# A long farewell. What the loss of V2 made briefly visible

Cecilia Poletto, Pierre Larrivée, Francesco Pinzin, Mathieu Goux

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Cecilia Poletto, Pierre Larrivée, Francesco Pinzin, Mathieu Goux. A long farewell. What the loss of V2 made briefly visible. Diachronica, 2025, 52 p. 10.1075/dia.24003.pol. hal-05212732

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# A long farewell

## What the loss of V2 made briefly visible

Cecilia Poletto;¹,² Pierre Larrivée;³ Francesco Pinzin¹ and
Mathieu Goux³

¹Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main | ²Università degli studi
di Padova | ³Université de Caen Normandie

The verb second word order (V2) is known to have been present in some
Medieval Romance languages, and to have been lost. The loss is however a
gradual process that we propose to relate to the decreasing height of the
verb movement in the left periphery through the Medieval period: whereas
in the initial period the verb could move to a high position (CP Topic/
Focus projection), in the final period only lower peripheral positions are
accessible. This means that the ongoing change will make visible
constructions involving verb movement to a lower position. Such
constructions are studied here in parallel texts calibrated for provenance
and text type from two Romance languages for the period from the
beginning of the 14th century to the 16th century. More specifically, we
investigate Participle and Infinitive Fronting in French and Venetian,
showing that these structures involve low movement and correlate with a V2
of the low type.

**Keywords:** verb second, language change, fronting, Medieval Romance, French, Venetian

### 1. Detecting types of verb second syntax

Assertive main clauses in many Germanic languages present a verb second syntax (V2), by which the finite verb is standardly in second position, preceded by a single constituent (1) (for the initial theoretical analysis, see Koster 1975 for Dutch, Besten 1983 for German; see Holmberg 2015 for an overview).

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
(1) German

a. *Diesen Roman hat Jan schon letzes Jahr gelesen.*
   this novel has Jan already last year read
   'Jan has already read this novel last year.'

b. *Schon letztes Jahr hat Jan diesen Roman gelesen.*
   already last year has Jan this novel read
   'Jan has already read this novel last year.'

As V2 characterizes main assertive clauses and not subordinates, a main vs. subordinate asymmetry emerges with respect to the linear position of the finite verb: main clauses are V2 while subordinates are verb-final (2).<fnref n="1" />

(2) German

... *dass Jan diesen Roman schon letztes Jahr gelesen hat.**
   that Jan this novel already last year read has
   '... that Jan has already read this novel last year.'

The strength of the expected main vs. subordinate asymmetry depends on several factors, such as the unmarked word order in subordinate clauses and the height of the raising verb. Medieval Romance languages as 13th century Old French (OFr), Old Florentine (OFI) and Old Venetian (OVen) have been claimed in the literature to present V2 in main clauses (Benincà 1983/1984, 2006, 2013; Labelle 2007; Larrivée 2021; Poletto 2014; Roberts 1993; Singh 2021; Vance 1988, 1997; Wolfe 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2018), but they are also VO languages with the verb sur-facing in the high portion of the inflectional domain to the left of adverbs like *often/always*, as their modern counterparts (Emonds 1978; Kayne 1989; Pollock 1989).<fnref n="2" /> This means that we expect to find the finite verb in second position imme-

<footnote n="1">1. Some Germanic languages as Yiddish (Diesing 1990; Santorini 1992) and Icelandic (Rögnvaldsson & Thráinsson 1990) have been found to exhibit a symmetric V2 system, with both main and subordinate clauses showing V2 properties (but see Walkden and Booth 2020 for data from historical corpora against the lack of asymmetry for both languages).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. A relevant discussion regards the symmetrical status of V2 in Early Old French from the 12th century (EOF), as opposed to the asymmetrical status of V2 in OFr from the 13th century. The issue is noticed in Vance (1997) and scrutinized in depth in Labelle (2007). Labelle (2007) shows that (i) in EOF, contrary to OFr, both main and embedded clauses can have a superficially V2 structure where an XP precedes the finite verb, (ii) both EOF and OFr show an asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses regarding the distribution of pronominal subjects: only main clauses allow for their post-verbal placement. Assuming that this state of affairs is not a consequence of the absence of prose for EOF, it calls for an analysis in which both EOF and OFr have CP V2 in main but not subordinate clauses, with EOF having the additional possibility of scrambling a constituent to the left of the finite V in the IP in embedded clauses. As we will only be concerned with OFr from the 14th century (see §2), we leave this discussion aside for the remainder of the contribution.</footnote>
diately after the subject in most subordinate clauses too, making the main vs. sub-
ordinate asymmetry less obvious than is the case for German, which is OV, but
also for languages like the mainland Scandinavian ones, which are VO, but with
the verb surfacing in the low portion of the inflectional domain. One might sur-
mise from this that the loss of V2 in Romance and its maintenance in mainland
Scandinavian has to do with the verb raising property. Nonetheless, the main
vs. subordinate asymmetry resurfaces with respect to other phenomena, such as
the distribution of null referential subjects (pro-drop), post-verbal subjects, and
clitics. Referential pro-drop has been observed to occur asymmetrically in 13th
century OFr (Adams 1987; Labelle 2007; Roberts 1993; Vance 1988, 1997), OFl
(Benincà 1983/1984) and OVen (Poletto 2020):<fnref n="3" /> main clauses present higher rates
of referential pro-drop than subordinates. The same has been shown for the dis-
tribution of post-verbal subjects (Adams 1987; Labelle 2007; Roberts 1993; Vance
1988, 1997; but see Kaiser 2002; Kaiser & Zimmermann 2011; Rinke 2007 and
Rinke & Meisel 2009). Finally, Old Italo-Romance varieties have been shown
to present enclisis to the finite verb only in main clauses (Benincà 1995, 2006).<fnref n="4" />
While all these correlates point to the V2 status of main clauses in these languages,
their strength as acquisition evidence for V2 is language-specific and depending
on the ease with which one can detect a certain difference and how many cues one
must consider. This is the case for the linear position of the finite verb, as shown
above, and for the other correlates: a non-pro-drop language like German is not
expected to show any main/subordinate asymmetry in that respect, just as a lan-
guage not allowing for enclisis to the finite verb will never show the asymmetric
distribution of clitics observable in Old Italo-Romance.

Furthermore, recent work in acquisition (see Presotto & Torregrossa 2024) shows that a certain phenomenon x can only be a cue for the acquisition of a phenomenon y when the child has acquired x, not before. It might then be the case that some cues are only available at a later stage than others: for instance, asymmetrical pro-drop or enclisis<fnref n="5" /> are available only when they have been acquired, and as such might come into play only relatively late (for a similar point related to L2 processing, see Håkansson et al. 2002).

<footnote n="3">3. See Walkden (2013) and Fuß (2008) for the same observation on Old English and on Old High German, respectively.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. Old Spanish (Fontana 1993; Wanner 1991) and Old Catalan (Fischer 2002, 2003) have been shown to exhibit the same effects, as well as EOF, which lost it along the 12th and 13th century (Labelle 2007; Labelle & Hirschbühler 2005; Ramsden 1963).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. For instance, we know that pro-drop is acquired relatively early, while the syntax of clitics is generally acquired later. So enclisis and pro-drop might have a different weight as triggers for the acquisition of V2, pro-drop being more relevant since it is present earlier in the child grammar.</footnote>
Adding to the complexity, it has long been observed that the CP projection is
to be analyzed as a layered set of projections, not as a single projection (Benincà
& Poletto 2004; Rizzi 1997). This multiplies the possible landing sites for the finite
V and requires fine-tuning of the mechanisms deriving the linear V2 constraint,
such as the Fin-V2 analysis put forward in Haegeman (1996). Additionally, it has
long been observed that not all V2 languages are the same in how strictly they fol-
low the linear V2 constraint.

The literature identified “high” or “strict” V2 languages, as opposed to “low” or “relaxed” V2 languages (Benincà 2006; Poletto 2002,<fnref n="6" /> 2013; Wolfe 2015b, 2018, 2019).<fnref n="7" /> V2 languages of the “high” type show a strong linear restriction, in that (almost) all main declaratives show a linear sequence where the finite verb is pre-ceded by a single XP. In such languages, V1 and V3 orders are only acceptable under specific circumstances.

- V1 in main declarative clauses with topic-drop (for early observations about topic-drop in German, see Fries 1988; Reis 1982; Ross 1982) and in the second conjunct of two conjoined clauses, when the subject is the same in both clauses.

- V3 with an initial XP belonging to the informational class of frame-setters (Greco & Haegeman 2020 and Haegeman & Greco 2018 on West Flemish; Breitbarth 2022 on Modern German).

Looking at Medieval Romance languages, Wolfe (2019) contends that 13th century Old French, 14th century Venetian and 13th century Spanish belong to this category. Main clauses in these languages would then behave similarly to German (1a)–(1b).

V2 languages of the “low” type, while still showing the asymmetries reported above, are less constrained with respect to the linear surface position of the finite verb.

- More topic positions are available, giving rise to cases of V3, V4, etc.

- More cases of V1 are licensed, as having more topic positions is in general connected to the possibility of having more types of null topics too (Poletto 2002, 2014, 2020; Wolfe 2015a, 2018, 2019).

<footnote n="6">6. Poletto (2002) distinguishes between low and high constructions and shows that in the same language (Rhaeto-Romance) it is possible to have some constructions, like declarative clauses, targeting a “high” V2 with others, like interrogatives, targeting a “low” V2. Hence, in our sample we control for this factor.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7. This paper uses a generative syntactic framework, as do a significant part of the international studies on word order. For a reader-friendly introduction to that framework, see van Gelderen (2017).</footnote>
Wolfe (2019) identifies as belonging to this category 13th century Occitan, 14th century Sicilian, and 12th century Spanish, as well as Old English on the Germanic side (see (3) for an example with a post-verbal subject and two topic XPs preceding the finite verb).

(3) Old English
(Wulfstan 223, 58; Haeberli 2002:248)
[Dysne yrming] [æfter his forðsiðe] wurðodon þa hæðenan eac for
This poor-wretch after his decease worships.PST the heathens also for
healicne god.
high God
'After his decease, the heathens also worshipped this poor wretch instead of
God.'

These observations can be modeled by an analysis in which the height of the movement of the finite verb is not the same in all V2 languages. In “high” or “strict” V2 languages, the finite verb moves to the high layers of the CP domain, while in “low” or “relaxed” V2 languages, the finite verb moves to the low layers of the CP domain. Different options can be taken with respect to the specific implementation. In this paper we adopt an analysis whereby the opposition between “high” and “low” V2 languages is related to the height of the verb movement.<fnref n="8" /> “High” V2 languages move the finite verb to ForceP, at the left border of the CP (4). An XP is attracted there by an EPP feature. Only frame-setters and higher extra-clausal elements (e.g., vocatives) can give rise to V3 configurations. V1 orders are only possible as cases of topic-drop. Low V2 languages, on the other hand, show V2 effects because of a low V-to-Fin movement. This low movement to FinP leaves open the possibility of filling higher positions in the CP (multiple topic positions via external merge operations), as well as the possibility of having more types of topic-drop and, therefore, more cases of V1. This is represented in (5).

