Partial Null-subject Languages Research Articles

D-features or ellipsis in null subject licensing? Evidence from Brazilian and European Portuguese

Abstract Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564) and its revised version in Holmberg et al. (Holmberg, Anders, Aarti Nayudu & Michelle Sheehan. 2009. Three partial null-subject languages: A comparison of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, and Marathi. Studia Linguistica 63(1). 59–97) derive the availability of null subjects in a given language from the interaction between T with/without a D(efiniteness)-feature and the features of subject pronouns. Their theory predicts the existence of consistent null subject languages, whose T has the D-feature, and partial null subject languages, whose T lacks the D-feature. This paper examines this D-feature approach to null subjects against the empirical evidence provided by Brazilian Portuguese, a partial null subject language, and European Portuguese, a consistent null subject language, showing that it cannot account for the range of microvariation observed with respect to different null subject pronouns and the type of T (finite vs. participle vs. gerund). We argue that, in comparison, the ellipsis account of null subject licensing put forward in Martins and Nunes (Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes. 2021. Brazilian and European Portuguese and Holmberg’s 2005 typology of null subject languages. In Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen & Luisa Meroni (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2018. Selected papers from “Going Romance” 32, Utrecht, 171–190. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins) fares better. It retains from Holmberg (Holmberg, Anders. 2005. Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36(4). 533–564 et seq.) the insight that the licensing of null subjects depends on the interaction between the features of T and the features of subject pronouns but resorts only to ϕ-features and Case. Crucially, it relies on the (theoretically and empirically) plausible assumption that the relation between abstract ϕ-features and verbal agreement morphology need not be transparent.

Overt and Covert Subjects in Uyghur: Not the same thing

Overt nominative-marked indexicals in Uyghur attitude reports are known to undergo obligatory shifting and trigger matching agreements. This paper challenges the prevailing view that the covert subject is parallel to its overt nominative counterpart. We evaluate several hypotheses that consider covert subjects to be true indexicals, but we find that none of them can fully explain all the observed readings. Drawing inspiration from previous studies on null subject licensing in Partial Null Subject languages, we suggest that the covert subject in Uyghur functions as an anaphor, while the overt subject is an indexical. The recognition of their differences opens up the possibility of associating Uyghur covert subjects with other non-indexical elements, thereby contributing to our understanding of indexical shift.

What May Statistics Tell Us About Null Subjects in Russian?

The article highlights the linguistic phenomenon of abandoning the expletively presented syntactic subject (the Null Subject Phenomenon) in different languages and focuses on its exemplification by the Russian language. It is shown that despite the existing number of studies on this issue, there is lack of precisely formulated criteria that determine the choice of linguistic means to represent a syntactic subject in the languages, which allow both options (partial null subject languages). Based on the discussion of literature on the topic and on the statistical analysis of 16,718 sentence samples from the spoken language, print journalism, and fiction subcorpora of the Russian National Corpus, the article argues that the choice between null and overt subjects in Russian sentences depends on factors such as tense, person, and style, but that this dependency is rather weak, owing to the fact that the Russian language system is now in the process of change. Null-subjectness is not an exclusive syntactic parameter and should be studied along with other aspects like semantics and pragmatics. The statistical data from this study support previously discussed diachronic and acquisition data, and confirm that languages do not nicely distribute themselves into distinct groups, but inhabit a constantly changing continuum.

Narrow scoping content question items in shifty contexts: A case of surprising non-quotation in Uyghur

This paper analyses finite (indexically shifted) complements in Uyghur with narrow scoping content question items. Using novel data, this paper discusses the distribution of null subjects in Uyghur, which can be licensed without a controlle in embedded clauses except for interrogative intensional complements. I argue, following Suñer (1993), that complements with interrogative intensional interpretations (containing narrow scoping content question items) are syntactically larger than their extensional counterparts, containing a Force phrase (ForceP). Following Holmberg et al. (2009)’s theory of null subject licensing, I argue that Uyghur is a partial null subject language in which the heads of referential CPs contain a valued [D] feature which can check with the unvalued [uD] feature on typically controlled pronouns (in the Holmberg et al. 2009 sense), resulting in an interpretation in which the embedded (null) subject is not coreferent with a controller but rather some discourse provided individual. Referential CPs cannot be embedded directly under ForcePs, and so complements with narrow scoping content question items, which I take to be ForcePs, ban this kind of null subject.

