The Subject Cycle: Linguistic Change and Cognitive Principles

Elly van Gelderen

20 August 2007

Abstract

In this paper, I provide examples of subject pronouns changing to agreement

markers, agreement markers disappearing, and pronominal subjects being

renewed again. This phenomenon is well-known from the linguistic literature of

the 19th century and part of the Linguistic Cycle as e.g. Hodge (1970) calls it.

This particular cycle involves the subject, and I therefore refer to it as the Subject

Cycle.

I provide a classification for the stages of the cycle using specific criteria

as well as ways in which these stages change. The main languages I discuss (in

order of appearance in the paper) are Urdu/Hindi, Japanese, Modern English,

Standard and Colloquial French, stages of Egyptian, Welsh, Navajo, Spanish,

varieties of Italian, Warlbiri, Old and Middle English, O'odham, and varieties of

Dutch. One type of language I discuss is the Pronominal Argument (PAL) one. I

show that, even though PALs are relevant to the Subject Cycle, they represent a

special stage.

I argue the changes are brought about by certain cognitive principles (or

third factor principles as in Chomsky 2005; 2006), in particular by Economy

Principles. Language change is therefore not so much triggered by new data as by

new reanalyses of the linguistic data (that are then accepted).

Emphatic (non-argument) pronouns can be reanalyzed as subject pronouns which in turn

can be reanalyzed as agreement and then be lost. I refer to this series of changes as the

Subject Cycle. Givón's (1971; 1978) views that agreement markers arise from pronouns

that are adjacent to the verb are well-known: "agreement and pronominalization ... are

fundamentally one and the same phenomenon" (1978: 151). Subjects aren't the only

arguments involved in this cycle since object pronouns can become agreement markers

too but I will leave that unexplored here.

There are many examples of the various cross-linguistic stages synchronically and

diachronically. Lambrecht (1981) and others show that the Modern French pronoun is

really an agreement marker accompanied by an optional topic. Jelinek (1984; 2001) has

argued for Athabaskan, Arabic, and Australian languages, to name but a few, that the

agreement morphemes are the arguments. Katz (1996) has considered the status of the

subject pronoun in diachronic stages of Hebrew and Turkish. In this article, I classify the

stages in terms of positions in the phrase structure and provide instances of all of the

stages. I also suggest some reasons why one stage is reanalyzed as the next.

In section one, I provide some background on the Subject Cycle as well as on

Minimimalism, the framework used in this paper, and list criteria to distinguish

arguments from agreement. The section discusses Economy Principles such as feature

Economy and Specifier to Head and closes with a precise formulation of the Subject

Cycle's stages. In section two, one stage of the cycle is examined in Hindi/Urdu and

Japanese and another in English and French. In Hindi/Urdu and Japanese, the subject

pronoun is a real argument but in English and French, subject pronouns are becoming

agreement markers. Section three examines the stage where the agreement marker is the

argument and section four considers the change from this stage to one the agreement

loses argument status. Section five examines where the cycle `starts' and how renewal

takes place. Section six is more speculative and considers mechanisms by which

pronouns are reanalyzed as prefixes or suffixes and section seven is a conclusion.

In general, when I discuss `change', I mean it as a reanalysis by the language

learner (in the sense of Andersen 1973 and Lightfoot 1979), i.e. as the incorporation of

something in the grammar of the learner. I avoid the term grammaticalization in this

paper since for many linguists this terms has become too general to be helpful.

1 The Subject Cycle

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Arguments can be expressed synthetically (through agreement) or analytically (through

pronouns). This has been recognized for a long time, e.g. in Hodge (1970) for the stages

of Egyptian. Subject agreement arises through incorporation of subject pronouns into the

verb and this can be done through varying mechanisms resulting in either prefixes or

suffixes. There are other cycles, e.g. Jespersen's Negative Cycle, using the same

mechanisms but this paper is restricted to the Subject-Agreement Cycle.

1.1 What is the Subject Cycle?

Givón (1984) provides the stages in (1a). In (1b), I have added first and second person

pronouns. The latter two derive from emphatic pronouns, often from oblique ones <1>:

(1) a. demonstrative > third person pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero

b. oblique > emphatic > first/second pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero

For instance, the Latin demonstrative ille `that' was reanalyzed as the French article le

`the', the third person subject pronoun il `he', and the third person object pronoun le `him'.

As we'll see below, the French pronominal il is on its way to becoming an agreement

marker. The originally oblique emphatic pronouns moi `me' and toi `you' are becoming

first and second pronoun subjects respectively. As Bresnan & Mchombo (1987) argue,

many languages have two sets of pronouns for new and old discourse information. In

English, the former would be more stressed than the latter. One can use (1) and say that

the newer information is always expressed by an element more on the left-hand side.

The changes in (1) are very common and I will mention just a few here. Proto

Indo-European verbal endings -mi, si, -ti are seen as early as the 19th century to arise

from pronouns (e.g. Bopp 1816). According to Tauli (1958: 99, based on Gavel & Henri-

Lacombe 1929-37), the Basque verbal prefixes n-, g-, z- are identical to the pronouns ni

‘I’, gu ‘we’, and zu ‘you’. Givón (1978: 157) says that Bantu agreement markers derive

from pronouns. Hale (1973) argues that in Pama-Nyungan, inflectional markers are

derived from independent pronouns. Likewise, Mithun (1991) claims that Iroquoian

agreement markers derive from Proto-Iroquoian pronouns and Haugen (2004: 319)

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argues the same for Nahuatl. Wolfart (1973: 15; 38) shows that in Cree, the verbal

singular person markers are ni-, ki-, o-/ø and that the full sets of pronouns are based on

these, namely niya, kiya, wiya. Fuß (2005) cites many additional examples.

1.2 Agreement versus arguments

Distinguishing an argument from an agreement marker is notoriously difficult. An

argument is assigned a theta-role by the verb or through entering a particular construction

(e.g. Hale & Keyser 2002) when they first merge. Agreement, on the other hand, shows

the relationship between a displaced element and the verb. Nominals that lack a theta-role

cannot be quantified or focussed; they are topics, i.e. adjuncts. In this case, either the

agreement can be linked to a theta-role or there can be a empty element, pro, that bears

the theta-role.

Agreement markers are always heads and nominal arguments are typically

phrases but pronouns can be either. Agreement markers cannot be coordinated but full

pronouns can be. Thus, coordination forces the appearance of full pronouns, as shown by

the difference between (2) and (3) in Malagasy (from Pearson 2001), where a `weak'

pronoun is shown in (2) and a full pronoun in the coordinated nominal in (3):

(2) Hita-ny tany an-tokotany i-Koto Malagasy

see-3 there AN-garden Koto

`S/he/they saw Koto in the garden'

(3) Hitan' izy sy ny zaza tany an-tokotany i-Koto Malagasy

see 3S and DET child there AN-garden Koto

`S/he and the child saw Koto in the garden'. (Pearson 2001: 43)

Agreement is represented in a Minimalist framework as having uninterpretable person

and number features on a probe, e.g. T, that need to find an element with interpretable

ones to agree with. The feature status will be important when we consider change. The

characteristics of the different elements are given in Table 1 below.

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As to the phrase structure status, pronouns are ambiguous between heads and

phrases. According to Cardinaletti & Starke (1996: 36), pronouns can be `deficient heads', or `deficient XPs', or `non-deficient XPs' (XPs being full phrases). Phrases can be coordinated and modified; they bear theta-roles and occur in specifier positions. Pronominal heads bear theta-roles but cannot be modified or coordinated since that would render them into non-heads. Finally, what look like agreement morphemes may or may not bear theta-roles but they are definitely heads. Zwicky & Pullum's (1983)

criteria to distinguish agreement from non-agreement (a pronominal head in our terms)

are well-known and include the fact that agreement is obligatory and has a fixed position.

The differences I use to distinguish the stages are summarized in Table 1 regarding

argument-status, morphology, and syntax.

Theta-role XP or X fixed position phi languagei Full pronoun yes XP no yes Hindi/Urdu, Japaneseii Head pronoun yes X no yes French, (English)iii Agreement (=PAL) yes X yes yes Navajo, Old Englishiv Agreement no X yes no Hindi/Urdu, etc

Table 1: Differences between pronouns and agreement

In Table 1, three syntactic/historical stages are represented since (i) and (iv) occur

simultaneously. The PAL stage (abbreviation of Pronominal Argument Language, as in

Jelinek 1984) is one where the agreement affix bears the theta-role. I will argue in section

three that this stage is special and may have a cycle of its own. I'll now turn to some

factors that may be involved in the changes.

1.3 Minimalism and Economy Principles

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Chomsky (2006: 2) identifies three factors that are crucial in the development of

language in the individual "(1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable

languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; (2) external data, converted to

the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; (3) principles

not specific to FL. Some of the third factor principles have the flavor of the constraints

that enter into all facets of growth and evolution, [...] Among these are principles of

efficient computation".

Van Gelderen (2004) identifies two principles of efficient computation that also

account for language change, the Head Preference and Late Merge Principles. The former

can be formulated as (4), and this could be a more general cognitive principle, a third

factor principle, `analyze something as small as possible':

(4) Head Preference Principle (HPP):

Be a head, rather than a phrase.

