On the undoing of the null subject parameter diachronically: Evidence from Greek
By Brian D. Joseph, The Ohio State University
The existence and origination of null subject constructions have gotten significant attention
in the synchronic and diachronic literature. Thus, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that
for all the consideration of how languages develop so as not to require overt subjects, there
is relatively little discussion on how languages develop requirements for non-null subjects.
Haiman 1974 is an exception, treating the emergence of required subjects in French as due
to Germanic influence and the emergence of a Verb-Second requirement in Germanic; this
idea is developed further in Haiman 1991, based on the evidence of Northern Italian
varieties of Romance.
In this paper, I reexamine Haiman’s specific claims regarding how a language becomes a
non-null subject language, based on evidence from two constructions in Modern Greek that
have developed in the past 500 years, both involving the deployment of an innovative weak
subject pronoun. These constructions are a presentational deictic construction meaning
‘Here’s X / There’s X!’, and a semantically related locative interrogative construction
meaning ‘Where’s X?’. I show that the subject requirement arises by the analogical creation
of a weak subject pronoun out of a strong form, starting in the presentational deictic
construction, with later spread to the locative interrogative. It has spread no further, thus
leaving the language as generally allowing null subjects but not in this small corner of the
syntax.
Besides the challenges these Greek developments present for Haiman’s claims, they allow
also for a broader point: large-scale effects found across the entire syntax of various
languages, such as the (seemingly) inviolable non-null subject character of languages such
as German or the equally (seemingly) inviolable null-subject character of languages such as
Spanish, may well have originated in highly particularistic developments specific to a single
construction from which generalization across broader swaths of the language occurs.
Haiman, John. 1974. Targets and Syntactic Change. The Hague: Mouton, 1974.
Haiman, John. 1991. From V/2 to Subject Clitics: Evidence from Northern Italian, in E.
Traugott & B. Heine, eds., Approaches to Grammaticalization. Volume II. Focus on Types
of Grammatical Markers. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 135-157.