The possibility of referential null subjects in Old English (OE) has been the subject of conflicting assertions in the literature. Hulk & van Kemenade (1995: 245) state that referential subject pronouns may not be omitted in OE; van Gelderen (2000: 137) argues the opposite. Mitchell (1985: 633) suggests that the possibility of subject omission ‘occurs (or survives) only spasmodically’.
This paper assesses the evidence for null subjects in OE, drawing on a search of the YCOE (Taylor et al 2003) and YCOEP (Pintzuk & Plug 2001) corpora. It is found that in West Saxon texts the percentage of referential null subjects is extremely low (between 0.1% and 1.1% in main clauses). However, in other texts, such as Beowulf, Bald’s Leechbook, and the D and E manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, more subjects are omitted in main clauses (e.g. 23.7% for Bald’s Leechbook). In all of these texts the effect of clause type is statistically significant, with referential null subjects being rare in subordinate clauses, and 1st and 2nd person null subjects are much rarer than 3rd person (e.g. for Beowulf, Fisher’s exact test, p<0.0001 for both). The results indicate a dialect split within OE: those texts that omit subjects are Anglian or Anglian-influenced. That the phenomenon is a retention is suggested by similar distributions in other early Germanic varieties (see Rosenkvist 2009, Walkden 2012).
A classic method of accounting for subject omission (e.g. in Italian, Latin) is to argue that the information provided by pronouns is already expressed by rich verbal endings. However, I argue that this approach does not work for OE. First, the plural verb form is the same for all persons; nevertheless, subject pronouns must be systematically present in the first and second person but may be absent in the third person, regardless of number. Second, null objects are also found (van der Wurff 1997), unexpected under the rich agreement approach given that OE verbs never exhibit object agreement.
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