Edited by Nicholas Catasso, Marco Coniglio and Chiara De Bastiani
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 275] 2022
► pp. 123–162
This paper focuses on the distribution of null subjects in inti coordinated clauses in the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron and shows that the presence of null referential subjects in this construction should not be analysed as a case of Topic drop of the same type of present-day German, but as a case of pure pro-drop of Romance type, involving the presence of a silent category pro licensed via a matching relation with a null Topic in CP (cf. Frascarelli 2007, 2018). The analysis will be shown to be able to also account for the presence of V1 main clauses with free-inversion (Inversion nach inti sentences, cf. Coniglio & Schlachter 2013) and to offer a novel scenario on the loss of both the Inversion nach inti construction and pro-drop in the history of German.