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.

imbrian 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 German-like verb-subject inversion only obtains with clitic pronouns. In recent literature on Cimbrian, pronominal subject inversion has been taken as a traditional argument in favour 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 data particularly relevant, since it casts light on the correlation between V2 and Nominative case licensing. The stance in this chapter is that Nominative case in Cimbrian is assigned by C-as generally assumed for Germanic V2 languages-but in an 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 wit...