This means that a speaker will build structures such as (5a) rather than (5b) if given

evidence that is in principle compatible with either. The FP stands for any functional

category and a pronoun (but categories such as adverb or preposition could occur too) is

merged in the head position in (5a), but occupies the specifier position in (5b):

(5) a. FP b. FP

F’ F ...

F ...

Hawkins' (2004) efficiency principle has a Minimize Forms, a much less specific principle

than the HPP. Besides, Minimize Forms is a performance principle. Optimality Theory has

constraints as well, e.g. STAY (`do not move') and TELEGRAPH (`do not spell out FCs).

These constraints are ordered differently cross-linguistically, however, unlike the Head

Preference and Late Merge ones.

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The Head Preference Principle is relevant to a number of historical changes, as listed

in Table 2: whenever possible, a word triggers a head status rather than a phrase one.

Spec > Head Spec > Head

Demonstrative pronoun that to complementizer Demonstrative pronoun to article

Negative adverb to negation marker Adverb to aspect marker

Adverb to complementizer (e.g. till) Full pronoun to agreement

Table 2: Examples of the Head Preference Principle

In this way, pronouns change from emphatic full phrases to clitic pronouns to agreement

markers, and negatives from full DPs to negative adverb phrases to heads. This change is,

however, slow since a child learning the language will continue to have input of a pronoun

as both a phrase and a head. For instance, coordinated pronouns are phrases and so are

emphatic pronouns. If they remain in the input, phrases will continue to be triggered in the

child's grammar. Lightfoot (e.g. 2006) develops an approach as to how much input a child

needs before it resets a parameter, e.g. from OV to VO. In the case of pronouns changing to

agreement markers, the child will initially assume the unmarked head option, unless there is

a substantial input of structures that provides evidence to the child that the pronoun is a full

phrase.

Within early Minimalism, there is a second economy principle (see e.g. Chomsky

1995: 348). To construct a sentence, we need to select lexical items from the lexicon, put

them together, or Merge them, and Move them. In Early Minimalism, Merge "comes `free'

in that it is required in some form for any recursive system" (Chomsky 2001: 3) and is

"inescapable" (Chomsky 1995: 316; 378) but Move requires additional assumptions. This

means that it is less economical to merge early and then move than to wait as long as

possible before merging. This is expressed in (6):

(6) Late Merge Principle (LMP):

Merge as late as possible

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Principle (6) works most clearly in the case of heads. Thus, under Late Merge, the

preferred structure would be (7a) with the auxiliary base generated in T, rather than (7b)

with the auxiliary base generated in a lower position and moving to T. The LMP accounts

for the change from lexical to functional head or from functional to higher functional head

so frequently described in the grammaticalization literature (e.g. Heine & Kuteva 2002):

(7) a. TP b. TP

T vP T vP

might v' v'

v ... v ...

might

Late Merge also accounts for lexical phrases becoming base generated in the

functional domain, e.g. the adverb fortunately. When it is first introduced into the English

language from French in 1386, it is as adjective, as in (8), meaning 'happy, successful,

favored by fortune'. In (9), it still has that meaning but is preposed, and ambiguous in

structure. In (10), it has been reanalyzed as a higher adverbial:

(8) Whan a man..clymbeth vp and wexeth fortunat. (OED, 1386, Chaucer)

(9) Most fortunately: he hath atchieu'd a Maid That paragons description, and wilde

Fame: One that excels the quirkes of Blazoning pens (Shakespeare, Othello)

(10) Fortunately, Lord De la War..met them the day after they had sailed (OED,

1796).

Structure (11a) shows the more recent structural representation and (11b) the earlier one.

The prefered one under the LMP is (11a):

(11) a. CP b. CP

AP C' C'

Fortunately C TP C TP

... .... VP

8

... AP

fortunately

The question can be asked which lexical items are `prone' to a reanalysis under

the LMP? If non-theta-marked elements can wait to merge outside the VP (Chomsky

1995: 314-5), they will do so. I will therefore argue that if, for instance, a preposition can

be analyzed as having fewer semantic features and the PP of which it is the head is less

relevant to the argument structure (e.g. to, for, and of in ModE), it will tend to merge

higher (in TP or CP) rather than merge early (in VP) and then move. How does he LMP

work in practice? Assuming a lexicalist hypothesis in which a lexical entry "contains

three collections of features: phonological ... semantic ..., and formal" (Chomsky 1995:

230), a Lexical Item such as the light verb go might have semantic features of [motion,

future, location]. If go occurs in the numeration with another verb, e.g. bring, one of the

semantic features of go can be activated, in this case [future] rather than all. In that case,

a biclausal structure can be avoided as well. Other examples are listed in Table 3.

On, from P to ASP VP Adverbials > TP/CP Adverbials

Like, from P > C (like I said) Negative objects to negative markers

Modals: v > ASP > T Negative verbs to auxiliaries

To: P > ASP > M > C PP > C (for him to do that ...)

Table 3: Examples of the Late Merge Principle

Pronouns fit this picture completely. When they are full pronouns, they are relevant to theta-

marking in the lower domain as well as to checking the person and number features of the

higher T. After they are reanalyzed as higher heads, a new element for theta-marking is

assumed (could be null) and the higher head no longer moves.

It is also possible to think of syntax as inert, and reformulate Late Merge in terms

of feature change and loss. From Chomsky (1995) on, features are divided in

interpretable (relevant at Logical Form) and uninterpretable (only relevant to move

elements to certain positions). Interpretable features are acquired before uninterpretable

ones, as argued in Radford (2000), but are later reinterpreted as uninterpretable ones,

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triggering the functional/grammatical system. The same reanalysis happens in language

change. For instance, changes in negatives can be accounted for by arguing that their

(initially) semantic features are reanalyzed as interpretable ones and then as

uninterpretable ones, as in (12). Changes connected to the Subject Cycle occur because

the interpretable person (and gender) features of a full pronoun are reanalyzed as

uninterpretable when they become agreement, as will be shown in (13) below:

(12) Feature Economy (to be expanded)

Minimize the semantic and interpretable features in the derivation

This is of course not responsible for the entire cycle, and I return to this Principle below.

I will use the Minimalist insight that "language is a perfect solution to interface

conditions" (Chomsky 2006: 3) and I will argue that Economy Principles are responsible

for the various stages of the cycle. Computational efficiency is different for the LF

component (Logical Form, but also called Conceptual Intentional Interface) than for the

PF one (Phonological Form, or Sensorimotor Interface). Chomsky argues that “the

conflict between computational efficiency and ease of communication” is resolved “to

satisfy the CI interface” (2006: 9). This would mean a preference for interpretable

features. Evidence from language change shows that computational efficiency can

sometimes favor the CI-side (by renewal of the forms) and sometimes the SM one (by

(12)).

1.4 The Mechanisms behind the Cycle

Another way to see the stages of Table 1 is as in Figure 1. In stage (a), the nominal and

pronominal (abbreviated as pron to avoid confusion with pro in pro-drop) are both in the

specifier position. In (b), the pronoun is optionally placed in the head position. In (c), the

nominal and (emphatic) pronoun in the specifier position are optional and the pronoun

must be represented on the verb (=polysynthetic or pronominal argument) <2>. The next

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stage is for the agreement to start becoming less relevant and for the material in the

specifier to become obligatory again. Then we are back at stage (a).

a. TP b. TP (=HPP)

DP T’ DP T’

pron T VP pron pron-T VP

(English, Urdu/Hindi, Japanese) (Non Standard

French)

c. TP

[DP] T’ (=LMP)

[pron] pron-T VP (Navajo, Old English)

Figure 1: Stages of the Subject Cycle

([...] indicates and optional adjunct)

In terms of the principles formulated in section 1.3, the reanalysis from stage (a) to (b) is

expected under the Head Preference Principle, and that from (b) to (c) under the Late

Merge Principle or under Feature Economy, if we think of agreement now merged as a

separate entity, e.g. through uninterpretable phi-features in T. Though these stages seem

to make sense logically, I show in section three that the one from (b) to (c) doesn't occur

this way. Instead, there is a direct reanalysis from (b) to (a). Stage (c) is a possible stage

but an optional one.

As mentioned, one can also see the cycle purely in terms of feature change:

topic/emphatic pronouns have interpretable phi-features but regular pronouns can be

reanalyzed, starting with the most definite first and second person features, as not having

interpretable person features. The reason for the reanalysis first of the most definite this

way is that they are most often preposed as subjects. The reanalysis as an agreement head

means the phi-features are reanalyzed from interpretable on the (pro)noun to

uninterpretable on the agreement, as in (13), expanded from (12) above:

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(13) Feature Economy (expanded)

Adjunct Specifier Head affix

emphatic > full pronoun > head pronoun > agreement

[i-phi] [i-phi] [u-1/2] [i-3] [u-phi]

As far as theta-roles are concerned, emphatic pronouns have none, pronouns have them

and agreement does not. Theta-checking/probing differences have not been added here.

An important consideration in the agreement cycle is the occurrence of pro-drop,

or null subjects (and objects). When the pronoun is optional, it is not clear if the

agreement is tied to the theta-role (and an argument is superfluous) or if an empty

argument pronoun is present. The occurrence of pro-drop is therefore not decisive even

though the question is relevant to consider. Rizzi (1982: 154) ties the occurrence of pro-

drop to rich agreement in languages such as Italian, so that pro is licensed by agreement.

