The degree and timing of Germanic influence on Old French syntax has long been in dispute: subject pronoun use and inversion in interrogatives and non-subject initial affirmatives is thought to be of Germanic origin.

This paper investigates why subject pronoun use and inversion in negative clauses is not found in Old French, since it is shown that older Germanic languages had this trait. West Frankish Old High German positioned pronoun subjects in negated clauses after a ni + finite verb initial complex. However, an examination of Gothic data taken from alterations to the syntax of the Gothic Bible indicates that, at the time of the Salian Frankish invasions of Northern France, negative inversion was not yet a Germanic trait. It was already well-established in West Frankish Old High German sources roughly contemporaneous with the Carolingian period. Further support for this position is found in the lack of negative inversion, despite V2 order, in Northern Italian dialects.

It is concluded that an early date for Frankish contact-induced change in prehistoric Old French fits the available evidence regarding the use of postposed subject pronouns.