Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Overextension in Gottscheerisch (negative) imperatives: Proclisis at the edge of the first phase Michael T. Putnam & Andrew D. Hoffman Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract Gottscheerisch, a Southern Bavarian heritage grammar from Koˇ cevje (Gottschee) in southern Slovenia, has existed in steady contact with Slovene for centuries, with arguably only negli- gible effects on its syntax with respect to the linear ordering of elements. An exception to this state- ment can be found in Gottscheerisch imperatives-in particular, negative imperatives-where this German-based dialect patterns with Slovene. Following Aboh (2015), we propose that this contact- induced change is simultaneously a case of pattern and feature transmission that can be captured in a straightforward and conceptually appealing manner. Adopting a late-insertion derivational ap- proach to morphosyntax, we show how separable prefixes (p-elements) exhibit clitic climbing-like behavior to the edge of the first (v P) phase. Finally, we sketch out an analysis of the overextension of Slovene-like (negative) imperatives in Gottscheerisch in connection with the complex nature of V2. Keywords Language contact · Syntactic change · Post-syntactic morphology · Gottscheerisch · Negation · Proclisis · Separable Prefixes · Germanic · Slavic · Slovene · Cyclicity · Reprojection 1 Introduction Recent treatments of syntactic properties of heritage languages-and in language contact scenarios more generally-suggest that the syntactic properties of these grammars remain ostensibly immune to rapid, large-scale changes or attrition (e.g., for an overview of this position see Polinsky (2018) and Lohndal (2021)). Based on this body of research, a reasonable hypothesis to entertain is that when/if syntactic change does occur in these grammars it will likely (1) be highly conservative, targeting only a finite domain; (2) be small-scale in scope and application; and (3) result in the amplification-or recycling -of already existing properties in the less dominant grammar in the contact dyad (see, e.g., Putnam and Schwarz (2014), Kupisch (2014), Hopp and Putnam (2015), and Polinsky (2018)). Adopting the Minimalist proposal that functional categories and their accompanying formal features are the locus of parametric variation across languages (Chomsky 1995), Aboh (2015) presents two possible outcomes, sketched out in (1). 1 Michael T. Putnam Penn State University, 239 Burrowes Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA E-mail: mike.putnam@psu.edu 1 Heine and Kuteva (2005, 81) propose a similar model that systematically captures contact-induced gram- maticalization (or change) involving a feature or structure from the model grammar (M) transferring to the replica language (R) involving the following mechanisms: