Agreement and pro-drop in some dialects of English

Abstract

In this paper, we consider data from a number of English dialects in which the distribution of pronouns and verb inflection differs radically from that in standard English. In these dialects, pronouns adjacent to the verb occur with an uninflected form of the verb, at least for some types of subjects and some subset of verbs. Pronouns that are separated from the verb or immediately follow it, on the other hand, occur with an inflected verb form. We provide an analysis of these constructions within lexical-functional grammar (LFG) in which the pronouns occurring with the uninflected form are analyzed as pro-clitics to the verb. Given this analysis of pronouns as verbal inflection, the constructions in which they occur lack an overt subject and can hence be referred to as pro-drop constructions. We examine a property that has frequently been associated with pro-drop languages - the COMP-trace effect - but find the link between the two properties too weak to be relevant to our discussion. Finally, we consider briefly the implications of the LFG analysis of this phenomenon for diachronic aspects of the data