<footnote n="8">8. See Samo (2019) for an alternative analysis, where “high” V2 languages move the finite verb because of a strict spec-head requirement triggered by each XP position in the CP domain. When an XP is independently merged (internally or externally) in a Topic or a Focus position, the finite verb moves to the head of that projection. “Low” V2 languages would then have a lower threshold for this sequence of spec-head relations.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
Applied to concrete examples, these structures would be operative in the following way. Considering (4) and (1a), the object *diesen Roman* ‘this novel’ would occupy the XP position in ForceP, the finite auxiliary *hat* ‘has’ the head position of Force, while the subject *Jan* would occupy the specifier position of the TP. On the other hand, (5) would represent the structural analysis of a sentence like Old English (3), where the finite verb *wurðodon* ‘worships.PST’ occupies the head position of FinP and the higher positions would be available to host the two preverbal XPs. The subject *þa hæðenan* ‘the heathens’ would occupy the specifier position of the TP, as was the case in the structure in (4) too.

Finally, there is the possibility of having “mixed” V2 languages, where the movement of the finite V to the CP only occurs with specific configurations. Let us think of cases of residual V2 like English interrogatives, or languages like Central Ladin, where interrogatives display a low V2 type while declaratives have the typical rigid configuration of high V2 languages (Poletto 2002). For the present investigation we focus on declarative clauses, thereby controlling for this factor of the variable types of V2 depending on clause-type.

Understanding if a language is V2 – and which kind of V2 – is crucial for diachronic analyses interested in tracing the curve of change relative to this phenomenon. This implies identifying a coherent set of correlates. In the following, we show the typology of V2 for Old Venetian (OVen) and Old and Middle French (OFr/MidFr) based on the already established correlates; and we point to the existence of another phenomenon which correlates with the availability of “low” V2: infinitival/participial Fronting. Illustrations of Fronting with a participle preceding an auxiliary and an infinitive preceding a modal are provided in (6)–(9).

(6) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1300-1346)
*se clamor fato serà sovra la soa envestison [...]*
if complaint made is.fut over the her possession
‘If someone will make a complaint regarding her possession [...]’

(7) Old French (Style 1425)
*En l' eschiquier de Pasques M.II<sup>c</sup>.LXVIII jugié fu que [...].*
in the Exchequer of Easter 1268 judged is.PST that
‘In the Exchequer of Easter 1268 it was judged that [...]’

(8) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1300-1346)
*un altro notero quella complir porà [...]*
a other notary that complete.inf can.3sg.fut
‘Another notary will be allowed to complete it [...]’
(9) Old French (ANYB 1340)

La femme dit qe son baroun fust seisi si qe dower
the woman says.PST that his baron is.PST seized so that dower.INF
la poet.

CL.ACC.3SG.F can.3SG

'The woman said that her husband was seized, so that he could endow her.'

Our perspective on Fronting, argued for in §5, is that it results from a phrasal movement of the VP to a low left peripheral position above FinP, labeled for the moment FP (10).

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

To make things explicit, considering (8), the modal infinitive *complir* would be moved from the lower VP to higher VP under FP, and the auxiliary would stand in Fin, accounting for the observable order, *quella* occupying either the direct object position within the moved VP or an independent higher topic position (Topic in (10)).

This low CP movement becomes visible as the high movement constitutive of a “strict” V2 language (4) is gradually lost. This implies that V2, initially a high movement to the highest portion of the CP layer, is realized later as low movement to FinP (5), before being lost. Thus, the nature of V2 and V2 loss is enlightened by the study of Fronting, which arises precisely when the verb does not move to the highest CP any longer, making Fronting visible.
The paper is organized as follows. After some remarks on the corpus and methodology adopted (§2), we present an overview (i) of the known V2 correlates for the earliest Venetian and French texts we analyze (§3) and (ii) of the distribution of the Fronting phenomenon, in terms of diachrony and correlation with the presence of null/overt subjects (§4). In §5, we then tackle the syntactic characteristics of Fronting, which we show to involve a phrasal movement to the low periphery of the CP. This leads to §6 and §7, where we show how these kind of low Fronting movements correlate with a low type of V2, and we put forward an analysis in terms of Verum Focus marking. Section 8 concludes.

## 2. Corpus and methodology

Our analysis focuses on two Romance languages: Venetian and French. These two varieties are compared because of their cultural and linguistic relations in the Medieval period. Also, it is useful to compare closely related languages to illustrate the structure of specific configurations. In particular, these two languages show both similarities in their diachronic linguistic developments (Northern-Italian Dialects have a close linguistic relationship with Gallo-Romance varieties, which diachronically amounts to the fact that in both sets of languages we see a progressive loss of V2, null subjects, and rich verbal inflection) and documented close cultural relations (see the collection in Castro et al. 2024 for an overview, Perret 1896 for an early analysis and Pellegrini 1956, among others, on the Franco-Veneto language). To limit external factors of variation in each language, the material used to study them comes from one region — the Venetian lagoon itself for the former, and Normandy for the latter. Selected texts (Tables 1 and 2) are prose, as verse, because of the constraints it imposes on word order, may contain examples that would not reflect the immediate competence of speakers. These prose texts belong to defined genres within the legal tradition, principally legal hearings and custom law for Venetian, and trials and custom law procedure for French. They cover the period from around 1300 to 1500 where V2 and its correlated features are manifesting change and definitive decline.

The challenge in establishing a fully calibrated corpus enhances the comparability of the data through time and between the two languages.
<table><caption>Table 1. Venetian texts used from the MICLE corpus.<fnref n="9" /></caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Type</th><th>Number of words</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>Mostly legal</td><td>56 860</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>Mostly legal</td><td>6 849</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>Judicial hearings</td><td>13 479</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>Custom law</td><td>52 308</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>Private correspondence</td><td>5 559</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato deliberazioni Terra</td><td>Administrative reports</td><td>34 282</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti di Murano</td><td>Custom law</td><td>16 564</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1529</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>Administrative reports</td><td>13 929</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="3">Total</td><td>199 830</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>Table 2. French texts used from the MICLE corpus</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Type</th><th>Number of words</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>Anglo-Norman Year Book</td><td>Trial</td><td>33 557</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements et Jugiés</td><td>Judicial procedure treatise</td><td>15 232</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>Anglo-Norman Year Book</td><td>Trial</td><td>49 203</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style et usage de l'échiquier</td><td>Judicial procedure treatise</td><td>71 903</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>Procès de Jeanne d'Arc</td><td>Trial</td><td>41 967</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>Réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc</td><td>Trial</td><td>8 716</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé, Style</td><td>Judicial procedure treatise</td><td>33 232</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Possédée</td><td>Trial</td><td>30 773</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="3">Total</td><td>284 583</td></tr></tfoot></table>

The French part of the corpus is tagged for Part of Speech (PoS) and for syntactic functions/dependencies following the Universal Dependencies (UD) guidelines via the HOPS parser (Grobol & Crabbé, 2021). The Venetian part is PoS tagged and (partially) syntactically parsed following the UPenn (University of Pennsylvania) guidelines. A set of harmonizing scripts takes care of translating the information in the two systems and storing both in an XML format (see Goux & Pinzin 2024).

<footnote n="9">⁹. The French part of the corpus is available at (https://txm-crisco.huma-num.fr/), with full documentation. The Venetian part will be published in the second half of 2025.</footnote>
### 3. The type of V2 of early Old Venetian and Old and Middle French

This contribution aims at exploring the relation between the typology of V2 and Fronting, as exemplified in (6)–(9). To do so, we must independently control for these two different variables in our texts. We start from the typology of V2 as represented in two early texts in our sample: *Lio Mazor* for Venetian and *Atirements et Jugiés* for French, both dated to the beginning of the 14th century.<fnref n="10" /> In the following sections, we go through the main phenomena characterizing these texts as V2, as listed in §1. More specifically, we look at the prevalence of the V2 order (§3.1), the presence of a main/subordinate asymmetry in subject inversion, distribution of null subjects and distribution of enclisis to the finite verb (§3.2) and the typology of attested V3 configurations (§3.3). As we notice throughout the following sections, some of these data can only show the V2 or not-V2 status of the grammar of the given text (main/subordinate asymmetry in subject inversion and distribution of null subjects, frequency of enclisis to the finite verb), while others can also tell us more about the typology of V2 in terms of high or low movement in the CP domain (typology of V3). This will allow us to check if these texts present a V2 grammar and, if they do, to investigate which type of V2 (either high or low) they display in declarative clauses.

#### 3.1 Verb position

In Tables 3 and 4 we report the numbers and percentages of main and subordinate clauses with V1, V2, V3 and V4.<fnref n="11" />

<table><caption>**Table 3.** Verb position in 1312 Venetian *Lio Mazor*</caption><thead><tr><th>Clause type</th><th>V1</th><th>V2</th><th>V3</th><th>V4</th><th>Totals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>9.1% (58)</td><td>72.3% (462)</td><td>17.4% (111)</td><td>1.3% (8)</td><td>639</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>13.6% (33)</td><td>80.7% (196)</td><td>4.5% (11)</td><td>1.2% (3)</td><td>243</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="10">10. The *Lio Mazor* has been selected as the *Stussi* text has not been syntactically parsed yet; only the PoS annotation is available at the moment. This only allows for extracting the occurrences of the Fronting phenomenon but not for an in-depth analysis of verb position, subject position, pro-drop and enclisis. The other early Venetian text in our sample, *Tomasin*, is considerably shorter than the *Lio Mazor*, which would make it problematic for a detailed analysis. The French text has been selected as it has a similar length and date of composition.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11. The numbers in these sections exclude ambiguous structures — clauses with a subject gap coordinated to a previous clause within a sentence (where it is not clear whether they involve a full V1 clause or a coordinated VP), and relative/interrogative clauses (many of which are subject relatives/interrogatives and therefore come up as V1 by automatic extraction).</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 4.** Verb position in 1314 French *Atirements et Jugiés*</caption><thead><tr><th>Clause type</th><th>V1</th><th>V2</th><th>V3</th><th>V4</th><th>Totals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>3.9% (19)</td><td>53.2% (258)</td><td>40% (194)</td><td>2.9% (14)</td><td>485</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>3.2% (16)</td><td>88.2% (439)</td><td>8.4% (42)</td><td>0.2% (1)</td><td>498</td></tr></tbody></table>

These figures point to V2 being the dominant word order in both languages, with a relevantly higher share in the Venetian text. The French text shows a higher share of V3 than the Venetian one, while the share of V4 is comparable. At first sight, this might point to an analysis where the two texts present two different grammatical systems with respect to the word order possibilities. However, following the literature presented in §1 and the fact that these languages have an underlying SVO syntax, the numbers relative to the linear position of the verb do not really help defining with a certain degree of confidence if the languages represented by these texts is V2 and, if it is, the typology of V2 we are dealing with. To do this, other tests are needed. In the next section we start by checking if there is a main/subordinate asymmetry regarding the position of the subject, the presence of null subjects and the position of clitics with respect to the finite verb. Finally, we address the issue of the types of XPs licensing the V3 configurations highlighted in Tables 3 and 4.

