Null Subjects Research Articles

Null Subject Occurrence in Monolingual Spanish SLI: A Discriminant Function Analysis

Background: Child Spanish-speakers appear to use more null subjects than do adults. Null subject use, like the use of tense marking, is sensitive to discourse-pragmatics. Because tense marking has been used to identify child Spanish-speakers with specific language impairment (SLI) with near good sensitivity and specificity (89%), null subject use may as well, following the predictions of the Interface Deficit Hypothesis. We investigate the possibility that null subject occurrence may form part of a useful discriminant function for the identification of monolingual child Spanish-speakers diagnosed with specific language impairment. Methods: We evaluate the rate of null subject expression from spontaneous production data, together with results from independent measures of another discourse-sensitive construction, verb finiteness, in child Spanish. We perform a discriminant function analysis, using null subject expression as a target variable, among others, to classify monolingual child Spanish-speakers (N = 40) as SLI or as typically-developing (TD). Results: The SLI group is shown to have significantly higher scores than the TD group on null subject expression. Multiple discriminant functions, including the null subject variable with tense measures, and in combination with mean length of utterance in words (MLUw), are shown to provide good sensitivity and specificity (<90%) in the classification of children as SLI vs. TD. Conclusion: Our findings support the contention that null subject occurrence is a plausible reflection of the Interface Deficit of SLI for Spanish-speaking children.

Subject Pronoun Expression in Santomean Portuguese

<p class="p1">Studies on Subject Pronoun Expression (SPE) in the Portuguese-speaking world have shown a distinction between European Portuguese, which is a Null Subject Language (NSL) with high rates of null subjects, and Brazilian Portuguese, which is controversially treated as a partial-NSL and exhibits a considerably lower rate of null subjects. No specific studies have been conducted on the matter on Santomean Portuguese, but we know that both null and overt subject personal pronouns exist in this variety of Portuguese. The objective of this paper is to investigate variation in SPE in Santomean Portuguese, and to situate this variety of Portuguese in comparison with other varieties. Results of the variationist analyses show that Santomean Portuguese patterns more like European Portuguese in its high rate of use of null subject. Interestingly, and contrary to previous studies, Santomeans with a higher level of education disfavor the use of null subject, which I relate to a sensitivity to grammatical ideology and the favoring of the overt subject in more formal situations. Most of the results regarding the linguistic predictors, which are stronger than the social predictors, relate Santomean Portuguese to other varieties of Portuguese, and to Spanish.

Aprofitar la gramàtica per millorar la redacció: els subjectes tàcits

En aquest treball es defensa la idea que la reflexió conscient sobre la gramàtica durant el procés educatiu contribueix a la millora i perfeccionament de l'ús de la llengua. En concret, l'aspecte que aquí s'aborda està relacionat amb el paper que exerceix el coneixement gramatical sobre l'alternança entre subjectes tàcits i subjectes explícits en el control i ús adequat de les relacions de referència i anàfora en el text escrit. Per a això, s'ofereix una selecció d'exemples amb errors de redacció i una proposta teòrica i pràctica, amb la qual es pretén demostrar que la incorporació d'algunes idees de l'anàlisi lingüística recent (teoria de l'accessibilitat) ajuda, juntament amb la creació de tasques pràctiques que reforcin la consciència gramatical, a millorar els mecanismes anafòrics que intervenen en la redacció d'un text.

Topic, Focus and null subjects in Old French

AbstractOld French subject pronouns (Spro) were omissible if postverbal (Foulet 1928), but not freely so (Vance 1997, Zimmermann 2014). This article addresses their partial omissibility in discourse-syntax terms, following work on partial null subject languages by Holmberg and Nikanne (2002) and Modesto (2008). An observational study of dialogic responses in 13th century prose romances is first reported, finding strong indications of covariation between the Topic/Focus status of an initial non-subject constituent and the expression/omission of post-verbal Spro. A quantitative investigation, in such texts, of preposed discourse-linked anaphoric constituents and preposed intensifiers, taken as diagnostic of Topichood and Focushood respectively, confirmed this analysis. We take null Spro to be available (i) when a null Topic operator targets left-peripheral TopicP, and (ii) with a left-peripheral Focused expression. When a discourse-linked non-subject constituent occupies TopicP, however, Spro must be overt.

