Fortune and Decay of Lexical Expletives in Germanic and Romance along the Adige River

• Published in: Languages (Basel) Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 44
• Main Authors: Tomaselli, Alessandra, Bidese, Ermenegildo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2023
• Subjects: Clauses; Cleft constructions; Diachronic linguistics; Dialects; Evaluation; Expletives; Finiteness; Germanic languages; impersonal subjects; Language contact; Language varieties; Lexicalization; Linguistics; null subject parameter (NSP); positional expletives; Pro drop parameter; pro-drop; Pronouns; Romance languages; Sentence structure; subject inversion; Syntax; Venetian language; verb second (V2); Verbs; Italy; Adige River

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP expletives required by the V2 constraint and, hence, by the necessity to lexicalize the position on the left of the inflected verb and (ii) TP expletives connected with the negative value of the pro-drop parameter and, therefore, with t...