Discourse-related V1 declaratives in Dutch

Abstract

This paper discusses two types of discourse-related V1 declaratives in Dutch. The first type involves a missing argument. In the position before the finite verb a referential 3rd person pronoun is deleted. The deletion of the pronoun is constrained by the recoverability condition, which requires that its referential features can be reconstructed from context. I will argue that only the deletion of a d(emonstrative)-pronoun is ‘topic drop’. Deleted topic d-pronouns are subject to the same syntactic conditions as overt topic d-pronouns. Like the overt d-pronoun, the deleted d-pronoun refers to the focus constituent of the preceding sentence. A deleted p(ersonal)-pronoun, by contrast, does not have a uniquely determined antecedent. It solely maintains the preceding subject referent. The second type of V1 declarative is found in so-called ‘narrative inversion’ in which all arguments are present, and no empty element needs to be postulated. Various types of narrative inversion and the kind of discourse relation they imply are discussed.