Unspeakable sentences

AbstractThe empirical focus of this paper is register based subject omission in English. On the basis of a range of empirical data (including naturally occurring examples) the paper first dispels a number of common misconceptions about the phenomenon such as the idea that (i) this phenomenon is only restricted to diary style, (ii) only first person subjects can be omitted, (iii) the null subject is an instantiation of pro, (iv) the null subject is always uniquely identified in the context. The paper develops the cartographic analysis of register based subject omission proposed inHaegeman (2013)and based onRizzi’s (2006b)‘Privilege of the Root’ approach. A key ingredient of the analysis is the hypothesis that there is a specialized projection for the encoding of subjecthood (SubjP).

Revisiting the Null Subject Parameter: New Insights from Afro-Peruvian Spanish

With the advent of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), the prevailing view of linguistic variation and contrast within universal Grammar has undergone a shift from rigidly defined parameters ˗associated with clusters of properties (Chomsky 1981; Chomsky & Lasnik 1993)˗ to an approach in which features play a central role, are flexibly distributed, and originate in the lexicon, according to what Baker (2008) calls the Borer-Chomsky conjecture (Borer 1984; Chomsky 2001). A closer cross linguistic look at empirical data seems to support this change in focus. The Null Subject Parameter (NSP) (Chomsky 1981; Rizzi 1982), as originally formulated, had a number of shortcomings (cf. Huang 1994; Holmberg 2005). Within the realm of Spanish and Portuguese, two dialects that do not follow the predictions of the NSP are Dominican Spanish (DS) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The analysis of these varieties has led to the postulation of new hypotheses to account for their unexpected syntactic patterns (cf. Duarte 1993; Toribio 2000; Camacho 2008; etc.). The present study pays attention to yet another dialect of Spanish that does not conform to the NSP, Chinchano Spanish (CS), an Afro-Hispanic variety spoken in Chincha, Peru. In so doing, this paper provides an analysis of null and overt subjects that partially deviates from previous accounts of similar pro-drop phenomena. Additionally, this study proposes a model of contact-induced language transmission that explains why CS –as well as many other Afro-Hispanic languages of the Americas (AHLAs)– presents patterns that do not align this dialect with either null-subject languages (NSLs) like Italian or non-null-subject languages (NNSLs) like English.

Little pro’s, but how many of them? – On 3SG null pronominals in Hungarian

While Hungarian 3SG individual reference null pronominals are in free variation with their lexical counterparts, 3SG generic reference null pronominals do not show such variation. This follows from the fact that Hungarian 3SG generic null pronominals behave like bound variables, i.e. they always require a 3SG generic lexical antecedent in an adjacent clause. Both the 3SG generic lexical antecedent and the 3SG generic null pronominal must be in the scope of the GN operator, which is seated in SpeechActParticipantPhrase (SAPP), the leftmost functional projection of the left periphery in the sentence (see Alexiadou &amp; D’Alessandro, 2003; Bianchi, 2006). GN binds all occurrences of the generic variable in accessible worlds (see Moltmann 2006 for English one/oneself). These properties distinguish Hungarian from the four major types of Null Subject Languages identified by Roberts &amp; Holmberg (2010).

Formal issues in Afro-Hispanic morphosyntax: The Afro-Bolivian Spanish case

This study provides a formal analysis of certain aspects of Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS) morphosyntax that are relevant to both hypotheses on the origins of the Afro-Hispanic languages of the Americas (i.e., the Decreolization Hypothesis, Granda, 1968et seq) and theoretical proposals on the nature of cross-linguistic variation (i.e., Null Subject Parameter, NSP, Rizzi, 1982). Results suggest that the grammatical features under investigation can be conceived as the by-product of advanced second language acquisition processes, and do not necessarily imply any previous (de)creolization phase for ABS. In addition, the nature of our ABS data calls into question the validity of the NSP's universal predictions. For this reason, we account for the phenomena under study by adopting a theoretical framework that revisits the traditional notion of “parameter” in favor of a less rigid, minimalist model (Eguren et al., 2016), in which the locus of language variation is ascribed to lexical items and their clusters of features (Borer, 1984; Chomsky, 2001).

Frames of Reference and Antecedentless Anaphora in Spanish Conversation.