## 3.2 Subject inversion, null subjects, and clitics

As a first test, we show the rate of post-verbal subjects for both texts. The rate is calculated on the total of attested overt subjects in main and subordinate clauses, defined as before for V position.

<table><caption>**Table 5.** Subject inversion in assertive clauses in 1312 Venetian *Lio Mazor*</caption><thead><tr><th>Clause type</th><th>Preverbal subject</th><th>Post-verbal subject</th><th>Totals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>80.2% (405)</td><td>19.8% (100)</td><td>505</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>96.2% (203)</td><td>3.8% (8)</td><td>211</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>**Table 6.** Subject inversion in assertive clauses in 1314 French *Atirements et Jugiés*</caption><thead><tr><th>Clause type</th><th>Preverbal subject</th><th>Post-verbal subject</th><th>Totals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>88.3% (354)</td><td>11.7% (47)</td><td>401</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>94.9% (462)</td><td>5.1% (25)</td><td>487</td></tr></tbody></table>
Tables 5 and 6 show that post-verbal subjects are found in both languages, and more notably in main clauses. In (11) and (12) we show two examples of such cases.

(11) Old Venetian (Lio Mazor 1312)
e così avev' e' lo me' cortel da ferir en man trato [...].
and so have. PST.IPFV.1SG I the my knife from stab.INF in hand taken
'And so, I pulled out in my hand my dagger [...].'

(12) Old French (Atirements 1314)
Et si doit le serjant escharir le serement [...].
and so must.3SG the sergeant pronounce.INF the pledge
'And so the sergeant should pronounce the pledge [...].'

This main/subordinate asymmetry is expected if we take these texts to show a V2 grammar where the post-verbal subject is in SpecTP, preceded by the finite V which has raised to the CP layers. As underlined in §1, this phenomenon only indicates that we are dealing with a V2 grammar, and not how high the finite V raises in the CP layers (i.e., the type of V2).

As shown by Tables 7 and 8, the main clause asymmetry is displayed by null subjects too.

<table><caption>**Table 7.** Null subjects in 1312 Venetian *Lio Mazor*</caption><thead><tr><td>Clause type</td><td>Null subject</td><td>Overt subject</td><td>Totals</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>22.4% (146)</td><td>77.6% (505)</td><td>651</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>13.1% (32)</td><td>86.9% (211)</td><td>243</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>**Table 8.** Null subjects in 1314 French *Atirements et Jugiés*</caption><thead><tr><td>Clause type</td><td>Null subject</td><td>Overt subject</td><td>Totals</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>17.3% (83)</td><td>82.7% (401)</td><td>485</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>2.2% (11)</td><td>97.8% (487)</td><td>498</td></tr></tbody></table>

As observed in Poletto (2020), null subjects are a property of (main) declarative clauses in OVen. All the 25 direct partial and total questions in the *Lio Mazor* have an expressed subject (13), as do the six interrogatives in a 1207 Norman prose legal text of the same type as *Atirements et Jugiés* (which itself contains no direct question); see (14).
(13) Old Venetian
Me savres-tu menar a casa de Catarina del Tos [...]?
CL.ACC.1SG know.COND.2SG-you bring.INF to home of Catarina del Tos
'Could you bring me to the house of Catarina del Tos [...]?'

(14) Old French
Comment en sera-il par droit?
how CL.PRT is.FUT-he by right?
'How could it be legally?'

Since declaratives are the context where V2 is operational and V2 is believed to license null subjects, the absence of null subjects in interrogatives and its asymmetric distribution between main and subordinate clauses further supports the view that both languages involve a V2 rule, although they evidently leave open the problem of the difference between interrogatives and declaratives (see Poletto 2020).

Finally, our Venetian text shows a further phenomenon which has often been connected to a V2 grammar: the possibility of having enclisis to the finite verb in main clauses (Benincà 1983/1984, 2006); see (15).

(15) Old Venetian
e mis-me man en cavo.
and puts.PST-CL.DAT.1SG hand in head
'and he put a hand on my head.'

The same phenomenon is not attested for our French texts, so that we only present the numbers for the *Lio Mazor* text. The percentage is calculated on the total of sentences with a clitic as, as expected, subordinates present almost only proclisis (Table 9).<fnref n="12" />

<table><caption>**Table 9.** Clitic position in 1312 Venetian *Lio Mazor*</caption><thead><tr><td>Clause type</td><td>Enclisis</td><td>Proclisis</td><td>Totals</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Main</td><td>27.9% (79)</td><td>72.1% (204)</td><td>283</td></tr><tr><td>Subordinates</td><td>7.1% (6)</td><td>92.9% (78)</td><td>84</td></tr></tbody></table>

If the analysis in Benincà (1983/1984, 2006) is on the right track, the high rate of enclisis as testified by this text and the main-subordinate asymmetry of the phenomenon point to categorizing such language as V2.

<footnote n="12">12. The only six exceptions are coordinated subordinates with a null subject coreferential with the subject of the first conjunct.</footnote>
All in all, these three different tests point to the same conclusion: both texts present a type of V2 grammar, where the finite verb moves in main clauses to a left peripheral position. By these tests we do not know, however, the type of V2 involved. This issue is addressed in the next section looking at the typology of V3 configurations.

### 3.3 The typology of XPs involved in V3 configurations

The type of XPs licensing V3 is of utmost relevance for understanding the type of V2 we are dealing with (see Wolfe 2019 for an overview on Medieval Romance). As the analysis of the linear position of the finite verb gave different results for the two languages, with many more V3 configurations present in the French text than in the Venetian one, we might expect this difference to show up in the set of available XPs in such V3 configurations. In other words, we might expect this higher frequency of V3 in the French text to be related to the possibility of having more types of XPs in the first linear position in a V3 configuration. This is however not the case, as Tables 10 and 11 show. Contrary to expectations, the French text shows even fewer types of XPs in first position in V3 configuration than the Venetian one.

<table><caption>Table 10. Types of XPs in first position in V3 configurations in 1312 Venetian *Lio Mazor*</caption><thead><tr><th>type of XP</th><th>n</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>PP</td><td>58</td><td>52.3%</td></tr><tr><td>AdvP</td><td>19</td><td>17.1%</td></tr><tr><td>Participial clause</td><td>19</td><td>17.1%</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>6</td><td>5.4%</td></tr><tr><td>CP-adv</td><td>4</td><td>3.6%</td></tr><tr><td>particle</td><td>3</td><td>2.7%</td></tr><tr><td>NP-vocative</td><td>1</td><td>0.9%</td></tr><tr><td>Object</td><td>1</td><td>0.9%</td></tr></tbody></table>

Both systems allow for the V3 configuration almost only with frame-setting adverbs, PPs and adverbial clauses, either participial or full CPs. Summing these categories adds to 90.1% of the V3 cases for the Lio Mazor and 99% of the V3 cases for the *Atirements et Jugiés*. Notable and frequent examples in the *Lio Mazor* are *en questa* ‘meanwhile’ (16), *a la fin* ‘at the end’, *a ste parole* ‘at these words’, *unde then*, *item* ‘then’, or longer gerundive or adverbial clauses describing the situation
<table><caption>**Table 11.** Types of XPs in first position in V₃ configurations in 1314 French *Atirements et Jugiés*</caption><thead><tr><th>type of XP</th><th>n</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>AdvP</td><td>123</td><td>63.4%</td></tr><tr><td>CP-adv</td><td>42</td><td>21.6%</td></tr><tr><td>Participial clause</td><td>17</td><td>8.8%</td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>10</td><td>5.2%</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>1</td><td>0.5%</td></tr><tr><td>NP-dislocated</td><td>1</td><td>0.5%</td></tr></tbody></table>

in which the event takes place.<fnref n="13" /> This observation on V₃ orders in the *Lio Mazor* has been mentioned in Wolfe (2019). The French text shows instead a high frequency of adverbs like *item ‘so’* (17).

(16) Old Venetian (Lio Mazor 1312)
*En questa lo dito Çan nava verso la barcha sua.*
in this the said Çan goes.PST.IPFV toward the boat his
‘Meanwhile, the said Çan went toward his boat.’

(17) Old French (Atirements 1314)
*Item, l'en doit savoir que [...].*
also, one must.3SG know.INF that [...]
‘Also, one must know that [...].’

These kinds of frame-setting XPs are well known in the literature to give rise to V₃ orders in regular V₂ languages as West Flemish (Greco & Haegeman 2020; Haegeman & Greco 2018) and Modern German (Breitbarth 2022). The Venetian text shows more initial subjects than the French text. It must be noted, however, that in all six cases of V₃ where the first XP is a subject, the second XP is an adverb/PP of the frame-setting type (18).

<footnote n="13">13. Only one occurrence is found, where the linear order is OBJ > SBJ > V.</footnote>

<footnote>i. Old Venetian (Lio Mazor 1312)
*Quel ch' el dis cum eli e' no-l so;*
what that he say.PST with them I NEG-CL.ACC.3SG.M know.1SG
‘I don’t know what he said with them;’</footnote>
(18) Old Venetian

e he' en questa pres Madalena per li cave li.

and I in this take.PST.1SG Madalena for the hair

'and in the meantime, I grabbed Madalena by her hairs.'

(Lio Mazor 1312)

For both texts, therefore, the data point to a V2 system where exceptions to the V2 linear order are only justified by the presence of frame-setting PPs, adverbs and adverbial clauses. The higher frequency of such elements in the French text leads to an over-representation of the V3 linear word order with respect to the Venetian text. This difference, therefore, seems to be only related to a text-related higher use of these items, rather than to a different type of V2.

In conclusion, the data in this section show that both languages in the early period (beginning of the 14th century) show common main/subordinate asymmetries which point to a V2 grammar, where in main declarative clauses the verb raises to the CP layers. This is confirmed by the proportion of subject inversion, null subjects and, only for Venetian, enclisis (§3.2). All these features show that main clauses behave differently than subordinates. This, however, does not tell us much about the position to which the finite verb raises within the CP layers. In this respect, the type of XPs attested in V3 configurations is more interesting. Once the data are unpacked, the two texts are found to be extremely similar in this respect too, with V3 being only possible when a frame-setting element is involved. All in all, this points to a V2 system of the “high” type for both the Venetian and the French text.