This is still accepted as one way that pro-drop is licensed. To account for pro-drop in

languages such as Chinese that lack agreement, Huang (1984) suggests that pro-drop can

be licensed in a language that completely lacks agreement (Chinese), but not in one that

has partial agreement (Standard English). The latter is not a `natural' stage where

agreement is concerned but kept alive prescriptively.

Since the 1980s, many other analyses have been proposed. Most recently,

Neeleman & Szendroi (to appear) have suggested it is the morphological shape of the

pronoun that determines if the pronoun can be left out or not (though they still allow

context-sensitive spell-out rules where full agreement licenses a zero spell-out). If the

pronoun has agglutinative morphology and different parts of a pronoun are spelled out by

different spell-out rules, there is pro-drop. Thus, a Japanese pronoun watasi-ga 'I-NOM'

has a very identifiable Case morpheme -ga and this allows the top layer of the pronoun to

be spelled out as -ga whereas the NP part can be spelled out as watasi. If it is the

morphological shape of the pronoun and not the type of agreement that determines if pro-

drop occurs or not, pro-drop is expected to occur at any stage in the cycle. This is indeed

the case.

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2 Full pronouns to heads

In this section, I look at examples from stage (a) in Figure 1 and the transition to stage

(b). Section 2.1 shows that Hindi/Urdu and Japanese are languages where pronouns and

nouns have the same status, i.e. stage (a). In 2.2 and 2.3, English and Colloquial French

are discussed respectively. English is a language where first (and second) person

pronouns are moving towards a loss of independence, i.e. stage (b). In Colloquial French,

stage (b) has already been reached for most speakers. In Egyptian and Celtic, as discussed

in section 2.4, there is a complementarity between pronouns and agreement. I argue that

this could be reanalyzed two different ways.

2.1 Stage (a): Hindi/Urdu and Japanese

A clear example of stage (a) is Urdu/Hindi where the pronoun is phonologically not

reduced, as in (14), and can easily be modified, as in (15):

(14) mẽ `I', tum `thou', woo `s/he', ham 'we', aap `you', and woo `they'

(15) a. ham log `we people',

b. aap log `you people',

c. mẽ hii `I-FOC'

The pronouns get similar Case endings as full nominals, as (16a) and (16b) show, and are

in similar positions vis-avis the verb, as (17a) and (17b) show, i.e. they need not to be

adjacent to the verb:

(16) a. mẽ nee us ko dekha Urdu/Hindi

I ERG him DAT saw

`I saw him'.

b. aadmii nee kitaab ko peRha Urdu/Hindi

man ERG book DAT read

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`The man read the book'.

(17) a. mẽ kahaanii likhtii hũ Urdu/Hindi

I-NOM story writingam

‘I am writing a story’.

b. woo aadmii kahaanii likhtii hẽ Urdu/Hindi

that man-NOM story writing is

`That man is writing a story'.

Pronouns are also coordinated, as in (18), and keep the same shape as when they are not

coordinated:

(18) mẽ or merii behn doonõ dilii mẽy rehtee hẽ

I and my sister both Delhi in living are

`My sister and I are both living in Delhi'.

The agreement on the verbs is full and pro-drop occurs. Urdu/Hindi also shows a

relatively free word order and rarely uses expletives, compatible with its pro-drop

character.

Could Hindi/Urdu be a language where agreement bears the theta-role and the

subject (pro)noun is the topic? Butt & King (1997) have argued that nominative subjects

are focussed. This means subjects are not in topic positions. An example of a focus

marker is too, as in (19):

(19) Mẽ too us see kahũuga Urdu/Hindi

I FOC he to tell-FUT-3SM

`I'll certainly tell him'. (Barker 1975, I, 213)

Japanese is a language with pronouns that are very nominal (Noguchi 1997).

Kuno (1973: 17) notes that Japanese "lacks authentic third person pronouns". Instead, it

uses pro-drop or nouns. These pronouns can be modified, as in (20), and vary for

politeness level:

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(20) tiisai kare Japanese

small he

Their case marking and topic suffixes are identical to those of full nouns as well, as

shown in (21), and they can both be separated from the verb, as shown in (22):

(21) a. watakusi wa / Yoko wa Japanese

1S TOP Yoko TOP

`As for me/Yoko, ...'

b. watakusi ga / Yoko ga Japanese

1S NOM Yoko NOM

`I/Yoko ...'

(22) watashi-wa kuruma-o unten-suru kara. Japanese

I-TOP car-ACC drive-NONPST PRT

`I will drive the car'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)

Could the Japanese pronominal subjects be topics? Like full nominals, they can

sometimes occur in topic position and be marked for it, as in (22), but they need not be,

as e.g. (23) shows where another element is in topic position, or (24) where more than

one are:

(23) kondo-wa watashi-ga kuruma-o unten-suru kara. Japanese

this time-TOP I-NOM car-ACC drive-NONPST PRT

`This time, I will drive the car'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)

(24) kondo-wa kuruma-wa watashi-ga unten-suru kara. Japanese

this time-TOP car-TOP I-NOM drive-NONPST PRT

`This time, as for the car, I will drive'. (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.)

 

Typically, as we'll see for French, pronoun heads cannot be code switched. Japanese

pronouns, as in (25), can do so (in many cases) showing they are not regular heads:

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(25) watashi-wa drove the car Japanese-English

I-TOP

`I drove the car' (Yoko Matsuzaki p.c.).

Thus, Urdu/Hindi and Japanese are languages where the subject pronoun is a specifier.

This represents stage (a) of Figure 1.

2.2 Stage (a) going on (b)

In English, a difference between (nominative) pronouns and full nominals (and non-

nominative pronouns) is starting to appear. I argue that the nominative (I, s/he, etc) marks

the head and the accusative (me, her/him, etc) the phrasal variant. I show how the

modification and coordination of the head and fully nominal variants differ and also how

first and second person pronouns are often repeated if separated from the verb.

English nominal subjects, like subjects in general in Urdu/Hindi, are definitely

phrasal and positioned in the specifier position since they can be modified and

coordinated quite extensively:

(26) that book's rejection by ten publishers (he had still not heard from The

Applecote Press, Chewton Mendip) had made him a little nervous of putting

pen to paper (BNC - ASS 2596).

(27) To pay for these new weapons, the Pentagon and the Office of Management

and Budget have proposed a number of cuts in other accounts (http://www.d-n-

i.net).

English pronouns on their own are less clearly phrasal since they are not that often

modified and coordinated. In the British National Corpus (abbreviated as BNC), the

coordinated she and he occurs 8 times and he and she, as in (28), 19 times whereas these

pronouns are very numerous (640736 instances of he and 352872 of she):

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(28) while he and she went across the hall, Jasper appeared, running ... (BNC - EV1

2028).

The reason that sentences such as (28) are rare may have to do with Case. When

pronouns are coordinated, they get an accusative/oblique case in colloquial speech, as in

(29):

(29) Kitty and me were to spend the day there ... (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me

are such friends!) (Austen, Pride & Prejudice II 16)

Pronouns on their own are marked as nominative, I, she, he, they, we; coordinated and

modified phrasal pronouns show accusative/oblique Case, me, her, him, them, us. The

latter are in topic position.

English has examples where the nominative pronoun is repeated, because this

nominative subject is preferably adjoined to the head in T when possible, as in (30) to

(32). This means the language is between stages (a) and (b) in Figure 1. (30) is from a

piece of creative writing, (31) is spoken text, and (32) from a sports TV broadcast:

(30) She’s very good, though I perhaps I shouldn’t say so (BNC HDC)

(31) if I had seen her, er prints I maybe I would of approached this erm differently

(BNC F71).

(32) I actually I'd like to see that again (BNC-HMN 901).

The same occurs with second person, as in (33) to (35), and infrequently with third (in the

BNC) as in (36) which is the only one for the three adverbs with s/he:

(33) then it does give you maybe you know a few problems. (BNC - J3Y 72)

(34) You maybe you've done it but have forgotten. (BNC - FUH 1047)

(35) Erm you actually you know you don't have to say I'm . (BNC - JYM 79)

17

(36) Erm he perhaps he remembered who he was talking to and what it was all about.

(BNC - JYM 1176)

Subject pronouns are not repeated after VP adverbs such as quickly, at least in the

BNC, as expected if pronouns are in the T position:

(37) %I quickly I ...

(38) %I completely I ...

Another sign that nominative pronouns are moving towards agreement is that

there is an emphatic in English. It is in the accusative/oblique form of the pronoun, e.g.

me in (39) and (40), occupying a topicalized position:

(39) Me, I've been a night person longer than I can remember (BNC-GVL 335).

