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Article published In:
Register Variation and Syntactic Theory
Edited by Diane Massam and Tim Stowell
[Linguistic Variation 17:2] 2017
► pp. 309–346
Regular article

Null arguments in old Norwegian

Interaction between pronouns and the functional categories of the clause

In this paper I propose a new analysis of null arguments in Old Norwegian. I argue that the option of null realization in Old Norwegian correlates with a distinction between φP and DP pronouns in the sense of Déchaine & Wiltschko (2002), and that this distribution can be captured by a version of pronoun deletion (Roberts 2010b). On a more general, theoretical level, I argue that both the structure of pronouns and that of the functional domains C, T and v influence the null argument properties of a language. Thus, null arguments, but also blocking of null arguments in non-null-argument languages like Modern Norwegian and English, may be derived in different ways.

Keywords: syntax, null arguments, syntactic variation, historical linguistics, Norwegian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Old Norwegian: definition and data
  • 3.Principles of excerption
    • 3.1Extracting null arguments
    • 3.2One or more types of null arguments?
    • 3.3The position of null arguments and rendering of linguistic examples
  • 4.Null arguments in Old Norwegian: empirical observations
    • 4.1Syntactic environments
    • 4.2Clause type
    • 4.3Person features
  • 5.A syntactic analysis: only φPs can be deleted
    • 5.1The framework of Déchaine & Wiltschko (2002)
    • 5.2Pronouns in Old Norwegian
      • 5.2.11st and 2nd person pronouns as DPs
      • 5.2.23rd person pronouns as φPs
    • 5.3Derivation of null pronouns: the deletion analysis of Roberts (2010b)
    • 5.4Deletion in Old Norwegian
  • 6.Some cross-linguistic perspectives
    • 6.1Old Norwegian vs. Modern Norwegian
    • 6.2Old Norwegian vs. English
    • 6.3Old Norwegian vs. other early Germanic languages
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.15018.kin
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