) changed. See also Poletto (1995); Roberts (1993) and (2007).

the parameter setting of Old Swedish differs from that of Old Italian in some relevant respects. For instance, Swedish loses overt person agreement and verb movement to Agr° after 1500 (cf. Falk 1993 and Platzack 1996), whereas Italian doesn’t, as is shown by the contrast between (270) and (271) below. Recall that V-to-Agr in Italian cannot be determined with respect to negation, as the latter has a different status from Scandinavian negation and always precedes the verb. Other sentential adverbs are often dislocated in a preverbal position in Old Italian, thus the only clear evidence contrasting with Modern Swedish concerns person agreement, which is missing on the latter (as in (270)b.) but is visible on Old and Modern Italian verbs (as in (271)).

(270)a. hvy kristne män räddos ei pino (Old Swedish) why Christian men dreaded.3pl not pain

“why Christian men did not fear pain”

b. varför kristna män ej fruktade pina (Modern Swedish) why Christian men not feared pain

“why Christian men did not fear pain” [Platzack 1996, 190, 17] (271)a. se gli cade in acconcio alcuna volta d’usare… (Old Italian) if 3s.DAT.cl fall.3s in proper any time of use(inf)

“If it seems proper to him to use [it] sometimes…” [FR, 49, 10]

b. vinci sempre perchè vai sempre molto veloce (Modern Italian) win.2s always because go.2s always very fast

“You always win because you always go very fast”

According to Falk (1993) and Platzack (1996), the pro-drop parameter setting of Old Swedish changes as a consequence of the loss of person agreement. With the loss of verb inflection, the Old Swedish AgrS° feature becomes weak, so V-to-Agr is no longer required, in Platzack’s analysis. At the same time, the Spec,AgrSP features become strong108_{, thus requiring overt referential subjects and forbidding the null referential}

subject forms which were available at an earlier stage. Around the 17th _{century, Old}

Swedish also loses quasi-argumental and expletive null subjects (cf. Falk 1993). The loss of different types of pro depends on the progressive reduction of the phi-features on the verb inflection, according to Falk (1993). Specifically, each type of pro is licensed only if the respective features can be recovered. Different pros are identified in the following way:

(272) a. referential pro: phi-features of number and person b. quasi-argumental pro: phi-features of number

c. expletive pro: no phi-features109 _{[Falk 1993, 134, 5]}

108 _{In Platzack view’s the Spec and the Head features constitute two parts of the same XP feature and}

checking the head feature before PF causes deletion of the Spec feature as well, see Platzack (1996), p. 187 and ff. for further details.

On the basis of Falk’s (1993); Platzack’s (1996) and Delsing’s (2001) observations, the changes regarding verb movement, verbal inflection and pro-drop in Old Swedish are reported in Table 12. below, where they are compared with Old and Modern Italian. Table 12.

Properties Old Swedish

(pre 1500) Old Swedish(1500-1600) Swedish(post 1600) Old Italian(1250-1300) Modern Italian agreement

on V

yes no no yes yes

V- to - Agr generalized no no generalized generalized

referential pro-drop

in main clauses no no in main

clauses

yes quasi-

argumental pro drop

yes uncommon no yes yes

expletive pro drop

yes main clauses no yes yes

The second line of Table 12., “V-to-Agr”, reports the setting of verb movement to Agr, independently from V-to-C. Of course, this step is obscured by V-to-C in V2 contexts, but examples like the one in (270) above take Agr, rather than C as the target of verb movement according to Platzack. This assumption is based on the chosen clause type illustrated in (270). Being subordinate Wh- clauses, (270)a. and b. are not potential contexts for V-to-C110_.

110 _{Vikner (1995), p. 74, shows that the only Germanic V2 language allowing for V2 topicalization in}

subordinate why-clauses is Yiddish far vos, as shown in (i)a. below, whereas Icelandic af hverju (lit. by whom.DAT) does not admit topicalization, see (i)b.