In what follows, we will focus on the phenomenon of Fronting, which we claim to be a potential candidate for signaling the V2 status of the language as “low”.

## 4. Fronting: the Venetian and French data

Fronting has remained a rather enigmatic construction (see the survey by Holmberg 2006). This construction is still found in Icelandic and Faroese, and was attested in historical mainland Scandinavian and English, and in Medieval Romance varieties. The received view is that it is related to subject licensing, in the sense that it occurs when the subject has been extracted out of the clause or is null, as Fronting seems to be in complementary distribution with the lexical expression of the subject. Thus, occurrences would be found with unexpressed expletive subjects, but not with expressed ones (19).
(19) Icelandic

a. *Ef gengið er eftir Laugaveginum ...*
   if gone is along Laugavegur
   'If one walks along Laugavegur ...'

b. *Ef það er gengið eftir Laugaveginum ...*
   if EXPL is gone along Laugavegur
   'If one walks along Laugavegur ...'

c. *Ef er gengið eftir Laugaveginum ...*

(Holmberg 2006: example (28))

As for French, occurrences of Fronting with an expressed subject can be found when the subject has undergone movement (for instance with a subject relative marker), or with a post-verbal subject, according to Labelle and Hirschbühler (2014, 2017; see also Mathieu 2006, and the descriptive work by Marchello-Nizia et al. 2020, especially chapters 34, 35 and 43). Furthermore, occurrence of Fronting with an expressed subject is common in Venetian (see below in this section for the relevant examples and quantitative data). Beyond syntax, an informational motivation has been envisaged for the construction: but the studies reviewed by Holmberg (2006) and those for French (Combettes 2006; Dufter 2018; Imel 2019; Mathieu 2006; Prévost 2003; Rahn 2016) and Italian (e.g., Franco 2016) fail to provide fully conclusive empirical evidence for a stable informational status of either the fronted element or the whole clause. Other matters such as the landing site and type of movement have also been explored (Mathieu 2006; Salvesen 2011 for French; Fisher and Alexiadou 2001 for Old Catalan), but proposals remain tentative, and would benefit from further exploration.

In this contribution, we focus on the two types of Fronting illustrated above in (6)–(9). Participles and infinitives fronted to the finite verb<fnref n="14" /> are interesting in that they seem to run against possibilities in the contemporary varieties of the languages under study. Occurrences in each language are extracted via the same queries performed on the .txm portal<fnref n="15" /> containing the morphosyntactically annotated files of the selected texts. The automatic procedure allows the general profile

<footnote n="14">14. Although Infinitive Fronting to a non-finite verb does not appear impossible as per the late French attestation below.</footnote>

<footnote>i. Renaissance French (Philippe Meusnier 1711; Guichané 2014: 161)

Marie Meusnier du consentement de ses dits père et mère ont promis se prendre l'un l'autre par nom et loy de mariage et y celui faire célébrer en face de la Sainte Eglise catholique appostolique et romaine dans le plus bref temps que faire se pouvoir.</footnote>

<footnote>'Marie Meusnier, with the consent of her said father and mother, had promised to take each other's name by law of marriage and to have the wedding celebrated before the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church as soon as it could be done [lit. do.INF SE.CL.REFL can.INF].'</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15. (txm-crisco.huma-num.fr)</footnote>
of the constructions to be established. Two properties are evoked before we move on to the analysis proper.

The first remarkable trait is the overall paucity of the constructions. The rarity of attestations has been pointed out by previous work on French (Larrivée & Goux 2023; Salvesen 2011; see also Rahn 2016 on the relative weight of different Fronting instantiations); the view from Mathieu (2006) that Fronting is frequent is based on early, verse material, where according to Dufter (2018) and Labelle and Hirschbühler (2014) Fronting is five times more frequent than in prose texts. Low rates of occurrence are confirmed in our data as shown in Tables 12 to 15. In Medieval French (Table 14), participle Fronting to an auxiliary represents an average of 3.8% of all participles with an auxiliary, with peaks of use in the 14th and beginning of 15th centuries; a percentage that is twice that of infinitives at 1.5%, which are evenly distributed through the period (Table 15). The different diachronic distribution we observe for Participle Fronting with respect to Infini- tival Fronting might be an indication that the two constructions have different properties. Participle Fronting in Medieval Venetian (Table 12) occurs at a rate similar to French, with a peak in one text at the beginning of the 14th century (represented by a single structure, see below); and Infinitive Fronting (Table 13) standing out at 7%, with a peak in one 16th century text.

<table><caption>Table 12. Rates of Participle Fronting in Medieval Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted participles (n)</th><th>Non-fronted participles (n)</th><th>Fronting ratio (%)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>1</td><td>893</td><td>0.1%</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>93</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>26</td><td>61</td><td>29.9%</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>35</td><td>1075</td><td>3.2%</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>69</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>1</td><td>626</td><td>0.2%</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>7*</td><td>284</td><td>2.5%</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>0</td><td>275</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>70</td><td>3376</td><td>2.1%</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote>* The figure does not comprise the few occurrences of Fronting of the participle to a complementizer position, as in *facta che serà la satisfaction* 'once the compensation will be done'.</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 13.** Rates of Infinitive Fronting in Medieval Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted infinitives<br>(n)</th><th>Non-fronted infinitives<br>(n)</th><th>Fronting ratio<br>(%)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>0</td><td>492</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>33</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>0</td><td>66</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>39</td><td>726</td><td>5.1%</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>48</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>11</td><td>386</td><td>2.8%</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>72</td><td>164</td><td>30.5%</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>17</td><td>204</td><td>8.3%</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>139</td><td>2119</td><td>6.6%</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 14.** Rates of Participle Fronting in Medieval French</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted participles<br>(n)</th><th>Non-fronted participles<br>(n)</th><th>Fronting ratio<br>(%)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>26</td><td>566</td><td>4.6%</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>53</td><td>428</td><td>11%</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>40</td><td>1266</td><td>3.1%</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>137</td><td>1746</td><td>7.8%</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>1120</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>1</td><td>190</td><td>0.5%</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>44</td><td>1014</td><td>4.2%</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>1498</td><td>0%</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>304</td><td>7828</td><td>3.7%</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 15.** Rates of Infinitive Fronting in Medieval French</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted infinitives<br>(n)</th><th>Non-fronted infinitives<br>(n)</th><th>Fronting ratio<br>(%)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>11</td><td>371</td><td>2.9%</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>0</td><td>269</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>5</td><td>395</td><td>1.3%</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>9</td><td>804</td><td>1.1%</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>250</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>0</td><td>35</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>7</td><td>550</td><td>1.3%</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>116</td><td>0%</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>32</td><td>2790</td><td>1.1%</td></tr></tfoot></table>
These rates go down significantly when we only consider productive cases. Tables 16 to 19 include only one instance of sequences where the same infinitive/ participles preceding the same verb are repeated in the same text. Participle frontings appear to provide a large proposition of formulaic uses. This is particularly noticeable for the OVen text *Lio Mazor*, where all occurrences have the form *condanà/comandà fo* ‘condemned/commanded was’ (but one, which has *acusà fo* ‘accused was’). The same can be said for the OFr *Atirements* text, where we have the same type of occurrences (*jugiè/rendu fu* ‘judged was’). Note that Participle Fronting in both texts also stands out for occurring only (i) in main clauses at the beginning of a paragraph (see §5, Table 24) and (ii) with post-verbal subjects, if overt (only in the *Lio Mazor*).

<table><caption>**Table 16.** Numbers of productive Participle Frontings in Medieval Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted participles (n)</th><th>Productive cases (n)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>26</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>35</td><td>18</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>7</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senati incanti</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>70 (2.1%)</td><td>28 (0.8%)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 17.** Numbers of productive Infinitive Frontings in Medieval Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted infinitives (n)</th><th>Productive cases (n)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>39</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>11</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>72</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senati incanti</td><td>17</td><td>14</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>139 (6.6%)</td><td>73 (3.4%)</td></tr></tfoot></table>
<table><caption>**Table 18.** Numbers of productive Participle Frontings in Medieval French</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted participles (n)</th><th>Productive cases (n)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>26</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>53</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>40</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>137</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>44</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>304 (3.7%)</td><td>49 (0.6%)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 19.** Numbers of productive Infinitive Frontings in Medieval French</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Title</th><th>Fronted infinitives (n)</th><th>Productive cases (n)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>11</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>5</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>9</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>7</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>32 (1.1%)</td><td>22 (0.8%)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

The second property we investigate is the supposed relation to null subjects. Such a relation is expected given the situation in Germanic languages, where Fronting is clearly tied to the absence of a lexical subject in the canonical subject position. One might expect that Old Romance Fronting is to be assimilated with Stylistic Fronting. This is found to be the case in the French data of that period, where throughout the period, more than 90% of both types of Fronting co-occur with a null subject<fnref n="16" /> (Tables 22 and 23), although the proportion with expletive null subjects is much greater with participles than with infinitives. However, with Venetian there is an average 40% of both types of Fronting with a null subject (with a relevant presence of expletive null subjects only for Participle Fronting, replicating the French datum), with no particular temporal progression (Tables 20 and 21).

<footnote n="16">16. It wasn't always thus: in the corpus FLAN of Norman legal prose (Larrivée 2019), we find a significant proportion of Fronting preceded by an expressed subject before 1300: all seven fronted infinitives before 1155 have an expressed subject (one of which is a relative marker); and so do five of the 13 fronted participles before 1300 (one with a relative marker also).</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 20.** Rates of Participle Fronting with a null subject/expletive null subject in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles with null subj (ref)</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles with null subj (expl)</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio<br>Mazor</td><td>26</td><td>3</td><td>7.7% (2)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>57.7% (15)</td><td>33.3% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta<br>Veneta</td><td>35</td><td>18</td><td>2.9% (1)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>14.3% (5)</td><td>22.2% (4)</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato<br>Terra</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti<br>Murano</td><td>7</td><td>5</td><td>42.9% (3)</td><td>40% (2)</td><td>14.3% (1)</td><td>20% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato<br>incanti</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>70</td><td>28</td><td>10% (7)</td><td>10.7% (3)</td><td>31.4% (22)</td><td>25% (7)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 21.** Rates of Infinitive Fronting with a null subject/expletive null subject in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives with null subj (ref)</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives with null subj (expl)</th></tr><tr><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta<br>Veneta</td><td>39</td><td>23</td><td>38.5% (15)</td><td>43.5% (10)</td><td>7.7% (3)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato<br>Terra</td><td>11</td><td>9</td><td>45.5% (5)</td><td>33.3% (3)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti<br>Murano</td><td>72</td><td>27</td><td>37.5% (27)</td><td>40.7% (11)</td><td>6.9% (5)</td><td>11.1% (3)</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato<br>incanti</td><td>17</td><td>14</td><td>17.6% (3)</td><td>21.4% (3)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>139</td><td>73</td><td>36% (50)</td><td>37% (27)</td><td>5.8% (8)</td><td>4.1% (3)</td></tr></tfoot></table>
The pattern that emerges for the period is one where French Participle/Infinite Fronting and Venetian Participle Fronting are occurring at roughly 1.5% to 4% of relevant occurrences, while Venetian Infinitive Fronting occurs at a higher rate, especially due to the high frequency of the structure in one text, the *Statuti di Murano* (1502). In addition, the French data show a particular affinity between Fronting and null subjects. This is not the case for the Venetian data, where cases of Frontings do not seem to appear more frequently with null subjects. The next section takes on the puzzle of the syntactic analysis of the construction: the type of movement, the landing site, and its motivations.