Null subjects in contemporary Brazilian filmic speech

The present research, based on a corpus of contemporary Brazilian filmic speech – Urban Carioca Sub-Corpus from the I-Fala Corpus of Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research (DE ROSA et al., 2017) –, illustrates how Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has undergone a process of change regarding the representation of referential subjects. A preference for overt pronominal subjects is on the rise, thus transitioning contemporary Brazilian Portuguese from a null subject language to a partial null subject language. The current paper revisits De Rosa (2017), this time including third person subjects and using actual film dialogue transcriptions rather than scripts. The occurrence of null and overt subjects in the corpus is discussed both quantitatively and qualitatively. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SUJEITOS NULOS NA FALA FÍLMICA BRASILEIRA CONTEMPORÂNEAO presente contributo, baseado numa amostra de fala fílmica brasileira contemporânea – Urban Carioca Sub-Corpus do I-Fala: Corpus of Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research (DE ROSA et al., 2017) –, propõe-se observar o processo de transformação que está atingindo o português brasileiro (PB) que está perdendo, à luz de toda uma série de mudanças linguísticas, as caraterísticas de uma língua de sujeito nulo. Nesse contributo, revisitamos De Rosa (2017), incluindo os sujeitos de terceira pessoa, sempre com o objetivo de registrar, em termos quantitativos e qualitativos, a presença do sujeito pleno nos diálogos fílmicos analisados e de confrontar os resultados com os dados da fala espontânea.---Original em inglês.

Os sujeitos de 3ª pessoa na fala fílmica brasileira

Abstract – In this paper, based on a corpus of contemporary Brazilian film dialogues (the Sub-Corpus Carioca Urbano , Corpus I-Fala, Luso-Brazilian Film Dialogues as a resource for L1 & L2 Learning and Linguistic Research; De Rosa et alii 2017), we will discuss the presence and use of 3rd person referential subjects within the wider framework of the changes that are affecting Brazilian Portuguese, the latter being today considered a partial null-subject language. The study, based on Duarte (2012), analysed only referential pronominal subjects (overt or null) in finite sentences by focussing on two things. First of all, we considered mainly the semantic traits [±human] and [±specific], given that, according to the referential hierarchy proposed by Cyrino, Duarte and Kato (2000), referentiality has translinguistic relevance in pronominalization. Next, following Barbosa, Duarte and Kato (2005), we analysed their “sentential pattern”, i.e., the syntactic accessibility and functions of the antecedents.

Proas a Minimal nP: Toward a Unified Approach to Pro-Drop

In this article, I examine the properties of the partial null subject languages (NSLs) when compared with the consistent and the discourse pro-drop languages and argue that the same basic mechanism underlies pro-drop in partial as well as discourse pro-drop: namely, null NP anaphora, as originally proposed in Tomioka 2003 for discourse pro-drop. The two sets of languages show a correlation between the occurrence of null arguments and the availability of a bare nominal in argument position. I suggest that the null element is a default, minimally specified nominal—the same item that arguably appears as a complement of D in pronouns. It is a proform that minimally consists of the categorizing head n, lacking a root, the meaning of which is ‘entity’ (a property that is trivially true of any individual in the domain). nP introduces a variable that may be bound under Existential Closure, yielding the impersonal interpretation; otherwise, its denotation is type-shifted to an individual (ɩ) under the appropriate conditions. The crosslinguistic differences found in the interpretation of the null subject depend on the resources available in particular languages for application of ɩ type-shifting: the (bare NP) languages that lack such resources only have quasi-argumental and impersonal null subjects (semi pro-drop languages). Finally, I show that the idea that pro reduces to [nPe] can also be successfully extended to the consistent NSLs, provided it is assumed that, in this type of NSL, the head bearing agreement morphology bears a D-feature and interpretable ϕ-features.

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.

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

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).

Nullsubjekte im Mittelniederdeutschen

Abstract In spite of growing interest in recent years, the syntax of Middle Low German (MLG) remains an extremely underresearched area. In light of recent research showing early North West Germanic languages to be partial null subject languages (Axel 2005; Walkden 2014; Kinn 2016; Volodina/Weiß 2016), the question arises where MLG is positioned in this respect. The present article presents novel data showing that MLG had referential null subjects (RNS) and can be classified as a partial null subject language. Based on a quantitative and qualitative corpus analysis of their syntactic distribution, we argue that two types of RNS must be distinguished in MLG, null topics in SpecCP and null clitics on C.

