TY - JOUR AU - Cognola, Federica AU - Walkden, George PY - 2019/12/18 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives.: A parallel study of Old High German and Old Italian JF - Linguistik Online JA - LO VL - 100 IS - 7 SE - Artikel/Articles DO - 10.13092/lo.100.6020 UR - https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/6020 SP - 95-140 AB - <p>While there has been a substantial body of research on the asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses in terms of the licensing of <em>pro-</em>drop, potential differences between types of unembedded clause have received much less attention – despite the fact that competing theories of <em>pro</em>-drop make strong, clear predictions about the distribution of null subjects across clause types, especially with regard to interrogatives. This paper presents the first in-depth comparative study of <em>pro</em>-drop in both declaratives and interrogatives in two asymmetric <em>pro</em>-drop languages: Old High German and Old Italian. Based on a parallel corpus study using two translations of Tatian’s <em>Diatessaron</em>, we show that there is a clear difference in distribution between interrogatives and declaratives: null subjects are more frequent in declarative clauses than in interrogatives, and these also differ in terms of the persons in which <em>pro</em>-drop is licensed. Our results speak against the V-in-C licensing theory of asymmetric <em>pro</em>-drop of Benincà (1984) and Adams (1987), and in favour of an account based on an Agree relation with left-peripheral operators in the sense of Frascarelli (2007, 2018).</p> ER -