Resilient Subject Agreement Morpho-Syntax in the Germanic Romance Contact Area

Abstract

In this work, we intend to investigate one fundamental aspect of language contact by comparing the distribution of subjects in German, Northern Italian dialects and Cimbrian. Here, we show that purely syntactic order phenomena are more prone to convergence, i.e., less resilient, while phenomena that have a clearly identifiable morphological counterpart are more resilient. The empirical domain of investigation for our analysis is the morphosyntax of both nominal and pronominal subjects, the agreement pattern and their position in Cimbrian grammar. While agreement patterns display a highly conservative paradigm, the syntax of nominal (vP-peripheral and topicalized) subjects is innovative and mimics the Italian linear word order.

Keywords

• clitic syntax
• language contact
• Cimbrian
• subject syntax