Unaccented pronominal subjects in the Germanic languages
Unaccented pronominal subjects in the Germanic languages

Summary/Abstract: In the Germanic languages, unaccented pronominal subjects have been in use for quite some time, whenever other types of subject are excluded. Utilising Gothic, Northumbrian and above all Old High German data, the author explains certain aspects of that phenomenon in the framework of the syntactic theory operating with strong and weak syntactic variants. (The theory is outlined at the beginning of the paper.) In the old Germanic languages of the pre-historic and partly of the historic period, emphatic pronominal subjects were used, only sporadically also non-emphatic but accented ones. The latter were the most common in non-third verbal persons. This circumstance is explained by the author under the presupposition that strong variants (ego dico [ego non-emphatic] was a strong variant, as opposed to the bare dico) assert themselves in less "natural" surroundings first, here in the non-third verbal persons. Later on, the non-emphatic pronominal subjects of the Germanic languages lost their ccentedness, under the influence of oblique cases (of pronominal pronouns), which as early as Indo-European times had clitic forms beside emphatic ones. The old non-emphatic but accented pronominal subjects enjoyed the status of strong variants, whereas the new unaccented pronominal subjects were allotted the status of weak variants. Because of this, the latter spread into simple syntactic constructions first, and only later into less simple ones: first into dependent clauses, then into main clauses displaying normal word order, and eventually into main clauses characterised by inversion.

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