<table><caption>Table 22. Rates of all and productive Participle Fronting with a null subject in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles with null subj (ref)</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles with null subj (expl)</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>26</td><td>8</td><td>7.7% (2)</td><td>25% (2)</td><td>73.1% (19)</td><td>37.5% (3)</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>53</td><td>3</td><td>3.8% (2)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>94.3% (50)</td><td>100% (3)</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>40</td><td>16</td><td>17.5% (7)</td><td>37.5% (6)</td><td>57.5% (23)</td><td>56.3% (9)</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>137</td><td>11</td><td>2.9% (4)</td><td>45.5% (5)</td><td>94.9% (130)</td><td>54.5% (6)</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>44</td><td>9</td><td>11.4% (3)</td><td>33.3% (3)</td><td>86.4% (38)</td><td>66.7% (6)</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>304</td><td>49</td><td>6.3% (19)</td><td>34.7% (17)</td><td>85.9% (261)</td><td>59.2% (29)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>Table 23. Rates of all and productive Infinitive Fronting with a null subject in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives with null subject (ref)</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives with null subject (expl)</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>11</td><td>7</td><td>63.6% (7)</td><td>100% (7)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>5</td><td>2</td><td>40% (2)</td><td>50% (1)</td><td>40% (2)</td><td>50% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>9</td><td>9</td><td>100% (9)</td><td>77.8% (7)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>22.2% (2)</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>71.4% (5)</td><td>100% (4)</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>32</td><td>22</td><td>71.9% (23)</td><td>86.4% (19)</td><td>6.3% (2)</td><td>13.6% (3)</td></tr></tfoot></table>
## 5. Fronting as low phrasal movement

Since participles and infinitives are normally in a lower position than the auxiliary/modal, there is little doubt that Fronting is the result of a syntactic movement. Let us note that Fronting does not involve verb-final structures: modals and auxiliaries can be followed by other constituents and do not have to be sentence final (20).

(20) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1310-1346)
*En qual manera çurar de' queli che vorà scoder li in which manner swear.INF must those that want.FUT redeem.INF the beni [...].*

assets

'How who wants to redeem the assets must swear [...]'

This observation rules out a potential verb-final analysis, as modals and auxiliaries seem to occupy the same position whether the infinitive/participle precedes them or not. Besides, these languages show no generalized OV-related phenomenon (as postpositions, prenominal relatives, generalized prenominal adjectives etc.), which indicates the general non-OV character of their syntax. The movement analysis raises the issue of the landing site, the type of movement (phrasal or head movement), and its motivation.

Fronting is most probably situated in a low peripheral position (see also Mathieu 2006 and, for subordinates, Franco 2017), since it follows complementizers, topics and focus. This is also shown by the regular occurrence of the construction with subordinates. Tables 24 to 27 show that despite variation, about half of Venetian participles and French participles/ infinitives are found in a subordinate clause, and a third of Venetian infinitives. Note that the occurrences of Participle Fronting in *Lio Mazor* and *Atirements* stand out once again. Besides being largely formulaic (see Tables 16 and 18), they only occur in main clauses, contrary to the other occurrences of Participle Fronting which are often found in subordinates. Moreover, we also notice that they are only found at the beginning of a paragraph with post-verbal subjects, if overt (compare (24), where the overt subject is preverbal). This is in line with what Labelle and Hirschbühler (2017) define as "V2 Leftward Stylistic Displacement".

When Topic and Focus are realized, the fronted constituent occurs lower (21a-b). This shows that Fronting occurs at least lower than Focus.
<table><caption>Table 24. Rates of Participle Fronting in a subordinate in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles in a subordinate clause</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>26</td><td>3</td><td>0% (0)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>35</td><td>18</td><td>97.1% (34)</td><td>100% (18)</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>7</td><td>5</td><td>28.6% (2)</td><td>20% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1540</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>70</td><td>28</td><td>52.9% (37)</td><td>75% (21)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>Table 25. Rates of Infinitive Fronting in a subordinate in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives in a subordinate clause</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>39</td><td>23</td><td>48.7% (19)</td><td>56.5% (13)</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>11</td><td>9</td><td>36.4% (4)</td><td>44.4% (4)</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>72</td><td>27</td><td>26.4% (19)</td><td>37% (10)</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>17</td><td>14</td><td>29.4% (5)</td><td>28.6% (4)</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>139</td><td>73</td><td>33.8% (47)</td><td>42.5% (31)</td></tr></tfoot></table>
<table><caption>**Table 26.** Rates of all and productive Participle Fronting in a subordinate in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles</th><th colspan="2">Fronted participles in a subordinate clause</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>26</td><td>8</td><td>69.2% (18)</td><td>62.5% (5)</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>53</td><td>3</td><td>3.8% (2)</td><td>0% (0)</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>40</td><td>16</td><td>40% (16)</td><td>56.3% (9)</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>137</td><td>11</td><td>40.1% (55)</td><td>36.4% (4)</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>100% (1)</td><td>100% (1)</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>44</td><td>9</td><td>100% (44)</td><td>100% (9)</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>304</td><td>49</td><td>44.7% (136)</td><td>59.2% (29)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 27.** Rates of all and productive Infinitive Fronting in a subordinate in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Title</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives</th><th colspan="2">Fronted infinitives in a subordinate clause</th></tr><tr><th>All</th><th>Prod</th><th>All</th><th>Prod</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>11</td><td>7</td><td>27.3% (3)</td><td>57.2% (4)</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>5</td><td>2</td><td>80% (4)</td><td>100% (2)</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>9</td><td>9</td><td>66.7% (6)</td><td>66.7% (6)</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>57.1% (4)</td><td>75% (3)</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="2">Total</td><td>32</td><td>22</td><td>53.1% (17)</td><td>43.5% (10)</td></tr></tfoot></table>
(21) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1310-1346)

a. Ma quelle cause chi perten a qualle glesie [...], al postuto alienar non but that things that belong to those churches to the place sell.INF NEG porà [...].
can.FUT

‘But it will not be otherwise possible to sell the belongings of those churches [...].’

Middle French (Style et usage 1425)

b. En ce brief acomplir convient que [...].

in this writ accomplish.INF suits that
‘With this writ, it is appropriate to accomplish that [...].’

Following the same reasoning, we can show that the movement occurs below complementizers, either Ven. *che* / Fr. ‘ke’ ‘that’ or Ven. *se* / Fr. *se* ‘if’, as shown by examples (22) to (25) (and, as noted above, the embedded topic *chella femena* ‘that woman’ in (24)).

(22) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1310-1346)

vollemo che quella demander e scoder possa li redi so.
want.1PL that that ask.INF and redeem.INF can.SBJV the heirs his
‘We want his heirs to be able to ask and redeem that.’

(23) Old French (ANYB, 1292)

Nota, ke clamer par meme la dessente ne pout yl nent en coe
note that claim.INF by even the descent NEG can.3SG he nothing in this
cas.
case

‘Note, that in the above case he could not claim by the same descent.’

(24) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1310-1346)

Se chella femena alguna causa açonçer vorà [...].
if that woman any thing add.INF want.FUT
‘If that woman will want to add anything [...].’

(25) Middle French (Style et usages 1425)

[...] se attendre la voullez [...].
if wait.INF CL.ACC.3SG.F want.2PL
‘[...] if you want to wait for it [...].’
This points to a landing site of the Fronting in the low CP area, just above the IP/ TP. Having identified the landing site to be in the low CP periphery, we move on to movement type, before showing the connection with “low” V2 (§6) and, finally, evoking the vexed question of the construction’s motivation (§7).

The second question about Fronting is what type of movement it involves. We here propose that this movement is *phrasal* and does not involve head movement (see Holmberg 2006; for French, see Olivier et al. 2024; Salvesen 2011). In other words, we propose that the construction under study is derived by moving past the modal/auxiliary the whole VP of which the infinitive/participle is part and not only the V head. As evidence in favor of this analysis note that if it were head movement it would violate the Head Movement Constraint (HMC; Travis 1984), in that the infinitive/participle head would move past another head in the same verbal extended projection — the modal/auxiliary — without incorporating in it, as the fact that we often find clitics in between indicates; (26) and (27).

(26) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1310-1346)
*s’ illi no confenserà, o provar no se porà, sia*
if they NEG confess.FUT or prove.INF NEG CL.REFL can.FUT is.SBJV
*condenpnati [...].*
condemned
‘If they will not confess or it will be impossible to prove, may they be con-
demned [...].’

(27) Old French (ANYB 1292)
*Vocher ne ly poez.*
claim.INF NEG CL.DAT.3SG.M can.2PL
‘You can’t vouch for him.’

In this respect, Rivero (1991, 1993) proposed that these kinds of Frontings do not involve regular head movement but *long* head movement, that is a special kind of head movement which is not constrained by the HMC. This approach can only be supported if the infinitive always moves without any other constituent as, for example, the direct object. However, this is not case in our data, as we see weak indefinite objects moving together with the infinitival verb (28) (repeated from (24); see also Olivier et al. (2024) for a similar observation on another set of OFr data).
(28) Old Venetian

Se chella femena alguna causa açonçer vorà [...].
if that woman any thing add.INF want.FUT
‘If that woman will want to add anything [...].’

(Statuta Veneta 1310–1346)

As weak indefinites do not generally undergo topicalization (Cinque 1990, among others), the pre-infinitival position of the indefinite object *alguna causa* ‘anything’ is derived by moving it along with the infinitive within a single XP (plausibly the VP).<fnref n="17" />, <fnref n="18" /> If cases like (28) need to involve XP movement, Occam’s razor excludes the presence in the grammar of an additional long head movement mechanism deriving these sequences. As a final and general point in favor of the phrasal movement analysis, notice that head movement has *per se* a questionable status in current linguistic theories, leading part of the literature to propose to dispense with it in favor of a generalized phrasal approach to all kinds of movements (Cinque 2023; Poletto & Pollock 2009).