Diacronia e sujeito nulo no português brasileiro: um estudo comparativo

Nesse trabalho foi elaborado um estudo comparativo-diacrônico a respeito do uso do sujeito nulo no PB e no PE, a partir de um corpus composto por jornais que circularam na primeira e segunda metade do século 19 e na primeira metade do século 20 nas cidades de Ouro Preto no Estado de Minas Gerais/Brasil e na cidade de Évora no Distrito de Évora/ Portugal. Os jornais utilizados para este estudo foram os seguintes: O Recreador Mineiro (1845-1848); O Jornal Mineiro (1897-1900) e Tribuna de Ouro Preto (1945-1948) no Brasil e Illustração luzo-brasileira (1856-1858); O Manuelinho de Évora (1890-1898) e Notícias de Évora (1945-1948). Para efetuar as descrições dos fenômenos estudados, foram analisadas mais de 14 mil sentenças desse corpus. Nosso objetivo neste artigo foi o de averiguar e descrever a relação entre o sujeito nulo na diacronia do PB, através de um estudo comparativo com dados do PE. Os resultados quantitativos mostraram que a gramática do PB teria sofrido uma mudança no que diz respeito ao uso de sujeito nulo: perdido a característica de uma língua de sujeito nulo consistente e adquirido propriedades de uma língua com sujeito nulo parcial. Verificou-se nos dados um alto preenchimento do sujeito com o decorrer do tempo por meio de uma estratégia que denominamos de Sujeito Lexical Anáforico. A mudança de gramática de sujeito nulo entre o PB e o PE foi constatada em nossos dados à medida que o número de sujeito nulos encontrados em PE permaneceu com alta frequência de uso em todos os períodos e ambientes sintáticos analisados. Além disso, o PE não apresentou qualquer necessidade de uso de estratégias de preenchimento como foi atestado em PB. A realização do sujeito nulo com primeira pessoa apresentou um comportamento diferenciado do sujeito nulo de terceira pessoa nos dados do PB, o que reforça a hipótese de o PB ser uma língua de sujeito nulo parcial.

Null Subjects in Swabian

AbstractFew studies have investigated referential null subjects in present‐day non‐standard varieties of German. This paper explores the distribution of 4,000 null and overt referential subjects in finite clauses in a new corpus of spoken Swabian, a North Alemannic dialect spoken in Southwest Germany. The paper describes Swabian subject use as it emerges from the corpus data with regard to morphological form, syntactic distribution, reference and informational status. Swabian, unlike Standard German, allows and in some cases prefers clause‐internal referential subjects to be null, whilst in other contexts, referential null subjects are ruled out. There is a robust second person null‐subject property, with 61% of 2nd singular subject pronouns being dropped clause‐internally, i.e. from a position following the finite verb in main clauses or following a complementiser in embedded clauses. 1st singular and 3rd singular neuter subjects are dropped clause‐internally as well, but at much lower frequencies and only in very specific phonological and lexical constellations, not previously noted in the literature. The empirical findings are compared with an earlier unquantified study of Swabian (Haag‐Merz 1996) and discussed in light of other work on present‐day Germanic vernaculars and previous accounts of partial null subject languages.

Null subjects in Old English

AbstractThe possibility of referential null subjects in Old English has been the subject of conflicting assertions. Hulk and van Kemenade (1995:245) stated that “the phenomenon of referentialpro-drop does not exist in Old English,” but van Gelderen (2000:137) claimed that “Old English has pro-drop.” This paper presents a systematic quantitative investigation of referential null subjects in Old English, drawing on the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE; Taylor, Warner, Pintzuk, & Beths, 2003) and the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry (YCOEP; Pintzuk & Plug, 2001). The results indicate substantial variation between texts. In those texts that systematically exhibit null subjects, these are much rarer in subordinate clauses, with first- and second-person null subjects also being rare. I argue that the theory of identification of null subjects by rich verbal agreement is not sufficient to explain the Old English phenomenon, and instead I develop an account based on Holmberg's (2010) analysis of partial null subject languages.

Parametric variation: Null subjects in minimalist theory (review)

Reviewed by: Parametric variation: Null subjects in minimalist theory Barbara Citko Parametric variation: Null subjects in minimalist theory. By Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts, and Michelle Sheehan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. v, 368. ISBN 9780521886956. $110. Parametric variation is a case study in parametric approaches to crosslinguistic variation, as well as an argument in favor of such an approach. It frames the discussion of parameters around various types of null-subject languages (NSLs) and the null-subject parameter (NSP) as the parameter governing their crosslinguistic distribution. The choice of the parameter is very timely; the NSP is arguably one of the most studied parameters to date, but, as the authors acknowledge in the introduction, its status remains highly controversial. The questions that feature prominently throughout the volume are: (i) How do languages differ with respect to what kinds of empty subjects they allow? (ii) How is the extended projection principle satisfied in NSLs? (iii) What does null subjecthood correlate with? (iv) What is the status of parameters in the grammar? and (v) What is the organization of parameters in the grammar? The book starts with an introduction by Ian Roberts and Anders Holmberg. The first part of the introduction gives an overview of the research on null subjects, starting with Apollonius Dyscolus’s observations about Ancient Greek, and sets the scene for the chapters in the volume. The second part turns to the debates surrounding the NSP, and the third part examines the nature of parameters themselves and the architecture of the grammar that contains them. It discusses and counters the arguments that have been levied in the literature against the concept of parameters, focusing on Newmeyer (2004, 2005), to whose criticism the authors respond in most detail, defending a parametric approach against Newmeyer’s rule-based approach or Hawkins’s (2004) performance-based approach. Ch. 1, ‘A deletion analysis of null subjects’ by Roberts, poses the question of whether the subject position in NSLs is occupied by an empty element or remains empty, with the extended projection principle (EPP) feature being checked by rich inflection. Building on Holmberg 2005, Roberts argues against the latter approach, since on minimalist assumptions, null subjects cannot be licensed by features of rich inflectional heads, as these features are not specified in the lexicon and themselves need to be licensed (by features of the subject). He considers the possibility that null subjects undergo incorporation to T, which he treats as a type of Agree between a Probe and a defective Goal containing a proper subset of the features of the Probe, building on his analysis of Romance clitics (cf. Roberts 2010). Ultimately, however, he rejects such an account in favor of a deletion-based one. [End Page 881] Ch. 2, ‘Null subject parameters’ by Holmberg, starts with Rizzi’s (1982) formulation of the NSP, which distinguished different types of NSLs by positing different types of pronominal inflection, but Holmberg reinterprets it as a difference in whether T has an uninterpretable D feature or not, and uses this to capture the distinction between consistent NSLs, such as Italian, and partial NSLs, such as Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Icelandic, or Marathi. To derive the two types of null subjects, Holmberg resorts to two mechanisms: Roberts-style incorporation and deletion. Consistent NSLs for him involve incorporation of a defective pronoun lacking a D feature into T. The D feature of T is valued by the null Aboutness-shift topic of the kind proposed by Frascarelli (2007). Partial NSLs, by contrast, do not have a D feature in T, which captures the indefinite interpretation of null subjects in such languages. Holmberg extends the proposal to capture the differences between Icelandic (a partial NSL) and Mainland Scandinavian languages (non-NSLs). Since in both types of languages T lacks D features, further microparameters are necessary. These lie in what types of phi-features reside in T, whether the EPP is checked by the element that values T’s phi-features, and whether the specifier of TP has to be filled by an overt element. The resulting system involves many ‘null-subject microparameters’, captured as features of T heads. Ch. 3, ‘Control into finite clauses in partial null-subject...

Pro‐drop and Theories ofproin the Minimalist Program Part 2: Pronoun Deletion Analyses of Null Subjects and Partial, Discourse and Semipro‐drop

This article reviews the recent theories of pro-drop that explore the hypothesis that pro is a pronoun that is deleted in Phonetic Form (Holmberg 2005; Roberts 2010b). Since most of the empirical arguments given in favor of this hypothesis come from the partial null-subject languages, we discuss the distinctive properties of this set of languages as opposed to the (rich agreement) consistent null-subject languages. The pattern of pro-drop found in the partial null-subject languages has features in common with discourse pro-drop, which is found in languages that lack agreement (Huang 1984). Among the analyses that have been proposed in the literature on discourse pro-drop is the hypothesis that it reduces to null-NP anaphora (Tomioka 2003). This hypothesis relates discourse pro-drop with the availability of bare NPs in argument position. Here, the possibility of extending the null-NP anaphora analysis to the partial null-subject languages is considered. The article ends with a discussion of yet a fourth type of pro-drop language, the semipro-drop languages, in the light of recent developments concerning the Extended Projection Principle (Biberauer 2010; Wurmbrand 2006).

Is There a Little Pro? Evidence from Finnish

The traditional view of the null subject as pro identified by Agr (the φ-features of I) cannot be maintained in a theory where Agr is uninterpretable. Two hypotheses are compared with regard to the predictions they make for Finnish null subject constructions: (A) Agr is interpretable in null subject languages, and pro is therefore redundant; (B) null subjects are specified but unpronounced pronouns that assign values to the uninterpretable features of Agr. Since Finnish observes the Extended Projection Principle and has an expletive pronoun, Hypothesis A predicts that null subjects should cooccur with expletives. The prediction is false, favoring B over A. A typology of null subjects is proposed: Null bound pronouns and null generic pronouns in partial null subject languages, including Finnish, are D-less φ, and so are null subjects in consistent null subject languages with Agr, such as Spanish and Greek. Null 1st and 2nd person subjects in Finnish are DPs that are deleted. Null pronouns in languages without Agr, such as Chinese and Japanese, are the only true instances of pro, a minimally specified null noun.