This study examines native Spanish speakers' use of anaphoric pronouns and null subjects in conversational discourse in the absence of coreferential antecedents. It also considers the adequacy of Gundel et al.'s proposal (Language 69(2):274-307, 1993) that the cognitive status "in focus" corresponds with speakers' use of minimal referring expressions (i.e., unstressed pronouns and zeros). Analysis of naturally occurring Spanish conversation shows how the felicitous use and interpretation of non-canonical (antecedentless) anaphoric pronouns and null subjects are possible due to the activation of underlying cognitive frames that are shared by the interlocutors. Furthermore, the speaker's mention of a referent, dubbed a "neighborhood antecedent" by Langacker (Conceptual grouping and pronominal anaphora, in: Fox (ed) Studies in anaphora, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), and the information "filled in" over the course of the conversation on account of the activation of relevant cognitive frames, both license and disambiguate the non-canonical anaphoric relations.

Faetar null subjects: a variationist study of a heritage language in contact

Abstract Faetar is an under-documented variety descended from Francoprovençal and spoken in two isolated Apulian villages in southern Italy as well as in the emigrant diaspora, especially in the Greater Toronto Area. Speakers use two series of subject pronouns (strong and weak pronouns), producing sentences with zero, one or two overt subject pronouns. The status of the overt forms as subject pronouns, emphatic pronouns, left- or right-dislocated pronouns, clitics, or affixes is not clear. Contrary to the predictions of the Null Subject Parameter hypothesis (Perlmutter 1971, Deep and surface structure constraints in syntax. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston; Chomsky 1981, Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris), these grammars have subject pronoun paradigms that are variable and conditioned by a number of linguistic factors (including person, tense, information status and subject type). This article delineates which aspects vary diachronically, spatially, or between individuals – a necessary prerequisite to constructing a theoretical model that accounts for this variation. By comparing the patterns of use in France, Italy, and Toronto, and using sources that span nearly a century, we see that despite the very small size of its speech community, Faetar shows little sign of accommodating to English’s virtually categorical presence of subject pronouns, nor to Italian’s high null subject (hereafter Ø-subject) rate, nor to the conditioning effects found in those languages.

Effects of age and education on variable but native heritage grammars: Theoretical and empirical implications for the Null Subject Parameter

AbstractIn this contribution, we investigate the impact of language-internal and language-external factors on the parametrized grammatical domain of (null) subjects in adult Italian heritage speakers (HS, n=16). Based on empirical evidence from correlation analyses comparing these speakers´ spontaneous speech to monolingual Italians (n=10), we determine the kind and extent of variation in monolingual and bilingual adult end-state grammars. We will show that there is indeed a significant variation in the null subject production of the HS related to the factorsageandeducationwhich is, however, constrained to contexts of 1stgrammatical person. This observation cannot be taken to represent incomplete acquisition but rather a discourse and possibly situation-related competent behaviour. We propose that end-state HS grammars are characterized by a full grammatical and pragmatic competence, combined with a larger variation of language-externally determined preferences than monolinguals show. This does not call the native end-state competence of HS into question but opens the door for potential changes in future bilingual generations. We further discuss the implications for language acquisition theory and language change in terms of stability.

Subjectless Sentences vs. Subjectless Clauses

The study is concerned with the contrastive analysis between the sentence and the clause level. It aims to investigate the usage of both subjectless sentences (independent clauses) and sentence-like construction (dependent clauses) in formal vs. informal language. The idea of subjectless is the focus of the analysis undertaken on selected samples, ranging from formal to informal language used in a presidential speech, a standup comedian’s monologue performance, an interview with a celebrity, and an episode of a TV series. Since English is a non-pro-drop language, then the study tries to answer the following questions: (1) why can we find instances of null subject on the sentence level. (2) How would null-subject for both sentences and clauses influence communication in different contexts?

Review of The Morphosyntax of Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America, by Mary A. Kato and Francisco Ordóñez (Eds.). New York: Oxford University Press

This volume, part of the series Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax, contains fourteen chapters, in addition to a foreword by the editors. It is devoted to the formal analysis of different aspects of American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish, while presenting their innovations with respect to their European counterparts. The papers collected have been presented at a meeting of the Romania Nova project and represent a wide range of topics in syntax, including null subjects and objects, complex predicates, clitics, and operator-variable constructions, besides one paper on morphology (truncated nominals). They explore these themes according to different theoretical assumptions and methodological tools.

