Clause-typing by [2] – the loss of the 2nd person pronoun du 'you' in Dutch, Frisian and Limburgian dialects

Abstract

Clause-Typing by [2] -the loss of the 2nd person pronoun du 'you' in Dutch, Frisian and Limburgian dialectsGertjan Postma (Meertens Institute Amsterdam) AbstractThe 2 nd person singular pronoun du 'thou' has been replaced by new pronouns gij/jij/jii 'you' in many Dutch dialects. The standard explanation attributes du's decline to the emerging honorific plural pronouns such as gij 'you' in singular use. In this study we trace a purely syntactic trigger for this change, thus replacing sociolinguistic and paradigmatic explanations (deflection). Using dialect geographic tools of the GTRP dialect database, we found a significant correlation between the loss of du and the rise of double present tense paradigms (direct and inverse). By defining two types of Verb Second, C-type V2 (Den Besten) and C/T-type V2 (Zwart), we show that a transition between those types predicts the loss of positiondependent spelled out pronouns such as du. The factor that blocks Den Besten-type V2 structures in clauses with [2] in Dutch dialects is the clausetyping property of the feature [2], which generate a violation that is similar to the that-trace violations with the [WH] feature.

The exceptional loss of the pronoun T

“…Whereas the origin of the V-pronoun is variable (in several languages there even is evidence for more than one polite pronoun), the T-pronoun was hardly ever replaced, almost all Indo-European languages use a cognate of *tu for the T-pronoun (cf. Aalberse, 2004Hickey, 2003;Postma, 2011Postma, , 2012. This stability is not a coincidence: calculations on word stability show that T-forms are in the top 10 of most stable and most basic forms around the world (cf.…”

The temporal interpretation of West Flemish non-inverted V3

“…TP g 3 finite verb subject initial V2 may not be uniformly derived in all varieties of Dutch was fi rst explored in Postma (2011Postma ( , 2013. 2 In line with Travis (1984) and Zwart (1997a,b), Haegeman & Greco (2018a,b) cast the difference between the derivations of StD and WF subject-initial V2 in terms of whether the verb does or does not leave the TP domain.…”

“…fi ndings on micro-variation in the derivation of subject-initial V2 explored in Postma (2011Postma ( , 2013. Let us adopt the articulated left periphery developed for V2 languages by Haegeman (1996), Poletto (2013) & Wolfe (2015, 2016, as endorsed in Haegeman & Greco (2018a).…”

Loss of laten-support in embedded infinitivals in fifteenth-century Low Saxon

“…In Postma (2013), a dialect-geographical interpretation of the two theories of V2 is proposed: in the eastern dialects systematically no double paradigms arise (Den Besten's theory). In the western dialects, however, the verb does not always move to C but stays in T in subject-initial contexts (Zwart's theory).…”