PRO-DROP IN NOMINAL POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

I provide LFG analyses for three nominal possessive constructions of modern Low Saxon, a less-studied West Germanic language closely related to Dutch and German. I argue that elegant synchronic analyses of these con-structions can be given if it is assumed that they involve a phenomenon which is largely parallel to verbal pro-drop and which I accordingly call nominal pro-drop of the possessor. I corroborate this claim by pointing out paral-lels between verbal and nominal pro-drop in the use of overt pronouns for the subject and possessor respectively. I then extend the nominal pro-drop analysis also to cases of a “missing ” possessum phrase and provide evidence against ellipsis accounts. I furthermore argue that my analysis is also suitable for the Low Saxon s-possessive construction. I conclude my paper by giving examples of similar constructions from almost all Germanic languages and also from genetically unrelated languages.