The emergence of Brazilian Portuguese: earlier evidence for the development of a partial null subject Grammar

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth, BP) is currently analyzed as a partial null subject language (NSL). This work shows the earliest attested changes in the properties of null subjects in the Goias dialect of BP. We analyze original data from colonial period manuscripts written in Goias, a state located in Brazil's center-west region, and provide empirical evidence of the loss of null subjects in BP grammars in historical data between the 18th and 19th century, preceding the period for which these changes have been reported regarding other dialects of BP. The analysis of our 18th and 19th century corpus shows an early signifcant rise in the realization of overt subjects. In addition, the loss of verbsubject (VS) free inversion, a property common to NSLs, drops from 57% in the 18th century to only 22.5% in the 19th century. On the other hand, a potential impoverishment of the verbal paradigm did not play a signifcant role in this early rise of overt subjects: only 15% of the clauses with a plural external argument in the 19th century data did not show overt agreement between the verb and the external argument, and all of them occur strictly with unaccusative or existential verbs. We take this as evidence that the loss of null subjects in BP was primarily linked to the loss of free VS-inversion, and not to the loss of clausal agreement. We propose that D-feature in T (an EPP-feature) was valued by V-movement to T in the 18th century, yielding a consistent NSL. We argue that the loss of the requirement of the D-feature in T(tense) was a primary trigger for the partial loss of null subjects and parallel loss of free inversion from the 18th to the 19th century in Goias BP, giving then rise to a partial NSL (without a D-feature in T). --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2017.v13n2a14033

ORA ESTÁ, ORA NÃO ESTÁ: INPUT VARIÁVEL E AQUISIÇÃO DA FLEXÃO VERBAL DE 3ª PESSOA DO PLURAL NO PB

Este artigo investiga a percepcao do morfema flexional de 3a pessoa do plural em verbos e a compreensao da informacao de pluralidade veiculada por tal morfema por criancas adquirindo o PB, tendo em vista que a realizacao da flexao de numero mostra-se variavel nessa lingua, tanto no âmbito nominal quanto verbal. Estudos previos em diferentes linguas sugerem que, embora essa flexao seja produzida por volta dos tres anos de idade, ate os seis anos, criancas apresentam dificuldades na sua interpretacao em tarefas de compreensao (JOHNSON; DE VILLIERS; SEYMOR, 2005; PEREZ-LEROUX, 2005; LEGENDRE et al., 2010; BLAHOVA; SMOLIK, 2014). Na presente pesquisa, foi conduzido um estudo experimental, por meio de uma tarefa de selecao de imagens, buscando verificar se, (i) apesar do carater variavel da marcacao de numero no PB, criancas aos seis e aos cinco anos de idade identificam a forma verbal de 3a pessoa do plural em sentencas com sujeito nulo ( Comeram doce ); (ii) associam essa forma a uma acao praticada por mais de uma entidade e (iii) se a forma verbal no singular e associada ao conceito de singularidade ( Comeu doce ). Enunciados contendo a informacao redundante de numero no sujeito e no verbo tambem foram testados ( As criancas comeram doce vs. A crianca comeu doce ). Os resultados apontam para uma sistematicidade na escolha pela imagem congruente com os estimulos linguisticos no plural, apesar da preferencia pela imagem plural tambem nas sentencas no singular. A variabilidade identificada no input parece nao interferir na percepcao e na compreensao do morfema verbal de plural na faixa etaria avaliada. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2017.28498

Who is the agent? The influence of pragmatic leads on children's reference assignment in non-obligatory control

Non-obligatory control constructions (NOC) are sentences which contain a non-finite clause with a null subject whose reference is determined pragmatically. Little is known about how children assign reference to these subjects, yet this is important as our current understanding of reference-resolution development is limited to less complex sentences with overt elements, such as pronouns. This study explores how seventy-six children (aged six to eleven) consult pragmatic leads when assigning reference in two examples of NOC. Children undertook three picture-selection tasks, containing no lead, a weak lead, and a strong lead, and their reference choices in the critical sentences were monitored. The novel results pinpoint children's baseline interpretations of the ambiguous sentences and expose an age trend in the degree to which they consult strong pragmatic leads when resolving reference. These trends illustrate how reference assignment in more complex discourse-governed contexts progresses, thereby contributing an important dimension to the pragmatics acquisition literature.