(40) Me, I was flying economy, but the plane, … was guzzling gas (BNC – H0M 36)

In English, the emphatic is most acceptable with first person, e.g. as in (39) and (40), and

second person, as in (41), but with third person or an indefinite, they are unattested, as

(42) to (44) indicate. This shows that the emphatic is still a topic in third person:

(41) You, you didn’t know she was er here (BNC – KC3 3064)

(42) %Him, he .... (not attested in the BNC)

(43) %Her, she shouldn’t do that (not attested in the BNC)

(44) %As for a ..., it ... (not attested in the BNC)

If the subject is being renalyzed as agreement, how does this work when the

auxiliary inverts in questions, i.e. when it moves to C. There are a number of varieties of

English where this movement is not taking place, e.g. African American Vernacular

English (AAVE) as in Green (1998: 98-9):

(45) What I'm go'n do? AAVE

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`What am I going to do'

(46) How she's doing? AAVE

`How is she doing'

There may be a few indications that this pattern occurs in relatively standard English. So,

though third person pronouns and full nouns occur on their own when the modal moves

to C, as in (47) to (49), first and second do not appear this way in copora searches, as in

indicated by (50):

(47) What else could possibly he be?

(http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2006/10/file-under-police-dog-whistle-

politics.html)

(48) Might possibly the human race now achieve its broader destiny?

(http://my.athenet.net/~dickorr/Sovran's_Eye1.html).

(49) Could possibly the third set numbers stand for letters, characters, rather than

words? (http://forums.steinitzpuzzlers.com)

(50) % might/could/will possibly I (not attested on a google search or on the BNC)

This shows that third person is more syntactically independent, i.e. in a specifier position.

In section five, on the basis of more languages, I will suggest that first and second

person pronouns are always the first to be adjacent to the verb, as in (30) to (35), and to

be accompanied by additional topics, as in (39) to (41), and that a third person is later. I

now turn to Colloquial French.

2.3 Stage (b)

French is one of the Romance languages to have lost pro-drop, some verbal agreement,

and to have developed clitic subjects. The development we saw starting with English

pronouns has gone further in French, as is well-known since e.g. Lambrecht (1981).

Below, I provide evidence that the (non-standard) French pronoun is often analyzed as

agreement marker. As before, I will examine modification, coordination, and position vis

19

a vis the verb. The pronoun is also frequently accompanied by a full nominal or emphatic

pronominal in topicalized position. Modern written French is very different from the

spoken language. I will therefore discuss different varieties and use terms such as

colloquial and standard French, while French is used when all varieties are included.

Modification and coordination are rare in general with pronouns. Pronouns refer

to already known information so are not often modified. I examined 1000 occurrences of

je in the spoken Corpus d'entretiens spontanés, hence CdES, and found not a single

instance of a pronoun that was modified by a PP or other word, or was coordinated. This

latter fact is well-known, and shown in (51):

(51) *Je et tu ... FrenchI and you

This is not true e.g. for third person feminine, as (52) shows:

(52) et c'est elle qui a eu la place. Frenchand it was her who has had the place (CdES)

The regular pronoun is never independent from the verb, as shown in (53) and by

the ungrammaticality of (54). In (53), écris must be preceded by a subject pronoun and the same is true in (55) and (56). As Tesnière (1932) already put

it, French is a synthetic language with an analytic orthography:

(53) Je lis et j'écris Colloquial French

I read and I-write (54) *Je lis et écris Colloquial French

`I read and write'.`I read and write'.

(55) J’ai vu ça. French

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I-have seen that

(56) *Je probablement ai vu ça French

I probably have seen that

Lambrecht (1981: 6) mentions the elimination of clitic-verb inversion, as in (57). Instead,

one hears (58) and (59):

(57) Où vas-tu Standard French

where go-2S

(58) tu vas où Colloquial French

2S go where

`Where are you going?'

(59) que tu vas Colloquial French

that you go

`Are you going?'

Auger (1994: 67) agrees with that for Quebec Colloquial French, saying that only second

person clitics ever appear postverbally. De Cat (2005: 1199) disputes the claim that

inversion no longer occurs but her data from Belgian, Canadian, and French French show

that inversion is infrequent (e.g. in Belgian French, only 2% of Yes/No questions are of

the kind in (57) and only 21% in Canadian Yes/No questions).

If the subjects are being reanalyzed as agreement markers, how can this happen

with the other clitics in Standard French, such as the negative and object in (60)?

(60) mais je ne l'ai pas encore démontré Standard French

but I NEG it-have NEG yet proven

`but I haven't yet proven that'.

(Annales de l'institut Henri Poincaré, 1932, p. 284; from a google search)

It turns out that these are very rare in Colloquial French. As is well-known, the negative

ne is fast disappearing and object clitics are being replaced by ça, as in (61):

21

(61) j'ai pas encore démontré ça Colloquial French

I-have NEG yet proven that

` I haven't yet proven that'.

Fonseca-Greber (2000: 127) in her study of Swiss Spoken French shows that

forms such as je `I' always precede the finite verb. If they were anything else than

agreement, this wouldn't be the case. She also shows (p. 314) that all emphatic pronouns

(except for eux `them') are accompanied by the subject pronoun. With proper nouns, the

percentage is lower (p. 321), for person names around 75% and for place names around

35%. Definite NPs (p. 329) have additional pronouns around 60% of the time, with

human singulars the highest. Doubled `pronouns' occur very frequently with indefinite

subjects, on average 77%. Examples are:

(62) une omelette elle est comme ça Swiss Spoken French

an omelette she is like this

`An omelette is like this' (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 335).

(63) si un: un Russe i va en france Swiss Spoken French

if a a Russian il goes to France

`If a Russian goes to France'. (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 335)

Quantifiers are the least likely to have doubling, namely about 20 %, but they do occur,

as in (64):

(64) c'est que chacun il a sa manière de ... Swiss Spoken French

it is that everyone he has his way of

`Everyone has his own way of ...' (Fonseca-Greber 2000: 338).

This is the last stage before the pronoun is reanalyzed as an agreement marker. Once that

happens, quantifiers will generally occur with the clitic/agreement marker. For a similar

22

reason that (64) is rare, Colloquial French does not allow (65) (yet), according to Roberge

(1988: 356), namely that the pronominal il would be bound:

(65) *Qui il est allé? Colloquial and Standard French

who he is come

`Who has come'?

However, Lambrecht (1981: 30) reports a switch from standard (66) to colloquial (67):

(66) C'est moi qui conduis Standard French

(67) C'est moi qu'je conduis Colloquial French

It is me that I-drive

`It is me that drives'.

A final argument to show that moi `me' is an emphatic or possibly a subject (as

well as toi `you' and some others) comes from code switching. In Arabic, the agreement

morpheme on the verb has a theta-role (or there is an empty subject with a theta-role) and

a subject is therefore optional. If present it has to be the emphatic form, and this is true in

code switching in (68) as well. In (69), the emphatic Arabic does not suffice, and a

French tu is needed, evidence that tu is part of the French agreement morphology:

(68) moi dxlt Arabic-FrenchI went-in-1S`I went in'.

(69) nta tu vas travailler Arabic-French

you you go work`You go to work' (from Bentahila and Davies 1983: 313).

This may show that the emphatic is in the argument position, as in stage (a) of Figure 1,

at least for first and second person pronouns.

23

To conclude the discussion on French, French is in transition between having

subject arguments expressed analytically to having them expressed synthetically.

Different varieties of French are in different stages, as one would expect. French

pronouns show more evidence towards agreement status than English ones. In the next

subsection, I examine a stage where pronouns can be seen to incorporate into the verb but

without an immediate new emphatic element moving into the specifier of the TP.

2.4 Pronouns and nominals in complementary distribution

In some Australian languages (Dixon 1980), Old Egyptian and Coptic, and some of the

modern Celtic languages, the pronoun is in complementary distribution with the

agreement marker. Siewierska & Bakker (1996) note that these languages are rare, and to

their knowledge a strict complementarity only occurs in Celtic and the Amazonian

language Makushi. An analysis that has been given for this phenomenon is incorporation

of the pronoun into the V or C (Willis 1999: 217). I will first cite some examples from

Old Egyptian and Coptic and then from Celtic.

Reintges (1997: 62-6) shows for Old Egyptian that full nominal subjects and

pronominal subjects have different distributions (with eventive verbs). In (70), there is

only a perfective marker on the verb whereas in (71) the pronominal subject is placed

together with the initial verb:

(70) 'h'-n Pjpj hr mht(y) pt hnc-f Old Egyptian

stand.up-PF Pepi at north heaven with-3SM

`(King) Pepi has stood up with him at the northern side of heaven'

(Pyramid Texts, 814b/P, Reintges 1997: 62)

(71) 'h'-k χnty-sn Old Egyptian

stand.up-2SM in.front-3P

`You stand in front of them' (Pyramid Texts, 255b/W, Reintges 1997: 62)

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Reintges argues that the endings are incorporated pronouns that occupy the same

(original) positions as full nominals.<3>

The same remains true in a later stage, Coptic. When a full nominal subject is

present in Coptic, the markers on the auxiliary or verb are absent, as the difference

between (72) and (73) shows:

(72) hən te-unu de a pe.f-las meh ro-f Coptic

in the-hour PRT PF the-his-tongue fill mouth-his

`Immediately, his tongue filled his mouth'

(73) a-f-ent-əs ehun e-t-plis rakte Coptic

PF-he-bring-her PRT to-the-city Alexandria

`It (the ship) brought her into the city of Alexandria' (both from Reintges 2001:

178).

Celtic languages languages are varied in their use of agreement with overt

subjects. Middle Welsh has three sets of (preverbal) pronouns, but even the least

emphatic of these are full phrases (Willis 1999), as in (74):

(74) ac ef ehun yn y priawt person a 'e gwylwys MWe

and he himself in his own person PRT 3S-ACC watched

`and he himself watched it in person'.

(Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys 141-2,Willis 1999: 136)

In (74), ef `he' is separated from the verb as well as modified. Willis argues that by early

Modern Welsh, this situation has changed radically and modified and coordinated

pronouns are very rare. This shows a reanalysis to head has taken place.

There is then a stage where the pronouns are doubled, as in 18th century (75),

especially first person, and the preverbal ones are reanalyzed as complementizers:

(75) Mi af fi 'n feichiau trosti Early ModWel

I go I PRT surety for-her

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`I'll act as surety for her' (Enterlute Histori 50.6, Willis 1999: 213).

None of the modern Celtic languages shows agreement between the verb and the

subject if there is a full DP subject, as (76ab) from Modern Welsh show:

(76) a. Gwelodd y dynion ddraig Welsh

Saw-3S the men dragon

b. *Gwelsan y dynion ddraig Welsh

Saw-3P the men dragon

‘The men saw a dragon’ (from Borsley & Roberts 1996: 40).

An analysis of pronominal subjects in these languages is given in (77) with the pronoun

as a head moving to T:

(77) TP

T'

T vP

san

v ...

gwel

Modern Welsh optionally has an emphatic pronominal subject with an inflected

verb, as in (78), but this is impossible in Irish, as in (79):

(78) Gwelsan (nhw) ddraig Welsh

Saw-3P they dragon

‘They saw the dragon’ (Borsley & Roberts 1996: 40).

(79) chuirfinn (*mé) isteach ar an phost sin Irish

put.1S.COND I in on ART job DEM

`I would apply for that job´ (McCloskey & Hale 1984)

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And an analysis of these would be as in (80), indicating that the emphatic is being

reanalyzed as specifier of the TP and san is agreement in T:

(80) CP

C TP

nhw T'

T vP

san v'

v ...

gwel

This structure is as in stage (a). So the history of Celtic first shows a full phrasal subject

in (74), then a head in (75), and then a phrasal pronoun in (78) for Welsh. This is an

instance where stage (a) of Figure 1 is reanalyzed as (b) and (b) as (a).

3 Agreement as argument

In this section, I provide data on languages where the agreement marker bears the theta-

role, i.e. stage (c) in Figure 1. These are called Pronominal Argument Languages (or

PALs). I first provide some background information on this kind of language, focussing

on Navajo. I then indicate how Spanish and varieties of Italian, even though they share

many characteristics of PALs, do not fit this classification (contra e.g. Ordóñez &

Treviño 1999). The latter's cycle instead goes from (a) to (b) and (a) again.

Jelinek (1984), in examining Warlpiri, argues that languages have either lexical or pronominal arguments. In non-configurational languages "Clitic Pronouns [are] Verbal Arguments" (1984: 43). Jelinek's version of this difference/parameter is (81):

(81) Configurationality Parameter <4>

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a. In a configurational language, object nominals are properly governed by the verb.

b. In a [...] non-configurational language, nominals are not verbal arguments, but are optional adjuncts to the clitic pronouns that serve as verbal arguments (Jelinek 1984: 73).

Making a similar point, Baker (1995; 2001) proposes the following macroparameter:

(82) The Polysynthesis Parameter Verbs must include some expression of each of the main participants in the event described by the verb (the subject, object, and indirect object) (Baker 2001: 111).

Baker (2001: 148; 149) distinguishes between Subject and Object Polysynthesis. In this section, I just regard Subject Polysynthesis.

In full fledged PAL languages, all pronouns and nominals are adjuncts. For

instance, in Navajo (83), the subject and two objects are marked on the verb:

(83) bínabinishtin Navajo

b-í-na-bi-ni-sh-tin

3-against-around-3-Q-1S-handle-IMPF

`I teach it to him' (Young & Morgan 1987: 223)

Characteristics of PAL languages, as in Baker and Jelinek, are (a) optionality of nominals (DPs as well as independent pronouns), as in (84), for Navajo, (b) sentences with more than one nominal are rare, (c) nominals as in (85) are adjuncts, (d) absence of anaphors and non-referential quantified DPs, (e) minimal embedding:

(84) Nanishté Navajo

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na-ni-sh-téaround-you-I-carry.IMPF`I am carrying you around'.

(85) (Diné bizaad) yíníshta' NavajoNavajo language 1-study`I am studying Navajo'.

The optionality of nominals, as in (84), follows if they are adjuncts, and so does their being specially Case marked in some languages. Regarding (d), Baker (1995: 49f.) makes the point that anaphors such as `himself' would be adjuncts and hence outside the c-command domain of the real subject. Quantifiers have been argued to be adverbial (Jelinek 1995; Faltz 1995). Thus, in (86), ałtso `all' is not a quantifier with scope over the entire sentence but just over the adjacent DP:

(86) má'ii ałtso dibé baayijah Navajo

coyote all sheep 3-3-ran-away

`The sheep ran away from all the coyotes' or

`All the sheep ran away from the coyotes'. (Jelinek 2001: 18).

As to (e), Hale (1989) notes that (non)-configurationality is confined to constructions, not languages, and notes that sentential complements such as (87) and (88) in Navajo have to be configurational, even though Navajo as a whole is non-configurational:

(87) Shi-zhé'é kinla'nígóó deesháál nízin Navajomy-father Flagstaff-to 1-will.go 3-want`My father wants to go to Flagstaff' (K. Hale 1989: 300).

(88) doogáál ní Navajo3-arrive 3-said (disjoint reference)`He said that he arrived' (Willie 1991: 143).

29

Baker (1995: chapter 10) says that polysynthetic languages avoid embedded arguments. Constructions such as (87) are rare in Navajo; the preferred embedding strategy being nominalization, as in (89) for instance:

(89) honeesná-nígíí yoodlá Navajo3.win-NOM 3.believe (free reference)`He believes he won' or `he believes the winner' (Willie 1991:

178).

These characteristics of Navajo indicate that a grammatical specifier position is

not available. The adjuncts, as in (85) and (86), are not in the specifier of TP. Instead the

role of agreement is prominent and in this, it resembles the stage a number of Romance

languages are in. I first provide a few examples where this seems the case, but then show

that neither Spanish not Italian dialects are being reanalyzed as (c); rather they are

reanalyzed as (a).

In Spanish and standard Italian, as is well known, subjects are optional and one

could argue that the agreement, shown in bold in (90) and (91) for Spanish, is the

argument

(90) (Muchas tribus) buscaban la opotunidad de rebelarse Spanish

many tribes sought-3P the opportunity to rebel

`Many tribes sought to rebel'.

(91) a. (nosotros) buscábamos

`we sought'

b. (vostros) buscabais

`you sought'

c. (ellos, ellas) buscaban

`they sought'

30

Ordóñez & Treviño (1999) show that pre-verbal overt subjects pattern with left dislocated

objects in ellipsis, extraction of quantifiers, and interpretation of preverbal quantifiers.

Postverbal subjects in Spanish, however, do function as arguments (as different tests

show though Ordóñez & Treviño 1999 do not take this into account), quantified subjects

are grammatical as are embedded objects though. So, Spanish exhibits agreement, and

has frequent topicalized subjects.

In standard Italian, the situation is similar to Spanish but, as is well known since

e.g. Brandi & Cordin (1989) and Poletto (2004), there is an incredible diversity across the

different dialects. I will come back to this in section five when talking about the

definiteness hierarchy. In Venetian Italian, full nouns and pronouns, as in (92), can be

doubled but not indefinites, as (93) shows:

(92) Ti te magni sempre Venice

you you eat always

(93) Nissun (*el) magna Venice

Nobody he eats (both from Poletto 2004)

In other varieties, especially Northern varieties such as Trentino and Fiorentino, all of

these are grammatical, even the quantified one, as in (94) to (96). That means these

varieties are back to stage (a) in Figure 1 and didn't reanalyze as stage (c). If they had,

they would have stopped using the specifier of TP and there's no evidence that they have

since quantifiers and other argument are possible:

(94) Nisun l'ha dit niente Trentino

nobody he-has said nothing

`Nobody said anything' (Brandi & Cordin 1989:118)

(95) Tut l'è capita de not Trentino

everything it-has happened at night

`Everything happened at night' (Brandi & Cordin 1989:118)

(96) a. Tuc i panseva Albosaggia (Lombard N.)

Everybody they thought..

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b. Vargù al ruarà tardi

Somebody he will-arrive late (both from Poletto 2007)

In this section I have given an indication how Navajo can be analyzed as a

Pronominal Argument Language. Colloquial French, as discussed in section two, and

Spanish (and standard Italian) resemble Navajo in the importance that agreement plays.

The agreement marking, however, doesn't necessarily have a theta-role (as it does in

Navajo) since there are some overt subject arguments. Varieties of Italian show that they

are now at stage (a). In the next section I show how stage (c) can be reanalyzed as stage

(a).

4 From Agreement as Argument to Nominal as Argument

In (94) to (96) above, we saw that some dialects of Italian may be `back' at stage (a) from

an earlier stage (b). In this section, I show how stage (c) can be reanalyzed as stage (a). I

first briefly discuss the loss of PAL-hood in Pama-Nyungan, based on Jelinek (1987), and

then go into a similar loss in the history of English.

