Developing pro-drop: the case of Cimbrian

The syntax of Cimbrian, a Germanic heritage language spoken in the North-East of Italy, is at a very peculiar developmental stage: on the one hand it has lost the V2 linear restriction, but still maintains both pronominal subject inversion (Vfin-pron) and a residual word order asymmetry (main versus embedded word order pattern); on the other, it is characterized by both ‘free’ subject inversion (VP DP) and the systematic violation of the ‘that-trace’ filter, but does not allow any kind of null subject. This very specific mixture of both V2- and pro-drop properties gives us an opportunity to revisit the traditional assumption that Germanic V2 (i.e.: word order restriction due to mandatory Vfin to C movement in the root context) is incompatible with full pro-drop. On the basis of the Cimbrian data, we propose that the development of pro-drop crucially depends on the loss of V-to-Fin movement and, consequently, on the lowering of structural subject agreement within TP so that the whole complex process of feature sharing (KEEP, SHARE, DONATE) between C and I is restructured, changing from a C-dominant system to an I-dominant system.