On the interpretation of null arguments in L2 Japanese by European &lt;i&gt;non-pro-drop&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;pro-drop&lt;/i&gt; language speakers

We report that (i) European pro-drop language learners of Japanese as a foreign language (L1 Spanish) (pro-drop JFLs) allowed a sloppy interpretation of null arguments beginning at the primary stage of L2 development, and that (ii) European non-pro-drop JFL learners (non-pro-drop JFLs) did not permit a sloppy interpretation with null arguments even at an advanced level. Under Ishino’s (2012) framework, we argue that the results for the pro-drop JFLs follow from positive L1 transfer, given that Spanish, their first language, permits a sloppy interpretation with null subjects in some well-defined contexts (Duguine, 2013, 2014), and also that the non-pro-drop advanced JFLs’ availability of null arguments stems from the addition of a D-feature to the feature bundles of the target language.

The emergence of Brazilian Portuguese: Earlier evidence for the development of a partial null subject grammar

Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth, BP) is currently analyzed as a partial null subject language (NSL). This work shows the earliest attested changes in the properties of null subjects in the Goiás dialect of Brazilian Portuguese. We analyze original data from colonial period manuscripts written in Goiás, a state located in Brazil’s center-west region, and provide empirical evidence of the loss of null subjects in BP grammars in historical data between the 18th and 19th century, preceding the period for which these changes have been reported regarding other dialects of BP. The analysis of our 18th and 19th century corpus shows an early significant rise in the realization of overt subjects. In addition, the loss of verb-subject (VS) free inversion, a property common to NSLs, drops from 57% in the 18th century to only 22.5% in the 19th century. On the other hand, a potential impoverishment of theverbal paradigm did not play a significant role in this early rise of overt subjects: only 15% of the clauses with a plural external argument in the 19th century data did not show overt agreement between the verb and the external argument, and all of them occur strictly with unaccusative or existential verbs. We take this as evidence that the loss of null subjects in BP was primarily linked to the loss of free VS-inversion, and not to the loss of clausal agreement. We propose that D-feature in T (an EPP-feature) was valued by V-movement to T in the 18th century, yielding a consistent NSL (Holmberg 2010). We argue that the loss of the requirement of the D-feature in T(tense) was a primary trigger for the partial loss of null subjects and parallel loss of free inversion from the 18th to the 19th century in Goiás BP, giving then rise to a partial NSL (without a D-feature in T).

Morpho-syntactic properties of simultaneous bilingualism: Evidence from bilingual English-Turkish

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: A number of studies on the acquisition of non-null subject languages in child grammars have suggested that while overt subjects are mainly used with finite forms, null subjects co-occur with non-finite forms. The purpose of this study is to explore the proposed relationship between subject realization and verbal morphology in a simultaneous bilingual context. Design/Methodology/Approach: Longitudinal case study Data and Analysis: The present study analyses longitudinal data from an English-Turkish bilingual child (2;4–3;9), with special reference to the distribution of finite forms and the suppliance of overt subjects on the one hand, and subject drop and the use of non-finite forms, on the other. The English/Turkish data comprise 37 recordings collected regularly for nearly 18 months. Findings/Conclusions: English-Turkish bilingual data show that the majority of the overt subjects in the English language of the bilingual child occur both with inflected and uninflected verb forms. At a time the child has consistent and productive suppliance of overt subjects in his English, he uses uninflected verb forms with overt subjects, suggesting that the proposed association discussed in the literature does not necessarily hold. Moreover, around the same time the bilingual child’s Turkish presents robust evidence for the productive and systematic use of inflected forms as well as omission of subjects. Originality and significance/implications: These data, based on a less commonly studied language pair, English-Turkish, challenge previous research that postulates an association between overt subjects and finite forms versus null subjects and non-finite root forms. Overall, there appears to be a relationship between the acquisition of subject–verb agreement in the bilingual child’s Turkish and the correct suppliance of overt subjects in his English, suggesting language-particular devices for the realization of person deixis.

Reversing the Approach to Null Subjects: A Perspective from Language Acquisition.

This paper proposes a new model for null subjects, and focuses on its implications for language development. The literature on pro-drop generally considers that not allowing null subjects is, informally speaking, the “default” option in natural languages, and appeals to particular morphosyntactic mechanisms in order to account for those languages in which the subject can be omitted. Shifting the perspective, the inverse approach postulates that pro-drop is (almost) a default grammatical setting, and that non-pro-drop results from the intervention of independent factors that block pro-drop in the derivation. The paper explores the consequences of the inverse approach in the domain of language acquisition, arguing that this model allows to account for a number of properties of child languages. It opens an avenue of research worth exploring, one that could give new solutions to old problems.