Jelinek (1987) provides a scenario where stage (c) of Figure 1 is reanalyzed as (a).

She argues that Proto-Pama-Nyungan was a PAL language where nominals were

adjuncts. The development of Dyirbal, a Pama-Nyungan language, shows that it evolves

from an accusative PAL into a split ergative non-PAL. The older stage, still represented

by Warlpiri, has (pro)nominals adjoined and the real arguments marked through

inflection on the AUX (in second position), as in (97), and zero for the third person, as in

(98):

(97) Wawirri kapi-rna panti-rni yalumpu Warlpiri

kangaroo FUT-1S spear-NONPST that

`I will spear that kangaroo' (Hale 1983)

(98) Ngarrka-ngku ka-0 panti-rni Warlpiri

man-ERG PRES-3S.NOM-3S.ACC spear-NONPST

32

`The man is spearing it' (Hale 1983).

In Warlpiri, there are separate pronouns as well, and these are Case-marked the same as

the full nominals. This prompts Jelinek (e.g. 1983: 80) to regard them as adjuncts and the

markers on the AUX as NOM/ACC marked arguments in (99):

(99) ngajulu-rlu ka-rna-ngku nyuntu-0 nya-nyi

Warlpiri

I-ERG PRES-1NOM-2ACC you-ABS see-NONPST

`I see you' (Jelinek 1983: 80; Hale 1973: 328)

The change that occurs in Dyribal is that it becomes a split ergative language

marking ergative/absolutive on nominals and nominative/accusative for pronouns.

Because of the absence of a third person pronoun AUX, the nominal was reanalyzed as

an argument, and the ergative and absolutive, as in (100), "became grammatical cases"

(Jelinek 1987: 103):

(100) yabu numa-ŋgu bura-n Dyirbal

mother-ABS father-ERG saw

`Father saw mother' (Jelinek 1987: 102).

The ergative Case derives from an instrumental. Since Dyribal has no AUX, the nouns

and pronouns are the arguments. I'll now turn to English.

We have seen above that Modern English is in stage (a) perhaps being reanalyzed as stage (b). Old and Early Middle English, I will argue, are in transition between (c) and (a). Bonneau & Pica (1995) similarly argue that Old English developed from a system in which complement clauses, relative clauses, and DPs "were interpreted as adverbials to a system in which they are interpreted as arguments of the verb". I will likewise argue that DPs and CPs are not arguments and that Old English

33

verbal subject agreement is argumental and that the language is in stage (c) .

Evidence for this can be found in the overt verbal agreement, the -est ending in (101), that eliminates the need for a full subject, with all kinds of subjects, as in (102):

(101) ær ðon ðe hona creawa ðriga mec onsæcestbefore that that rooster crows thrice me-ACC deny-2S`You will deny me three times before the rooster crows' (Lindisfarne Gospel, Matthew 26.75).

(102) þæt healreced hatan wolde | medoærn micel men gewyrceanthat palace command would meadhall large men to-build`that he would order his men to build a big hall, a big meadhall' (Beowulf 68-9).

Instances of (101) and (102), i.e. of a null subject, are especially numerous with third person singular and plural pronouns. This kind of pro-drop continues up to the mid 13th century. Berndt (1956) estimates that in some Old English texts only 20% of subjects are overt. Pro-drop is particularly frequent with third person pronouns, which I come back to in section five.

Old English verbal agreement distinguishes person and number separately. In addition, subjects in the traditional sense are often optional, and a topic appears, as in (103) and (104), from the 15th century, without being clearly integrated:

(103) As for þe toþer.tway enemyes. wich ben ... seruauntes to hem. [...]. mowe sone be ouer come. whan here lordis and maystris ben ouercome

34

`As for the other two enemies, which are servants to them ... [They] must soon be defeated, when their lords and masters are defeated' (The Tree of xii frutes 149.11-14).

(104) As for the secunde þinge wiche longith to a religious tree þat is plantid in religioun: is watering`As for the second thing which pertains to a religious tree that is planted in religion is watering' (Idem 5.8).

Other characteristics of Pronominal Argument Languages are that they not have object reflexives; see Baker (1995: 53). The absence of reflexive pronouns in Old English is well-known (e.g. Faltz 1985); simple pronouns, as in (105), function reflexively instead:

(105) Ic on earde bad | ... ne me swor felaI on earth was-around ... not me-DAT swore wrong`I was around on earth ... I never perjured myself' (Beowulf 2736-

8).

Quantifiers or, as Lightfoot (1979) calls them, pre-quantifiers are quite complex in Old and Middle English. They are inflected as adjectives; many have an adjectival meaning, e.g. eall means `complete'; and some have pronominal functions. This shows they are more referential in keeping with what is known about quantifiers in polysynthetic languages. Carlson (1978) provides different reasons why she thinks

that quantifiers are not a separate category in Old English. Two that I find interesting are

(a) pre-quantifiers can occur together, as in (106), and can modify a pronoun, as in (107):

(106) Mid childe hii weren boþe two

With child they were both two

(Layamon, 2399, Carlson 1978: 308)

(107) Ealle we sind gebroðra ... and we ealle cweðað

35

All we are brothers ... and we all say

(Aelfric Homilies I 54.8, Carlson 1978: 320)

In PALs, clausal arguments are unexpected since it would be difficult to represent them on the verb. (108) is an example of lack of embedding but it has to be stated that this does not occur always. There are instances of embedded sentences even in Old English:

(108) An preost was on leoden. la3amon wes ihoten. he wes leouenaðes sone. liðe him beo drihten. he wonede at ernle3e. at æðelen are chirechenA priest was among people. Layamon was called. He was Liefnoth's son. kind him be God. He lived at Areley. at lovely a church`There was a priest living here, called Layamon. He was the son of Liefnoth, may God be him kind. He lived at Areley, at a lovely church' (Layamon, Caligula 1-3).

A feature of PALs that hasn't received (as) much attention is the lexical incorporation of aspectual information, such as `around' in Navajo (84). Inner aspect is also typical for Old English verbs (frequent use of affixes) but I will not go into that much here.

If subject pronouns are adjuncts in Old English, and the agreement is the real argument, how are subjects Case marked? It can be argued that there is a split Case system for subjects and objects, with objects being assigned inherent Case (by the V, Adj, or P), and subjects nominative Case by a functional category. In (109), the subject is nominative and the object him is dative because the verb forscrifan `proscribe' assigns a Goal theta-role:

(109) siþðan him scyppend forscrifen hæfde

36

since 3S-DAT creator-NOM banned had `Since the creator had banned him' (Beowulf 106).

Inherent Case depends on the theta-role and can be genitive, dative, or accusative. It is, again relevant in section five, more frequent on third person pronouns than on first and second person (van Gelderen 2000).

In Old English, subjects are adjuncts with nominative Case while objects have inherent Case. Thus, Old English Case is interpretable (in terms of Chomsky 1995) and so is agreement. The loss of inherent Case around 1200 triggers checking of uninterpretable Case features in functional categories starting with the most definite nominals.

In this section, I have indicated that a number of the key characteristics of Pronominal Argument languages also hold for Old English. Like Navajo, but unlike varieties of Italian, the grammatical specifier position (Spec TP) is not present and the language is in stage (c) of Figure 1. This means that Old English stage (c) has been reanalyzed as Modern English stage (a).

5 Stages in the Cycle

In the present section I address two issues. (I) What is the typical `start' of the reanalysis

of a subject pronoun as an agreement marker, and of the topic as subject pronoun? (II)

What is the source for the renewals? The answer to (I), I suggest, is that preposing is

more prevalent with more definite elements due to discourse considerations; the answer

to (II) is that the element with the relevant features is incorporated. Each question is

addressed in a separate subsection. The last section provides a summary.

5.1 Definiteness and Feature Economy

37

Above it was shown that first person pronouns may be the first to be reanalyzed as

agreement markers. In Old English, the third person is more often dropped than first or second person pronouns. This means that first and second person are the first to be reanalyzed as subjects. Then, in Modern English, as we've seen in section two above, it is the first and second person that are more like agreement markers, i.e. marked with uninterpretable features, again leading the cyclical changes.

Definite nominals are ahead of indefinite nominals as well. For instance, Garrett (1990: 228; 234ff) shows that doubling in Lycian only occurs with

definite NPs and in Kambera, according to Klamer (1997), clitic subjects occur when the

subject is definite. There is typically the same set of changes, namely as in (110), as also

mentioned above:

(110) Definiteness Hierarchy

1/2 > 3 > definite > indefinite/quantifier

In what follows, I will give more examples of this sequence, starting with Italian dialects.

Poletto (1993; 2004) shows that the hierarchy in (110) occurs in Italian dialects.

In the Italian of Venice, first and second pronouns must be doubled <5>, as in (111),

definite nouns may be, as in (112), but quantified nouns cannot, as in (113):

(111) Ti te magni sempre Venice

you you eat always

(112) Nane (el) magna Venice

John he eats

(113) Nissun (*el) magna Venice

Nobody he eats (all from Poletto 2004)

In some other varieties, all of these are grammatical, even the quantified one<6>, as in

(114), and these varieties are back at stage (a). The reasons they are not at stage (c) is that

at that stage quantifiers do not occur, and they do in this variety:

38

(114) Gnun a m capiss Torino

Nobody he me understands

`Nobody understands me' (from Poletto 2004).