This set of observations calls for an analysis of Fronting as a phrasal movement of the whole VP to a low CP position (below Topic and Focus) marked for now with the place-holder FP (29).

i. Old Venetian

et *per far questo effecto usar debiano ogni mezo oportuno et necesario.*

and for *do.INF this* effect *use.INF must.SBJV.3PL* each mean adequate and necessary

‘And to do this, they should use any adequate and necessary means.’

At least two analyses could account for these cases: (i) subextraction of the object from the VP to a VP peripheral position and subsequent movement of the remnant VP; (ii) different sizes of the target XP, which could optionally include the object. For a more in-depth discussion, see Pinzin et al. (ms.).

<footnote n="17">17. Note that when the object is fronted with the infinitive the order is always OV. See Olivier et al. (2024) for the same observation on other OFr data and Pinzin et al. (ms.) for a possible analysis based on OVen and Old Florentine.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18. There are cases in which the object is not dragged along with the VP but stays in a low position.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

## 6. The relation between Fronting and low V2

In this section, we cross the syntactic analysis of Fronting proposed in §5 (phrasal movement to a low CP position, right above the inflected verb) with its diachronic distribution highlighted in §4.

Looking at Venetian, one wonders why Infinitival Fronting should only occur in the later texts, while in the earlier ones there are no occurrences of it (Table 13). As for Participle Fronting, we have the same pattern but for the apparent exception of *Lio Mazor* (Table 12). As already noted in §4 and §5, however, the occurrences of Participle Fronting in *Lio Mazor* stand out from the rest for occurring only in main clauses at the beginning of a paragraph and with post-verbal subjects, if overt. This is in line with Labelle and Hirschbühler’s (2017) “V2 Leftward Stylistic Displacement”, a phenomenon we take to be distinct from the rest of the cases we observe. Considering this, a pattern emerges by which Fronting is only possible in the later Venetian texts.
We believe the absence of Fronting in *Lio Mazor* and the other early Venetian texts is connected to the fact that they present a “high” V2 grammar, whereby the verb obligatorily moves to ForceP. Fronting has been shown in §5 to occur in the low CP area (i.e., after the complementizer, as well as after topics and focus). While it is rather difficult to identify exactly which pragmatic import this type of Fronting might have (see §7 for a proposal), it can be analyzed as targeting the operator field identified by Poletto (2014) and containing projections that are filled through operators (or in more traditional terms A' movement). If Fronting is a movement to the low CP area, it follows that a variety with obligatory verb movement to ForceP will not show the phenomenon: the inflected verb is raising too high for the infinitive/past participle to occur before it.<fnref n="19" /> The other part of our reasoning is that the presence of Fronting should indicate therefore that the text under analysis does not possess a “high” V2 grammar. In other words, if the target of Fronting is a low CP position, then we expect this type of phenomenon to occur in main clauses only in those languages in which the inflected verb does not raise higher than such position, i.e., in so called “low” V2 languages. That this is the case is shown by the variety of constituents that can precede the finite verb together with the infinitive/past participle in Fronting cases: subjects (30) (repeated from (6)), (31), (33), (34), objects (33), adverbial XPs (32), (35) or adverbial and *if* clauses (32), (35). The types (and relative number) of XPs in the Venetian texts are presented in Tables 28 and 29.

(30) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1300-1346)
*se clamor fato serà sovra la soa envestison [...]*
if complaint made is.fut over the her possession
'If someone will make a complaint regarding her possession [...].'

(31) Old Venetian (Statuti di Murano 1502)
*La pena divisa sia ut supra.*
the fee divided is.SBJV as above
'May the fee be divided as indicated above.'

<footnote n="19">19. Two additional notes are relevant in this respect. First, we are assuming that the fronted infinitive/past participle cannot satisfy the EPP feature on ForceP, probably due to the specific restrictions that Fronting displays in relation to its special pragmatic import (see §7; Balsemin et al. 2024). As a second note, our analysis does not in principle ban Fronting from being present in subordinate clauses. Actually, the *Stussi* text shows one occurrence of Infinitival Fronting in a subordinate clause, while showing no instances of Fronting in main clauses. The other early texts do not show any Fronting.</footnote>
(32) Old Venetian (Statuti di Murano 1502)
Se per testamento se lasserà alguna cosa ad alguna persona particular,
if for will CL.REFL let.FUT any thing to any person specific
senza altro rispecto servado sia l' ordene;
without other hindrance preserved is.SBJV the order
'If one leaves anything to anyone specific in the will, the order must be fol-
lowed without further hindrance;'}

(33) Old Venetian (Statuta Veneta 1300-1346)
Ma le altre cause stabel, le qual non à rendeda, la glesia perder
but the other things stable the which NEG have income the church lose.INF
porrà [...].
can.FUT
'But it will be possible for the church to lose the other immovable properties
which do not give income [...].'}

(34) Old Venetian (Statuti di Murano 1502)
Et quelli per el cancelier notar se debiano sopra uno
and those for the clerk note.INF CL.REFL must.SBJV.3PL over a
foglio [...].
sheet
'And those will have to be noted on a sheet by the clerk [...].'}

(35) Old Venetian (Senato incanti 1525-1529)
Et passato el ditto termine, se non haverano dati li ditti piezi,
and passed the said term if NEG have.FUT.3PL given the said pieces
immediate reincantar se debano le galie [...].
immediately reauction.INF CL.REFL must.SBJV.3PL the ships
'And beyond said date, if they will not have given said pieces, the ships must be
immediately reauctioned [...].'}

<table><caption>**Table 28.** XPs before the finite verb in main clauses (Participle Fronting, Venetian)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Statuta Veneta (1300-1346)</th><th>Statuti di Murano (1502)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>If clause</td><td>0</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>0</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><caption>**Table 29.** XPs before the finite verb in main clauses (Infinitival Fronting, Venetian)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Statuta Veneta<br>(1300-1346)</th><th>Senato terra<br>(1440-1455)</th><th>Statuti di<br>Murano (1502)</th><th>Senato incanti<br>(1525-1529)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>If clause</td><td>5</td><td>0</td><td>7</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Adverbial clause</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>4</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>12</td><td>1</td><td>14</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>Adverb</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>11</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>9</td><td>1</td><td>11</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Object</td><td>8*</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>Predicate</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

* Some of the objects can be analyzed along the lines we presented in §5, as being part of the whole moved constituent. This is not crucial, as the other cases cannot be subject to such an analysis.

The expectation is consequently to find a correlation between Fronting and more cases of V3 and even V4 (which are virtually non-existent in the earlier period). This is in fact what we find, as the texts in which Fronting is consistently attested (*Statuta Veneta, Senato deliberazioni Terra, Statuti di Murano, Senato incanti*) show also more cases of V>2 in main clauses (Table 30 cf. Table 3, where *Lio Mazor* shows V3 = 17.4% and V4 = 1.3%), as well as V>2 orders where the first constituent is not a frame-setter (36).

<table><caption>**Table 30.** Verb position in the later Venetian texts</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Text</th><th>V1</th><th>V2</th><th>V3</th><th>V4</th><th>Totals</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>12.9% (67)</td><td>64% (333)</td><td>18.3% (95)</td><td>4.8% (25)</td><td>520</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>16.1% (52)</td><td>45.5% (147)</td><td>27.2% (88)</td><td>11.1% (36)</td><td>323</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1529</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>34.8% (95)</td><td>38.1% (104)</td><td>22.7% (62)</td><td>4.4% (12)</td><td>273</td></tr></tbody></table>

(36) Old Venetian (Senato terra 1440-1455)

*E quei denari per niun altro muodo 7 via possi esser*
*and those deniers for no.one other manner and way may.SBJV be.INF*
*dispensadi.*

dispensed

'And those deniers cannot be dispensed in any other manner or way.'

As for French, the diachronic pattern is different. While the *Atirements* text behaves like the *Lio Mazor* text in showing only instances of “V2 Leftward Stylistic Displacement” with the past participle, the rest of the texts show cases of Participial and Infinitival Fronting. This includes both the early and the later texts.
As seen in §2, the *Atirements* text shows a “high” V2 grammar, tallying well with our expectations with respect to the Fronting phenomenon. As for the rest of the texts, the expectation is to observe a “low” V2 grammar. We first consider the XPs we can find in front of the finite verb in main clause Fronting for the French texts. Notably, already the *ANYB* text from 1292 shows a case in which the fronted infinitive is preceded by a sequence composed of an adverb, the subject, and the object (37), and a second case where the fronted past participle is preceded by the (clausal) subject (38).

(37) Old French (ANYB 1292)
*issy le viconte le commandement le Roy fere ne voleit [...].*
here the viscount the command the king do.INF NEG wants.PST
'Here the viscount didn't want to do the command of the king [...]'

(38) Old French (ANYB 1292)
[*...*], *ateint est par l assise: [...]*.
convicted is by the assize
'He is convicted by the assize: [...]'

Tables 31 and 32 collect all XPs preceding the finite verb in Fronting cases for the French texts (excluding the fronted constituent itself).

<table><caption>**Table 31.** XPs before the finite verb in main clauses (Infinitival Fronting, French)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>ANYB (1292)</th><th>ANYB (1340)</th><th>Style (1425)</th><th>Rouillé (1539)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>If clause</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Adverbial clause</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Adverb</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>NP-vocative</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Object</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>**Table 32.** XPs before the finite verb in main clauses (Participial Fronting, French)</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>ANYB (1292)</th><th>ANYB (1340)</th><th>Style (1425)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Adverbial clause</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>1</td><td>7</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>NP-circumstantial</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>NP-locative</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Subject</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr></tbody></table>
Notwithstanding the early attestation, we can observe that subjects preceding the fronted infinitive/past participle are extremely rare in our French texts (four cases in total). This is in line with the observation that most Fronting cases in our French texts present a null — usually expletive — subject (Tables 22 and 23). The remainder of the XPs occurring before the past participle/infinitive are mostly prepositional phrases or circumstantial elements (e.g., adverbial clauses), with a high rate of idiomatic expressions repeated throughout the text. To illustrate, (39) (repeated from (7)) and variations of it account for 38 cases of Participial Frontings in the *Style* text. No object is attested.

(39) Old French (Style 1425)
*En l' eschiquier de Pasques M.II<sup>c</sup>.LXVIII jugié fu que [...].*
in the Exchequer of Easter 1268 judged is.PST that
‘In the Exchequer of Easter 1268 it was judged that [...].’

