Abstract

Within PPs, German has two pronominalization strategies: regular NP pronominalization (für ihn, ,for him') and R-pronoun insertion (da-für, ,for it'). The goal of this paper is to give a new account of the conditions under which R-pronoun insertion is obligatory, optional, and impossible. The main idea is that R-pronoun insertion is a repair (last resort) strategy that arises in order to solve what I call the „Wackemagel-Ross dilemma": If PP-intemal unstressed NP pronouns must move to the Wackemagel position but cannot do so because of a PP barrier, a language may resort to a repair form da that satisfies both constraints vacuously, by violating a selection requirement. Since the analysis depends on violable and ranked constraints, it is developed within optimality theory. Evidence from synchronic (Northern German varieties) and diachronic (German, English) variation is shown to corroborate the approach.