Other instances of the hierarchy can be provided. In the history of English,

contraction of pronouns to the left of verbal elements starts with first person around 1600,

as in (116) from 1608 and (117) from 1630, both taken from the Early Modern English

part of the Helsinki Corpus (HC):

(116) Ill haue another foole, thou shalt dwell no longer with me (Robert Armin)

(117) I’le be at hand to take it (Thomas Middleton)

Due to the spelling variants, it is hard to get a total picture. In the Early Modern English

period, contraction with first person is more frequent. For instance, in Shakespeare's The

Merry Wives of Windsor, there are 213 third person masculine singular pronouns and 10

of those are contracted (=5%), but of the 745 first person singular pronouns 74 are

(=10%). (X-square 4.898, p < .05).

This asymmetry is still present in Present Day English as Table 3 shows (for the

Faculty Meetings part of the Corpus of Spoken American Professional English, or CSE)

and as other studies have shown, e.g. Kjellmer (1997). The explanation is that first person

pronouns adjacent to auxiliaries are becoming agreement markers. They are moving

towards having uninterpretable person features. What stops the complete change is that

main verbs do not move and therefore there will always be some pronouns that will have

to be in specifier position in English but not in French.

39

uncliticized cliticized total_____________________________________________

I 2037 685 (=25%) 2722you 1176 162 (=12.1%) 1338he 128 19 (=12.9%) 147Table 3: Contraction with pronouns in CSE-FAC (significant between

first and second and second and third at p < .001).

Let me add a note on the contraction of nouns and auxiliaries. Axelsson (1998: 94ff.), in

a study of contraction in 20th century newspapers, finds a small number of such

contractions. Many of these involve personal, company, or geographical names and

simple nouns of one syllable, as in the slightly odd (118):

(118) Hat’s the way to do it

(Axelsson 1998: 97).

Names can be seen as D heads and therefore incorporate as well. There are only a very

few instances where such an analysis is problematic.

Poletto's explanation of the hierarchy involves feature checking: if there are too

many features on the verb that the verb is checking, the verb is saturated and a clitic "is a

sort of substitute for a verb" (2000: 147). Poletto (2007) develops a very ingenious model

that explains the hierarchy in (110) in terms of features. The element on the left-hand side

in (1) is the one with most features, number, person, case, and gender (in some

languages) and rather than using the entire DP to check all the features in separate

functional categories, Poletto argues that the clitics or agreement markers do this more

economically. Poletto (2007) claims that pronoun doubling is more frequent with those

elements that have "more functional information", and that the (too large) number of

features to be checked is the cause of the doubling. She explains the Definiteness

Hierarchy in (110) by a universal order of checking domains (first and second below third

below plural etc). I will also use features but argue something a little different.

In section one, I have argued that there is a cognitive principle helping the

acquisition process, namely Feature Economy, and that DPs and other elements are

40

reanalyzed with fewer semantic and interpretable features. The consistency with which

certain interpretable features disappear first, i.e. are reanalyzed as uninterpretable, needs

to be explained. In section four, I noticed briefly that Old English third person pronouns

have inherent Case more frequently (and that pro-drop is more likely). This means that

first and second person pronouns have uninterpretable features before third person ones

do. If displacement is brought about by discourse factors (e.g. Chomsky 2002), i.e.

definite elements are more often subjects, these elements are the first to be seen as

moving and having uninterpretable features and become probes.

5.2 Source of the Renewals

Most new emphatic or topic pronouns derive from oblique pronouns, as in (119). Hale

(1973), in discussing Warlbiri subject and object markers, says that, historically, the

pronouns became cliticized and that new forms were created from oblique pronominals.

Third person pronouns (e.g. Latin to Modern Romance) are created from demonstratives.

Asian pronouns derive from honorifics. In what follows, I give some examples of this

trend, typically giving parts of cycles:

(119) The loss of phi-features

oblique > emphatic subject > pronoun > agreement > zero

[i-phi] [i-phi] [i-phi]/[u-phi] [u-phi]

Steele (1976) mentions that, in some Uto-Aztecan languages the clitics in second

position (i.e. following the first element), are derived from independent pronouns. Steele

(1979: 472) argues that proto Uto-Aztecan has an auxiliary marking modality, subjects,

and tense in second position. The different daughter languages have different orders and

positions. In O'odham, this comes out as (120) where the auxiliary `añ is reduced from

the first person pronoun 'a: ñi:

(120) ‘a:ñi ‘añ s-ba:bigǐ ñeok O’odham

41

I 1S-IMPF slowly speak-IMPF

`I was speaking slowly’. (Zepeda 1983: 18-9)

O’odham is pro-drop and the optional subject pronoun could in fact be in a topic position,

as in (121):

(121) CP

(‘a:ñi) C'

C TP

‘añ pro ...

[u-phi] [i-phi]

(122) also suggests that the auxiliary is in the CP-domain since the auxiliary is cliticised

to the Q head:

(122) N-o hegam hihim O'odham

Q-3.IMPF they walk-IMPF.P

`Are/were they walking?' (Zepeda 1983: 14; 21)

O'odham, like Luiseño, marks its auxiliary with subject and aspect and is therefore a

subject PAL. Many other Uto-Aztecan languages do not mark the subject on an auxiliary,

e.g. Hopi.

Harris (1978) discusses the evolution in Romance of `disjunctive' and

`conjunctive' pronouns, i.e. emphatic and clitic respectively. Old French, when it is still

pro-drop, has second person tu and toi for nominative and accusative emphatic. After the

loss of pro-drop, tu becomes the regular clitic pronoun and toi becomes the emphatic for

both nominative and accusative. The two stages are represented in Table 4:

Old French Modern French

Emphatic Regular Emphatic Regular

Subject tu zero toi tu

42

Oblique toi te toi te

Table 4: Changes in French second person pronouns (from Harris 1978: 117)

Athabaskan agreement prefixes are very similar to the emphatic pronouns, as in

(123):

(123) shí éiyá Lena yinishyé Navajo

I TOP Lena 1S-called

`I am called Lena'.

As mentioned in connection with the cline in (110) above, the full pronoun in e.g. (123) might be used for new discourse information.

In this section so far, I have discussed a definiteness hierarchy and provided additional examples of renewal. I'll now do a brief summary of Head Preference and Feature Economy.

5.3 Head Preference and Feature Economy

In section one above, I have provided an outline of the different stages and have given

more empirical detail in the remaining sections. I'll now review the mechanisms of how

certain stages are reanalyzed by the language learner as another stage. Figure 1 is

repeated for convenience.

a. TP b. TP (=HPP)

DP T’ DP T’

pron T VP pron pron-T VP

(Urdu/Hindi, Japanese) (Non Standard

French)

c. TP

43

[DP] T’ (=LMP)

[pron] pron-T VP (Navajo, Old English)

Figure 1: Stages of the Subject Cycle

The transition from (a) to (b) to (c) is facilitated by the Head Preference Principle and

Late Merge. Both of these can be seen as a reinterpretation of the interpretable phi-

features of the pronoun in the Specifier position as uninterpretable as agreement feature.

In stage (c), there is no longer Case checking and this means that [uCase] has disappeared

from the pronoun. For French, the changes could be summarized as:

(124) Old French Standard French Coll French

iCase uCase uphi

iphi iphi

All of these point towards a loss of features during the history of language.

6 Subjects reanalyzed: suffixes or prefixes?

This section is more speculative. I will examine why agreement is expressed as a prefix

in languages such as the ones we have seen above and as a suffix in the languages we'll

see in the first part of this section.

6.1 Reanalysis as C: Suffixes

In many languages, agreement is expressed as a a suffix. In these languages, verbs often

move to C (or Fin), as in (125a). The (pronominal) subject needs to be adjacent for many

speakers, as the ungrammaticality of (125b) shows, and the inflection is different as

(125c) shows:

44

(125) a. Ga jij daar vaak heen? Dutch

go you there often to

`Do you go there often?'

b *Ga vaak jij daar heen

ga often you ther to

`Do you go there often?'

c. Jij gaat daar vaak heen

you go there often to

`You (seem to) go there often'.

In subordinate clause, the complementizer is in C, as in (126a), and it too has a special

relationship with the subject. As in (125b), for example, for many speakers, adverbs

cannot come in between, as (126b) shows:

(126) a. ... dat ie gisteren zou aankomen Dutch

that he yesterday would arrive

b. *... dat gisteren hij/ie zou aankomen

that yesterday he would arrive

`that he'd arrive yesterday'.

In some varieties of Dutch, subject pronouns on C can even be argued to be agreement

markers, e.g. in (127), and certainly in (128):

(127) ... da-k daar niet heen wil Dutch

that-I there not to want

`that I don't want to go there'.

(128) Da ken-ik ik Flemish

that know-I I

`I know that'.

45

De Vogelaer et al. (2002: 236) provide the paradigm for Dutch inverted and non-inverted

verbs with the doubled subject pronouns, as in (128), and maps of the Dutch speaking

areas where they occur, mainly in Flanders and Brabant. The doubling shows that the

clitic has become an agreement marker (and C is a probe looking for interpretable phi-

features). De Vogelaer et al (2002: 242) conclude that sentences without inversion are

more pragmatically marked. The least acceptable are the third person ones. The non-

inverted doublings are not at all acceptable.

