Referential null subjects in Old English

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 2 investigates the question of whether Old English was a canonical pro-drop language. It does so by giving tabulated contrastive overviews of the occurrence of null subjects in 181 Old English prose and verse texts. It is demonstrated that null subjects occur extremely rarely in Old English prose, but that they are much more frequent in the verse. On the basis of this, the chapter argues that Old English was not a canonical pro-drop language. Instead, it is suggested that null subjects may represent linguistic ‘residue’. It is acknowledged that the view that Old English is a canonical pro-drop language is understandable in light of the higher proportions of null subjects in the poetry, but the case is made that evidence from the poetry cannot be taken to be syntactically representative of Old English, either quantitatively or qualitatively.