Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language (from 'pronoun-dropping') is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are pragmatically or grammatically inferable (the precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate). The phenomenon of 'pronoun-dropping' is also commonly referred to as zero or null anaphora. In the case of pro-drop languages, null anaphora refers to the fact that the null position has referential properties, meaning it is not a null dummy pronoun. Pro-drop is only licensed in languages that have a positive setting of the pro-drop parameter, which allows the null element to be identified by its governor. In pro-drop languages with a highly inflected verbal morphology, the expression of the subject pronoun is considered unnecessary because the verbal inflection indicates the person and number of the subject, thus the referent of the null subject can be inferred from the grammatical inflection on the verb. A pro-drop language (from 'pronoun-dropping') is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are pragmatically or grammatically inferable (the precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate). The phenomenon of 'pronoun-dropping' is also commonly referred to as zero or null anaphora. In the case of pro-drop languages, null anaphora refers to the fact that the null position has referential properties, meaning it is not a null dummy pronoun. Pro-drop is only licensed in languages that have a positive setting of the pro-drop parameter, which allows the null element to be identified by its governor. In pro-drop languages with a highly inflected verbal morphology, the expression of the subject pronoun is considered unnecessary because the verbal inflection indicates the person and number of the subject, thus the referent of the null subject can be inferred from the grammatical inflection on the verb. Even though in everyday speech there are instances when who or what is being referred to can be inferred from context, non-pro-drop languages still require the pronoun. However, pro-drop languages allow those referential pronouns to be omitted, or be phonologically null. Among major languages, two which might be called pro-drop languages are Japanese and Korean (featuring pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts). Chinese, Slavic languages, and American Sign Language also exhibit frequent pro-drop features. In contrast, non-pro-drop is an areal feature of many northern European languages (see Standard Average European), including French, (standard) German, English and Emilian. Some languages might be considered only partially pro-drop in that they allow deletion of the subject pronoun. These null-subject languages include most Romance languages (French is an exception) as well as all the Balto-Slavic languages and to a limited extent Icelandic. Colloquial and dialectal German, unlike the standard language, are also partially pro-drop; they typically allow deletion of the subject pronoun in main clauses without inversion, but not otherwise. The term 'pro-drop' stems from Noam Chomsky's 'Lectures on Government and Binding' from 1981 as a cluster of properties of which 'null subject' was one (for the occurrence of pro as a predicate rather than a subject in sentences with the copula see Moro 1997). Thus, a one-way correlation was suggested between inflectional agreement (AGR) and empty pronouns on the one hand and between no agreement and overt pronouns, on the other. It is worth noting that in the classical version, languages which not only lack agreement morphology but also allow extensive dropping of pronouns—such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese—are not included, as is made clear in a footnote: 'The principle suggested is fairly general, but does not apply to such languages as Japanese in which pronouns can be missing much more freely.' (Chomsky 1981:284, fn 47). The term pro-drop is also used in other frameworks in generative grammar, such as in lexical functional grammar (LFG), but in a more general sense: 'Pro-drop is a widespread linguistic phenomenon in which, under certain conditions, a structural NP may be unexpressed, giving rise to a pronominal interpretation.' (Bresnan 1982:384). The empty category assumed (under government and binding theory) to be present in the vacant subject position left by pro-dropping is known as pro, or as 'little pro' (to distinguish it from 'big PRO', an empty category associated with non-finite verb phrases).