While the scarcity and idiomaticity of the French data do not allow for a conclusive analysis, we can further check if the texts showing the few cases of Fronting are in line with our analysis, i.e., whether they have a higher rate of V > 2 cases where the first constituent is not a frame-setter. This would fit our expectations with respect to the connection between Fronting and “low” V2. For the time being, the analysis can only be performed for the *Style* text from 1425, as the parsing of other texts is still under review. This text (Table 33) shows a slightly higher rate of V > 2 sentences than the *Atirements* texts (see Table 4) and more V1. More importantly, the count of V > 2 includes 17 sentences where the XP sequence preceding the finite verb has the subject in first position, as in (40). This is not the case for the *Atirements* text (see Table 11).

<table><caption>**Table 33.** Verb position in one later French text</caption><thead><tr><th>Year</th><th>Text</th><th>V1</th><th>V2</th><th>V3</th><th>V4</th><th>Total</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>10.6% (197)</td><td>43.7% (812)</td><td>39.1% (726)</td><td>6.6% (122)</td><td>1857</td></tr></tbody></table>

(40) Old French (Style 1425)
*Et le dit Luce par ses raisons paralléguoit le contraire [...].*
and the said Luce by his reasons alleges.PST the contrary
‘And the said Luce through his reasoning alleged the contrary [...].’
All in all, the French data also support an analysis which sees Fronting as tied to a “low” type of V2.<fnref n="20" />

7. Motivation for the movement

If Fronting undoubtedly moves to a low left peripheral position, the questions arising are where exactly the items land, and why do they move; two questions that have so far baffled specialists.

One idea is that Fronting would be motivated by some licensing requirement of the subject. This relates to observations such as the ones reported in (15) above, and may apply to the French data, where Fronting is related to null subjects in over 90% of all occurrences (see Tables 22 and 23). It may work for Venetian participants, which are found with a null subject at over 60% after 1400. But it will not account for Venetian infinitives, Venetian participles before 1400 and French data before 1300 — although Labelle and Hirschbühler (2014) suggest that the expressed subjects are moved ones, either through a relative marker, or in post-verbal position.

Another approach has been to think of Fronting as motivated by informational dynamics. Two competing families of analyses are proposed in the literature. One sees the moved constituent as having a specific informational value (Hrafnbjargasson 2004; Trotzke 2017), although the empirical basis has been less than convincing so far (Imel 2019; Rahn 2016). A variant is that the moved constituent takes on a “subject of predication” value (Franco 2017), which does not however explain how this works for fronted elements preceded by an expressed subject. The other identifies the movement as an altruistic cue that the event is under Verum Focus (see Egerland 2013; Molnar 2010; for French, Dufter 2018; Rahn 2016; for Spanish, Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal 2009). But again, substantiating such a value has been a challenge, at least in a way that can be easily disproved.

We have therefore sought to assess the informational value of the fronted constituent in terms of discourse value, and of the clause in terms of Verum Focus. A discourse-old value was identified when the fronted element was previously explicitly mentioned, or refers through deixis or anaphor to a previously mentioned entity, or when inferences could reasonably be established with the pre-

<footnote n="20">20. Note that Infinitival Fronting is itself in no way responsible for the loss of V2. However, it might be the case that the rising of Infinitival Fronting reinforces the process of loss, providing positive evidence for a low left peripheral movement, and contributing to a sort of snowballing effect which ends up in the modern configuration, where V2-like phenomena are found only in marked constructions, like interrogatives and the like.</footnote>
vious context (of the 'search/found' type; is something is said to be found after a search has been evoked, 'found' would then be assessed as inferred discourse-old) (Larrivée 2019). Otherwise, a discourse-new value was attributed. This was applied only to productive occurrences (cf. Tables 16 to 19 above). The results (Tables 34 to 37) suggest that in this corpus, there is no period where a categorical informational value can be found for the fronted element.

<table><caption>Table 34. Informational status of productive fronted participles in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Text</th><th rowspan="2">Participle Fronting</th><th colspan="2">Discourse-old</th><th>Discourse-new</th></tr><tr><th>Explicit mention and deictic/ anaphor</th><th>Inferable</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>18</td><td>2</td><td>6</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>5</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>28</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>15</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>Table 35. Informational status of productive fronted infinitives in Venetian</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Text</th><th rowspan="2">Participle Fronting</th><th colspan="2">Discourse-old</th><th>Discourse-new</th></tr><tr><th>Explicit mention and deictic/ anaphor</th><th>Inferable</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1253-1321</td><td>Stussi</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1300-1310</td><td>Tomasin</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1311-1312</td><td>Lio Mazor</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1310-1346</td><td>Statuta Veneta</td><td>19</td><td>6</td><td>4</td><td>9</td></tr><tr><td>1340-1350</td><td>Zucchello</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1440-1455</td><td>Senato Terra</td><td>8</td><td>5</td><td>2</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1502</td><td>Statuti Murano</td><td>25</td><td>8</td><td>11</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>1525-1548</td><td>Senato incanti</td><td>13</td><td>4</td><td>1</td><td>8</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>65</td><td>23</td><td>18</td><td>24</td></tr></tfoot></table>
<table><caption>**Table 36.** Informational status of productive fronted participles in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Text</th><th rowspan="2">Participle Fronting</th><th colspan="2">Discourse-old</th><th>Discourse-new</th></tr><tr><th>Explicit mention and deictic/ anaphor</th><th>Inferable</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>8</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>16</td><td>4</td><td>7</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>11</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>9</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>49</td><td>11</td><td>22</td><td>16</td></tr></tfoot></table>

<table><caption>**Table 37.** Informational status of productive fronted infinitives in French</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Year</th><th rowspan="2">Text</th><th rowspan="2">Participle Fronting</th><th colspan="2">Discourse-old</th><th>Discourse-new</th></tr><tr><th>Explicit mention and deictic/ anaphor</th><th>Inferable</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1292</td><td>ANYB</td><td>8</td><td>5</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1314</td><td>Atirements</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1340</td><td>ANYB</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>1425</td><td>Style</td><td>9</td><td>6</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1430</td><td>PrcJdA</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1450</td><td>RehJdA</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>1539</td><td>Rouillé</td><td>4</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>1591</td><td>Fille Poss</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td>Total</td><td></td><td>22</td><td>14</td><td>3</td><td>6</td></tr></tfoot></table>

Let us now consider the Verum Focus analysis. Verum Focus is the configuration by which an event is asserted (see the overview in Lohnstein 2016), and contrasted to other events, as in (41).

(41) English

Paul HAS visited Dubai.
Here, strong commitment of the speaker to Paul having visited is expressed, and a contrast is suggested to the idea that the visit didn't take place. The difficulty is that few assertive clauses can be envisaged without some dimension of speaker commitment, and of potential contrast. Such a dimension is especially delicate to assess in an historical data where no prosody or pragmatic information is available beyond the flow of antecedent and subsequent sentences. This poses the risk of circular reasoning by which all Fronting is contrasted assertion. To break that potential circle, we conducted an examination of the occurrences. Occurrences that were unlikely to convey a contrast to another event in the context were searched and found. Consider (42) to (44) (the latter repeated from (9)):

(42) Old Venetian (Lio Mazor 1312)
Condanà fo lo dito Çan in s. XL per la dita briga.
condemned is.PST the said Çan in s. 40 for the said tussle
'The quoted Çan has been condemned to pay 40 soldi for the mentioned tussle.'

(43) Old French (Atirements 1314)
Jugié fu que il l' amendast avant.
judged is.PST that he CL.ACC.3SG.M amends.PST before
'It was judged that he put it right before.'

(44) Old French (ANYB 1340)
La femme dit qe son baroun fust seisi si qe dower
the woman says.PST that his baron is.PST seized so that dower.INF
la poet.
CL.ACC.3SG.F can.3SG
'The woman said that her husband was seized, so that he could endow her.'

There is no clear suggestion that the fronted participle, introducing the new issue of the judgment, is contrasted to an event in which the judgment would not have taken place, and there is no indication in the preceding context that this might be so — especially not in the *Lio Mazor* example where the construction introduces the legal case to be discussed.

The idea that a Focus is expressed by the event that gives rise to strong alternatives is therefore not categorical in the corpus. But all is not lost when one considers the diversity of Focus interpretation. A strong focus selects a value and suggest that this value excludes alternatives. Let us envisage the notion of a weak focus, without exclusion. Consider the elicitations of clefts in (45a-c), which are generally believed to relate to Focus.
(45) English

a. It's some time ago that Zelensky took the decision.

b. It's in Paris that Zelensky took the decision, not London.

c. It's for THAT reason that Zelensky took the decision, and for no other, whatever Putin says.

In the first, the idea is introduced that there is a time when decision-taking occurred, and while other decisive moments might have been the case, no exclusions are evoked. Such alternatives are however profiled in the strong Focus corrective (45b) and exclusive (45c) cases. Clefts can thus convey a strong Focus, with a partial or exhaustive exclusion, or a weak Focus, where alternatives are evoked but no exclusion.

We suggest that like clefts, Verum Focus can carry different strengths. Beside a strong interpretation that excludes options, we find a weak variety that simply commits the speaker to the event, as a selected option among others. This tallies with the view by Remberger (2014: 413ff) that Fronting expresses “emphasis”, a notion that can be expanded upon for different purposes in different languages.

Consider (46) (repeated from (23)).

(46) Old French (ANYB, 1292)

Nota, ke clamer par meme la dessente ne pout yl nent en coe note that claim.INF by even the descent NEG can.3SG he nothing in this cas.

case

‘Note, that in the above case he could not claim by the same descent.’

The fronted infinitive expresses weak Verum Focus. Commitment is expressed to the inability to claim explicitly stated, and contrast is suggested to the possibility to make the said claim. There is however no obvious exclusion of an alternative.

The advantage of analyzing Fronting as weak Verum Focus is that it is convergent with the distributional profile of the configuration. There is but one Fronting per clause: no attestation is known of several separate items fronted to the same verb,<fnref n="21" /> as one Fronting suffices to signal Verum Focus. And the reading is dependent on Fronting itself, not the nature of the fronted constituent, which can be represented, beyond participles and infinitives, by elements such as prepositions

<footnote n="21">21. Although coordination may be found</footnote>

<footnote>i. Old French

Ainsi que traité et dict est.
as that treated and said is
‘As is dealt with and said.’</footnote>

<footnote>(Le Rouillé 1539)</footnote>

<footnote>But the coordinated elements of course form a single phrase.</footnote>
(comme dessus est dit), attributes (comme bon vous semble) or intensifiers (point trop n'en faut). Fronting is found at important rates with expressed or unexpressed expletive subjects, which are known to profile the event rather than its subject (Svenonius 2001). It distributes in comparative and relative subordinates where it is widely assumed that clauses are normally given information (Dryer 1996). Its absence in interrogatives follows from the commitment expressed to the event: while it is not impossible to both commit to an event and ask a question about it as in a negative interrogative (*Didn't he visit Dubai?*?), such special questions are expected to be rare as they provide potentially conflicting information (of asserting and requesting information about the same event). Use with a non-finite verb is virtually unattested, because these do not represent an asserted event (the only case found, in footnote 14, features in a clause that could very well be finite). The fact that the Focus is weak also accounts for the fact that the Fronting is never found with stronger assertion element such as asseveration particle *si* and the expressions equivalents of *indeed* (notably *bene/bien*).

More generally, the benefit of a weak Verum Focus analysis paradoxically comes from its evanescent character. Weak Verum Focus with Fronting is barely distinct from a simple assertive without Fronting. The subtility of the contribution may explain why it can be lost, and the configuration with it. But it also raises the question: how can we be sure? What would this analysis predict that cannot happen? Well, commitment would be expected to be incompatible with mitigation. If a speaker is committed to an event, she should not at the same time edge that assertion. Indeed, we find no mitigators such as *maybe*, *almost* or *possibly* in our data.<fnref n="22" />

Thus, neither a correlation to null subject, nor the informational value of the fronted element is accounting for the motivation of Fronting in Medieval French and Venetian. We propose that the Fronting is a movement to the verb-phrase periphery signaling the commitment of the speakers to the expressed event, without excluding alternative events. The argument is summarized in the conclusion.

<footnote n="22">22. Other diagnostics would be desirable, especially for the Verum Focus dimension. Assuming that sentences can have only one Focus, this would lead to expect that other (Verum) Focus markers would be excluded. And neither Medieval French *si* and its Romance equivalents, nor Focus movement, nor a phrase modified by a Focus particle, are attested in our Fronting data. More work is needed on this, e.g., looking at varieties where Fronting is still found, such as Spanish or Icelandic.</footnote>
8. Conclusion

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the phenomenon of Fronting of the par-
ticiple to an auxiliary and infinitive to a modal in the V2 system of two closely
related Medieval Romance languages, French and Venetian, and thereby shed
light on the mechanism of V2 itself as well as its progressive loss in Old Romance.
Our main results are as follows:

- Fronting is the result of movement of a phrase to a low position of the left periphery. The low position analysis is supported by the fact that Fronting can occur in subordinates, below an overt complementizer.

- Since it targets a low peripheral position, Fronting is only visible in a language where low V2 is available. This is clearly shown by Venetian, where Fronting becomes available when enclisis, which is generally taken to be indicative of high V2 systems, disappears. It is clear however, that Fronting does depend on V2, as attested by its presence in other V2 languages such as contemporary Icelandic or Middle English.

- We have argued that the motivation for Fronting resides in the necessity to express a (weak) Verum Focus value. Cohesive with the proposal of a Spec-Focus as a landing site, the weak Verum Focus value is convergent with indications of alternative values being suggested, while not requiring such alternatives, making the subtle pragmatic contribution easy to lose, and explaining the rarity of the construction.

- One major consequence of the comparative study proposed here is that the demise of V2 in Medieval Romance may relate to the progressively decreasing height of verb movement.<fnref n="23" /> This validates the view that V2 loss is a gradual process, for which Fronting can serve as a diagnostic.

There are further refinements of this study that await a more thorough investiga-
tion. One concerns the extension of our idea of Fronting as low peripheral move-
ment to other sets of fronted items to determine the position they target in a V2
system which interacts with a split left periphery. The different behavior between
Venetian infinitives and participles suggests that other items may behave still dif-
ferently, further leading to a better understanding of the finer distinctions in the
left periphery. Another avenue of research opened up by this article is the exten-
sion of the cross-linguistic comparison to other languages using both quantitative
approaches through calibrated treebanks, and qualitative methods, for the inte-
gration of which this contribution provides strong evidence. Finally, connecting a

<footnote n="23">23. A similar conclusion is reached by Biberauer and Roberts (2018) for the history of English.</footnote>
construction whose pragmatic value is rather difficult to pin down to other syntactic properties of language may prove a fruitful approach to other enigmatic constructions, such as late OV in Romance, or VSO in Greek. We hope that these routes are explored in future work, *autant que faire se peut*.

## Funding

This research is part of the project *Micro Cues for Language Evolution* (MICLE), jointly funded by the *Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft* and the *Agence Nationale de la Recherche* (ANR-20-FRAL-0001-01 / DFG-449439301).

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Goethe University Frankfurt.

## Acknowledgements

The contribution greatly benefited from conversations with Sam Wolfe, Marc Olivier, Espen Klævik-Pettersen, Tommaso Balsemin and the audience of the *Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting 2022*, of the *Concordial* meeting in Grenoble in 2022, of the SIDF conference in Munich in 2022 and of the meeting of the *Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft* 2023. The initial scripts for tagging and parsing the Old Venetian data have been provided by Emanuela Sanfelici, whose help has been crucial in many respects. We would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and criticism. All errors remain our own.

## Statement of author contribution

Cecilia Poletto takes responsibility for §1 and §8; Pierre Larrivée for §2, §4 and §7; Francesco Pinzin for §3, §5 and §6. Mathieu Goux is responsible for the extraction of the French data, and Francesco Pinzin for the extraction of the Venetian data. Francesco Pinzin oversaw the analysis and categorization of the extracted data, as well as their organization for the presentation in the article.

## Abbreviations used

1 first person

2 second person

3 third person

ACC accusative

ASPP aspectual Phrase

AUX auxiliary

CL clitic

COND conditional

CP Complementizer Phrase

DAT dative

DP Determiner Phrase

EOF Early Old French

EPP Extended Projection Principle

EXPL expletive
<table><tr><td>F</td><td>feminine</td><td>PST</td><td>past</td></tr><tr><td>FinP</td><td>Finiteness Phrase</td><td>PTCP</td><td>participle</td></tr><tr><td>FOC</td><td>focus</td><td>POS</td><td>Part of Speech</td></tr><tr><td>FocP</td><td>Focus Phrase</td><td>REFL</td><td>reflexive</td></tr><tr><td>ForceP</td><td>Force Phrase</td><td>SBJ</td><td>subject</td></tr><tr><td>FUT</td><td>future</td><td>SBJV</td><td>subjunctive</td></tr><tr><td>HMC</td><td>Head Movement Constraint</td><td>SG</td><td>singular</td></tr><tr><td>INF</td><td>infinitive</td><td>SVO</td><td>subject-verb-object word order</td></tr><tr><td>IP</td><td>Inflectional Phrase</td><td>TOP</td><td>topic</td></tr><tr><td>IPFV</td><td>imperfective</td><td>TopicP</td><td>Topic Phrase</td></tr><tr><td>L2</td><td>second language</td><td>TP</td><td>Tense Phrase</td></tr><tr><td>M</td><td>masculine</td><td>UD</td><td>Universal Dependencies</td></tr><tr><td>MidFr</td><td>Middle French</td><td>UPenn</td><td>University of Pennsylvania</td></tr><tr><td>NEG</td><td>negation, negative</td><td>V</td><td>verb</td></tr><tr><td>NOM</td><td>nominative</td><td>V1</td><td>verb first</td></tr><tr><td>OF1</td><td>Old Florentine</td><td>V2</td><td>verb second</td></tr><tr><td>OFr</td><td>Old French</td><td>V3</td><td>verb third</td></tr><tr><td>OV</td><td>object-verb word order</td><td>V4</td><td>verb fourth</td></tr><tr><td>OVen</td><td>Old Venetian</td><td>VO</td><td>verb-object word order</td></tr><tr><td>PL</td><td>plural</td><td>vP</td><td>'small' Verb Phrase</td></tr><tr><td>PP</td><td>Prepositional Phrase</td><td>VP</td><td>Verb Phrase</td></tr><tr><td>PRS</td><td>present</td><td>VSO</td><td>verb-subject-object word order</td></tr><tr><td>PRT</td><td>partitive</td><td>XP</td><td>phrase</td></tr><tr><td>PROG</td><td>progressive</td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>

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## Abstract (French)

On sait que le verbe en deuxième position (V2) était une règle opérative dans certaines langues romanes médiévales qui l'ont subséquemment perdue. Cette perte s'est fait progressivement, ce que nous associons à la diminution graduelle de la hauteur du verbe dans la périphérie gauche au cours du Moyen Âge: alors que le verbe pouvait initialement être déplacé vers une position haute (projection CP Topic/Focus), seules les positions périphériques inférieures sont ultérieurement accessibles. Cela signifie que le changement en cours révèle des constructions dans lesquelles le verbe est déplacé vers une position inférieure. De telles constructions sont examinées ici dans deux langues romanes pour la période du début du XIVe au XVIe siècle, en utilisant des données parallèles calibrées selon la provenance et le type de texte. Plus précisément, nous examinons l'antéposition de participes et d'infinitifs en français et en vénitien, et montrons que ces structures impliquent un faible mouvement et sont en corrélation avec un verbe dans position inférieure de la périphérie gauche.
## Abstract (German)

Es ist bekannt, dass die Verbzweitstellung (V2) in einigen mittelalterlichen romanischen Sprachen vorhanden war und verloren gegangen ist. Der Verlust ist jedoch ein allmählicher Prozess, den wir mit der abnehmenden Höhe der Verbverschiebung in der linken Peripherie im Laufe des Mittelalters in Verbindung bringen: Während das Verb in der Anfangsphase an eine hohe Position verschoben werden konnte (CP Topic/Focus-Projektion), sind in der Endphase nur noch niedrigere periphere Positionen zugänglich. Das bedeutet, dass der laufende Wandel Konstruktionen sichtbar macht, bei denen das Verb in eine niedrigere Position verschoben wird. Solche Konstruktionen werden hier in parallelen, auf Provenienz und Textart geeichten Texten aus zwei romanischen Sprachen für den Zeitraum vom Beginn des 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert untersucht. Im Einzelnen untersuchen wir Partizip und Infinitiv Fronting im Französischen und im Venezianischen und zeigen, dass diese Strukturen eine niedrige Bewegung beinhalten und mit einem V2 des niedrigen Typs korrelieren.

## Address for correspondence

Francesco Pinzin

Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen

Goethe Universität Frankfurt

Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1

D-60629 FRANKFURT AM MAIN

Germany

Pinzin@em.uni-frankfurt.de

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3744-062X

## Co-author information

Cecilia Poletto

Institut für Romanische Sprachen und
Literaturen

Goethe Universität Frankfurt

poletto@em.uni-frankfurt.de

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4778-0812

Pierre Larrivée

Laboratoire CRISCO

Université de Caen Normandie

pierre.larrivee@unicaen.fr

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8447-7102

Mathieu Goux

Université de Caen Normandie

Laboratoire CRISCO

mathieu.goux@unicaen.fr

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4211-8309
Publication history

Date received: 8 January 2024

Date accepted: 5 November 2024

Published online: 29 July 2025