(i)a. Ikh veys nit far vos in tsimer iz di ku geshtanen (Yiddish) I know not why in room is the cow stood

b. *Ég veit ekki af hverju í herberginu hefur kýrin staðið (Icelandic) I know not why in room is the cow stood

“I don’t know why the cow has stood in the room” [Vikner 1995, 74, 25] However, the facts illustrated in Vikner’s examples are not transparent because the Why-clauses are not embedded under a verb of asking, but rather under a negated semi-factive predicate. Such a matrix context may not allow a V2 complement regardless of the sentential form of the latter (i.e. of whether it is introduced by a Wh- or a declarative complementizer). After a web search on af hverju -clauses embedded under the verb of asking að spyrja (to ask), I didn’t find any case of non-subject initial V2, cf. (ii) below. Instead, I found a case where negation fronting (ekki) seems possible in why-clauses introduced by hvers vegna (lit. whose.GEN by), given in (iii), where there is a null expletive subject. The absence of an overt preverbal subject is compatible with the analysis of the facts in (iii) as SF.

(ii) ég spurði hann af hverju ég hefði aldrei séð hann fyrr I asked him why I had never seen him before

“I asked him why I had never seen him before” (iii) ...spurði hvers vegna ekki væri hægt að... asked why not were possible that... “...asked why it wasn’t possible that...”

According to the descriptive grammar of Venturi (2004), af hverju has a final connotation, whereas hvers vegna a causal one.

Moreover, Table 12. indicates that quasi-argumental pro-drop was lost before expletive pro-drop. According to Falk (1993), the overt form det became productive in Early Modern Swedish (from 1500), in so called clause-anticipating constructions:

(273) a. Det wore mycket illa, [om den posten (Early Modern Swedish) It would.be very bad if that post

råkat uti Saxernas hånder] (has) fallen into Saxon’s.the hands

“It would be very bad if that post had fallen into the Saxon’s hands”

[Hermelin: 24]

b. att thet war svårt för migh, [så offta gåå then långa vägen] that it was difficult for me so often walk that long distance

“That it was difficult for me, to walk such a long distance so often”

[Gyllenius: 17; Falk 1993, 239-40, 76,79]

In (273), det/thet is referred to the clause in brackets it introduces. According to Falk (1993), the expletive use of det is enforced only later in the history of the language, as data show that det is more common in quasi-argumental than in expletive constructions. However, Falk remarks that:

“quasi-argumental det is not introduced in the language as a result of the loss of agreement in person. This is shown by the fact that quasi-argumental det is used already in Old Swedish” (p. 236).

In other words, there is not a one-to-one correlation between the loss of inflection and the introduction of det. This discrepancy is explained with the assumption that:

“The Old Swedish/Early Modern Swedish subject det is an argument, the null subject is non-referential” (Falk 1993, p.237).

An implication of the statements quoted above is that expletive det should not be possible before the loss of inflection, at least in principle. Nonetheless cases of expletive det are found in existential constructions, in the texts written by the generations born before 1600, and already in Old Swedish, although more rarely (spelled out as thz in the latter case):

(274) Thz war een iomfru som altidh plœghadhe gerna danza (Old Swedish) It was a maid that always used (to) willingly dance

“It was a maid that always used to dance willingly” [ST: 104, Falk 1993, 256: 10] Crucially, Falk observes that

“expletive det does not occur in the inverted subject position of main clauses” (p. 252)

and that it has the same pragmatic function of Icelandic það, namely it is a topic. The last point is supported by the fact that det is found in preverbal position in main clauses or in subordinates with main clause word order:

(275) om thett ähn kunde regna bönder nid (Early Modern Swedish) if it yet could rain peasants down

ett helt dygn igenom a whole day through

“If it would yet rain on the peasants all day long” [Brahe: 36, Falk 1993, 254: 9] Falk (1993) argues that, prior to the loss of inflection, Old Swedish/Early Modern Swedish topic det is merged in Spec,CP. Despite having the same function of topic det, Falk maintains that Icelandic það instead occupies the Spec,IP position. This assumption is rejected in the present perspective, for the simple reasons that:

(i) V2 order is derived as V-to-Fin, at least in main clauses;

(ii) postverbal það is not possible; i.e. only það – V is possible (whereas *V það111_);

Hence það must be in a position higher than Spec,IP. Doing away with the details of Falk’s argument, next section discusses the properties of null subjects in Old Icelandic.

111 _{The situation is different in Faroese, where postverbal tað is possible, under specific conditions. Albeit}

a comparison between Icelandic and Faroese would be interesting, it is out of the scope of the present analysis. See Erikssen (to app.) for an account of Faroese facts.