Verb-movement may be the reason why many agreement markers are suffixes. In

VS constructions, the verb moves to the position of the pronoun on its way to a higher

position, as in (129). The pronoun can be seen as a head in C triggering this movement:

(129) CP

C'

C TP

T'

T vP

pron ...

The reanalysis/change to a stage where the pronoun is agreement is of course easy to

`explain' as Feature Economy. C is reanalyzed as a probe with [u-phi]. I will give some

further examples.

In Old Norse (Faarlund 2004: 35; EyÞórrson 2004; Boer 1920: 210), first and

second person pronouns may cliticize on the verb, as in (130), from 500 CE. In Icelandic,

hygg ek can be hykk `think-I' and the Old English and Old High German second person

singular -st derives from the Germanic/Indo-European the 2S clitic (Lühr 1984), as in

(131) repeated from (101) above:

(130) hariuha haitika farawisa Old Norse

Hariuha named-I danger-knowing

46

‘I am called Hariuha, the one who knows danger’. (Sjælland bracteate 2 I Krause

1971).

(131) ... mec onsæcest Old English

... me betray-2S

`you betray me'.

Middle Dutch (Royen 1929: 487) and, as seen above, colloquial Dutch have a clitic, as in

(132). Middle English hastow, wiltow, and other forms, as in (133), Old High German

has (134), Farsi umad-esh ‘came-he’, Alemannic (135), and probably the Proto-Indo-

European verbal endings -m, -s, -t (see Bopp 1816; Brugmann 1904) derive from a

movement of the verb to the demonstrative pronoun:

(132) da kank nie doen Dutch variety

that can-I not do

(133) Sestow this people? Middle English

`See you these people'

(Piers Plowman 468)

(135) ni wane theih thir gelbo OHG

NEG think that-I you deceive

`Don't think that I deceive you' (Otfrid I 23, 64, Somers Wicka 2007)

(136) hätt-er gseit Alemannic

has-he said (Giacalone Ramat 1998: 117).

Many of these stages then double the pronouns, e.g. Old Norse (Boer 1920), as in

(137), where the full pronoun is base generated in an argument position:

(137) Fanca ec mildan mann eþa sva matar goðan,

found-I-NEG I mild man noble and food good

`I found none so noble and free with his food'

(Hávamál 39, from http://etext.old.no/Bugge/havamal.html)

47

In this section, I have provided examples of subject pronouns being reanalyzed

not as T (as in e.g. French) but as C. The definiteness hierarchy is relevant and renewal

does occur.

6.2 Prefixes

In 6.1, I have suggested a simple reason that subject pronouns are reanalyzed as suffixes,

namely that the verb somehow adjoins to the their left (in accordance with Kayne 1994). I

will now consider the origin of agreement prefixes.

Theta-marked subjects are merged in the Specifier of a vP. This means that in the

stage where the pronoun is a phrase, it moves from specifier of vP to specifier of TP or

another functional category above vP in languages such as English. The next stage is the

result of a reanalysis by the language learner of the pronoun as a head. Chomsky (1995:

249) says "a clitic raises from its [theta]-position, and attaches to an inflectional head. In

its [theta]-position, the clitic is an XP; attachment to a head requires that it be an Xo".

Thus, in its vP-internal position, the subject is a phrase, but it then moves as a head. It is

this movement that is complex since it interacts with the movement of auxiliaries.

Let’s assume a simplified VP-shell which looks like (138) and where the main

verb see moves to v:

(138) vP

DP v’

D v VP

you me V’

V there

see

The subject then moves as a head (internal merge) to T. On its way to T, it can move

through other heads, as in e.g. (139), assuming Kayne (1994):

48

(139) TP

T’

T MP

M’

M vP

you’ll you v’

v VP

see me there

(140) You'll see me there.

Initial merge of the pronoun is in the specifier because of theta-checking. The T-

position has uninterpretable phi-features and probes for interpretable phi-features to agree

with. It finds these in those of the subject pronoun. The next stage is when the pronoun is

seen as late merged in T, and reinterpreted as being T with uninterpretable features and as

a prefix, as may be happening in French.

Sentences such as (141) and (142) have 've in T with the subject and modal

auxiliary left adjoining to it:

(141) She'll've done that yesterday.

(142) He'll've seen what recently transpired abroad.

(http://www.footballpoets.org/Graham_Shaw/index.asp?poem=Europless)

In this section, two kinds of agreement morphemes wer discussed, one that

ultimately grammaticalizes as a probe in C and the other as a probe in T. Renewal of a

pronoun in the original argument position also occurs.

7 Conclusion

49

This paper has given descriptions of various stages of the Subject Cycle. I have identified

three main stages in the Subject Cycle, one with the pronoun as specifier (stage a), one

with the pronoun as head (stage b), and one without a real specifier (of TP) position

available (stage c). Languages such French and English are moving from (a) to (b) and

varieties of Italian are moving from (b) to (a). This is not a reversal or a counterexample

to the unidirectionality of the change since the next stage uses a renewed specifier not the

old one.

The Definiteness Hierarchy is very relevant as to where the cyclical changes start.

As is well-known, more definite nominals appear in the Spec TP and hence they are

reanalyzed earlier. A discussion of the difference between pronouns becoming prefixes or

suffixes is also included. and the difference has to do with a reanalysis as either T or C.

The status of stage (c) is interesting. It seems that in this stage specifiers play a

minor role and heads are the theta-bearers. This stage is characterized by a lack of

quantifiers, nominal reflexives, and embedded sentences. If Old English is in this stage as

I have argued, it can be shown to having been reanalyzed as Middle and Modern English

(a). Navajo is definitely in stage (c) but certain other Athabaskan languages seem to be

moving in this direction as well (Rice & Saxon 2005). Stage (b), at least in the languages

I have surveyed is not reanalyzed as stage (c), and Table 5 summarizes the possiblities

discussed in this paper.

(a) to (b): English, French (b) to (a) Varieties of Italian

(a) to (c) not attested (c) to (a) Old English

(b) to (c) not attested (c) to (b) not attested

Table 5: Changes in the Subject Cycle

Rather than just stating that a pronoun is reanalyzed as a clitic or agreement

marker, I have provided structural positions for each of the stages and have argued there

are Economy Principles that aid the language learner in the acquisition. The Head

Preference and Late Merge Principles are general cognitive principles that help the

language learner acquire a grammar. They can be reformulated in terms of Feature

50

Economy. Lexical items are first selected from the lexicon and then merged and

remerged in a derivation. The heavier the feature load, the less economical is the

derivation. Hence, the tendency to be analyzed by the learner as light as possible.

Let me say something about linguistic change too. Lightfoot in much recent work

(e.g. 2006) has talked about `cuing'. This refers to the "idea that children scan their

linguistics environment for structural cues" (2006: 32) and concerns the change of the

triggering experience from the E-language such that the language learner will come up with

an I-language different from that of the previous generation. Thus, for Lightfoot, change can

only come from the outside, i.e. triggered by variable data. In this paper, I have argued the

opposite, namely that change can come from the inside as it were.

Abbreviations and notes

ACC Accusative Case

BNC British National Corpus

CdES Un Corpus d'entretiens spontanés

CI Conceptual Intentional

CP Complementizer Phrase

CSE Corpus of Spoken English

DAT Dative Case

ERG Ergative Case

FOC Focus marker

HC Helsinki Corpus

HPP Head Preference Principle

i- interpretable

LMP Late Merge Principle

NOM Nominative Case

OED Oxford English Dictionary

PAL Pronominal Argument Language

PRT partcicle

phi person and number features

51

PRES present

PST past

S singular

SM Sensory Motor

TP Tense Phrase

u- uninterpretable

UG Universal Grammar

X any head

XP any phrase

1P first plural etc.

3SM third person singular masculine, etc

% unattested

<1> This use of oblique pronouns actually indicates a switch from a dependent

marking to a head marking system, but I will not go into that here.

<2> It is not clear that specifiers are as relevant in these languages. I come back to this

briefly in section 3.

<3> Old Egyptian also has a stative paradigm and here Reintges (1997) argues that the

verbal endings are agreement markers since they are obligatory.

<4> Initially, non-configurational languages are defined as having free word order (e.g. Hale) but then the emphasis shifts away from that because Navajo has relatively strict word order, and languages with free word order such as German can be accounted for through scrambling. There is structure to non-configurational languages.<5> I have not taken the EPP into account, i.e. obligatory subjects.<6> There is, as many people have pointed out a difference between universal quantifiers and negative or existential ones. For instance, Poletto (2007) provides the following difference:

(i) Bisogna che tuti i faga citu Bellinzona

52

necessary that everyone they make silence`It is necessary that everyone is silent'.

(ii) Quaidun telefunarà al prufessur BellinzonaSomebody will-phone to-theteacher(Poletto 2007: 6)

Universal quantifiers are typically doubled by a plural and more easily left dislocated. Poletto argues this is because they are interpreted as [+specific]. Her explanation for the doubling hierarchy has to do with the number of features: the more features, the easier the doubling. This doubling is more economic because the feature will be checked through the clitic and the entire element (e.g. DP) won't have to move.

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