LINGUIST List 4.186

Sun 14 Mar 1993

Disc: Pro-drop

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

  • David Gil, subject pro-drop in Tagalog
  • , Re: 4.179 Pro-drop
  • "Larry G. Hutchinson", Re: 4.179 Pro-drop
  • Patrick Farrell, Pro-drop

    Message 1: subject pro-drop in Tagalog

     Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 13:09:28 SSsubject pro-drop in Tagalog
    From: David Gil <ELLGILDNUSVM.bitnet>
    Subject: subject pro-drop in Tagalog


    Matthew Dryer cites Gilligan as claiming that Tagalog has subject pro-drop and (very appropriately) solicits comments on this.

    I would argue that Tagalog has no subjects (cf. Paul Schachter and others on this issue); I would further argue that Tagalog has no pronouns, if what is meant by pronoun is a coherent syntactic category or subcategory.

    However, if we adopt a naive Anglocentric approach and analyze a sentence such as

    (1) Umalis na siya ACTOR.TOPIC:PERFECTIVE-leave ASPECT TOPIC:3:SINGULAR "He/she has left"

    as consisting of verb, aspectual enclitic, and "subject pronoun" "siya", then indeed the latter *CAN* be omitted, yielding the grammatical "subject" "pro-drop" sentence

    (2) Umalis na "(He/she) has left"

    So it would seem that on Tagalog, at least, Gilligan is wrong in about as many ways as it is possible to be wrong: a great pity, since the field is crying out for exactly his kind of typological work.

    David Gil National University of Singapore ellgildnusvm.bitnet

    Message 2: Re: 4.179 Pro-drop

    Date: 13 Mar 1993 15:40:06 -0500Re: 4.179 Pro-drop
    From: <GUNDELvx.cis.umn.edu>
    Subject: Re: 4.179 Pro-drop


    Patrick Farrell asks if there is any reason why English should not be considered a pro-drop language, just because omission of subject pronouns is restricted to main clauses and is less frequent than in other languages which are considered pro-drop. I'm sure someone must already have noted this (I haven't been following all the discussion on pro-drop), but I believe the main reason for not considering English to be pro-drop is that what looks superficially like pro-drop may in fact be something else. The fact that auxiliaries are sometimes dropped along with the subject pronoun and, most importantly, the fact that a pronoun cannot be dropped if an auxiliary (or something else) precedes it -unless whatever precedes it is dropped too is pretty strong evidence, it seems to me, that what is going on here isn't pro-drop but omission of unstressed, pragmatically recoverable material in sentence initial position. If we adopt this analysis, then the fact that omission of subjects is restricted to main clauses would follow automatically, as would the restriction to casual speech. So, my answer to the question -is there any reason not to consider English a pro-drop language is: yes, the reason is that there is another, more general and more satisfying explanation of the facts here.

    Jeanette Gundel

    Message 3: Re: 4.179 Pro-drop

    Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 00:03:35 CSRe: 4.179 Pro-drop
    From: "Larry G. Hutchinson" <hutchincs.umn.edu>
    Subject: Re: 4.179 Pro-drop


    I should like to suggest that the term "pro-DROP" is a misnomer. In what I should call "classical" pro-drop languages, what is marked is the PRESENCE of a pronoun. Ellipsis of sentence-initial stuff (such as subjects and auxiliaries) is an unrelated phenomenon.

    I am surprised that in all this discussion of "pro-drop" there are no references to "cross-reference." This is an old concept. Bloomfield was writing about it back in 1916.

    Message 4: Pro-drop

     Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 20:58:49 -0Pro-drop
    From: Patrick Farrell <pmfarrellucdavis.edu>
    Subject: Pro-drop


    In an earlier posting I asked if anyone knew of any arguments against recognizing null subject pronouns in colloquial English. Here is a line of argumentation FOR recognizing them. It parallels that found for a certain variety of null object pronouns in Italian (see Rizzi, L. 1986. "Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of pro," Linguistic Inquiry 17, 507-557). Assumptions: 1. Some languages have null pronouns, i.e. syntactically present pronouns with no phonological realization ("pro" in GB). 2. Reflexives must have a local c-commanding antecedent. 3. Predicate adjectives need to have a local c-commanding NP to be predicated of.

    Consider the following examples, which I take it are fine in the kind of speech contexts in which "eroded" subjects are possible.

    a. My brother seems to be losing it. Went and got himself arrested the other day. b. Slept naked again, I see. Better get up and get dressed.

    Now given assumptions 2 & 3, there must be a c-commanding subject pronoun at some level of syntactic representation in the positions of the missing pronouns in (a) and (b). For essentially the same reasons, Rizzi adopted an analysis according to which Italian has null object pronouns (under certain conditions). It seems equally reasonable to assume that English allows null subject pronouns (under certain conditions).

    Actually, however, we have two choices that should be made explicit: A. (a) and (b) have null subject pronouns at all levels of representation B. They have subject pronouns underlyingly which get deleted Now, the argument can be completed: Given assumption 1, choice A is preferable, all else being equal, since it allows a stronger theory, i.e. one in which there is only one theoretical mechanism for "missing" pronouns that can be shown to be syntactically visible. If a theory allows choice B in addition to choice A, say in order to maintain some claim about null pronouns that appears to be counterexemplified by colloquial English, it is considerably weakened, since allowing choice B essentially makes it possible in principle to maintain ANY claim about null pronouns. Potential counterexamples can always be considered to be pronoun deletions.

    Patrick Farrell (pmfarrellucdavis.edu)