Rethinking Verb Second and Nominative case assignment: New insights from a Germanic variety in Northern Italy

Cimbrian is a German(ic) VO heritage language that does not display the linear V2 restriction: the DP subject can show up before the finite verb together with other constituents while verb-subject inversion a la German only obtains with clitic pronouns. In recent literature on Cimbrian, pronominal subject inversion has been taken as a traditional argument in favor of mandatory V-to-C movement (assuming a split-C configuration). Building on this assumption, the syntax of the enclitic expletive subject, -da/-ta, (which shows up whenever the DP subject does not raise in the C-domain) makes the Cimbrian scenario particularly relevant since it casts light on the correlation between V2 and Nominative case licensing. Our take is that Nominative case in Cimbrian is assigned by C – as generally assumed for Germanic V2 languages – but in a very idiosyncratic way: (i) it applies within the C domain, i.e. FinP; (ii) expletive -da/-ta absorbs Nominative case and acts as a defective goal with respect to the “low” subject. Basing on the feature-spreading model in Ouali (2008), we take the phasal head C in Cimbrian to “KEEP” its relevant ϕ- and T-features assigning Nominative case in [Spec,FinP] and triggering mandatory V-movement.