Pro-drop Language Research Articles

Why we can be you: The use of 1st person plural forms with hearer reference in English and Spanish

This article focuses on the phenomenon of 1st person plural forms being used with hearer reference, e.g. a teacher saying to his/her students “We’re going to be quiet now” in Spanish (a pro-drop language) and English (a non-pro-drop language), paying attention to both contrasts and similarities between them. The physical persons involved in interaction (speaker and hearer) are distinguished from the discursive roles (addresser and addressee). While coinciding by default, in some cases the interpretation of the 1st person plural forms shifts towards the addressee, thus triggering a hearer-dominant reading. On the one hand, this shift is argued to be not merely a matter of contextual interpretation, but to be triggered by linguistic elements, such as vocatives, interrogative speech acts and tense. On the other hand, the politeness judgment of this strategy is questioned in the light of various (im)politeness theories and a plea is made for taking into account the broader linguistic and non-linguistic context of the utterance. While the hearer-dominant reading occurs both in English and in Spanish, there appear to be differences as to the impact of the subject pronoun and the position of the strategy within the address system as a whole.

DP Ellipsis as Independent Phenomena from pro in pro-drop Languages

Previous studies proposed that there is no CP ellipsis in English (Kennedy and Merchant 2000) and Korean (Ahn and Cho 2009, 2010, cf. Park 2009). In particular, Ahn and Cho (2009, 2010) suggested that apparent CP ellipsis in Korean be in fact DP ellipsis (null realization of DPs in more neutral terms), which is subsumed to pro-drop in Korean. Specifically, Ahn and Cho (2010) make it clear that there is no genuine DP ellipsis in Korean and apparent DP ellipsis is explained with pro. However, close examination of other data reveals that this is not always the case; considering sentences with reflexives, NPIs, indefinite DPs and free choice DPs, we claim that Korean has both pro with no internal structure and DP ellipsis with an internal structure in the ellipsis site, which explain frequent zero realization of argument DPs in many constructions. We propose that the DP contained in the target clause undergoes partial deletion - the DP is stripped of phonological and semantic features only - when it is identical with the one in the antecedent clause. That is, the internal structure remains intact in the ellipsis site. As to the interpretation of the null argument, we propose that the ellipsis site is filled in with semantic features by overt nominals in the antecedent clause and obtains interpretation at LF (cf. Oku 1998, Saito 2007).

Arabic Natural Language Processing

The Arabic language presents researchers and developers of natural language processing (NLP) applications for Arabic text and speech with serious challenges. The purpose of this article is to describe some of these challenges and to present some solutions that would guide current and future practitioners in the field of Arabic natural language processing (ANLP). We begin with general features of the Arabic language in Sections 1, 2, and 3 and then we move to more specific properties of the language in the rest of the article. In Section 1 of this article we highlight the significance of the Arabic language today and describe its general properties. Section 2 presents the feature of Arabic Diglossia showing how the sociolinguistic aspects of the Arabic language differ from other languages. The stability of Arabic Diglossia and its implications for ANLP applications are discussed and ways to deal with this problematic property are proposed. Section 3 deals with the properties of the Arabic script and the explosion of ambiguity that results from the absence of short vowel representations and overt case markers in contemporary Arabic texts. We present in Section 4 specific features of the Arabic language such as the nonconcatenative property of Arabic morphology, Arabic as an agglutinative language, Arabic as a pro-drop language, and the challenge these properties pose to ANLP. We also present solutions that have already been adopted by some pioneering researchers in the field. In Section 5 we point out to the lack of formal and explicit grammars of Modern Standard Arabic which impedes the progress of more advanced ANLP systems. In Section 6 we draw our conclusion.

Gender Bender: Gender Errors in L2 Pronoun Production

To address questions about information processing at the message level, pronoun errors of second language (L2) speakers of English were studied. Some L2 pronoun errors-he/she confusions by Spanish speakers of L2 English-could be due to differences in the informational requirements of the speakers' two languages, providing a window into the composition of the preverbal message that guides grammatical encoding during language production. To study this, Spanish and French speakers of L2 English were made to answer questions designed to elicit pronouns. Spanish speakers produced significantly more gender errors than any other type of pronoun error, and significantly more gender errors than French speakers. The results are as expected given that Spanish is a pro-drop language where many sentences would not have required gender to be encoded had they been uttered in the L1 instead of the L2. The implications for theories about the preverbal message are discussed.

Two kinds of subjectpro

Abstract. This paper discusses evidence that reinforces previous proposals (Barbosa 1995, 2000, Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998, Pollock 1997, Kato 1999) that there is no EPP feature driven subject movement to pre-verbal position in the Romance consistent Null Subject Languages (NSL). The paper argues that this property distinguishes European Portuguese (EP), a consistent NSL, not only from the non-NSLs (French or English) but also from a closely related partial pro-drop language such as Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In line with a long tradition of research on the topic, the absence of EPP feature driven XP movement to Spec-TP is attributed to properties of “rich” agreement morphology. The paper develops an analysis of this phenomenon within the Agree based framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2005) as modified in Pesetsky & Torrego (2004a, b). In the analysis proposed here, pro is a minimally specified nominal whose unvalued φ-features are valued in the course of the derivation. Another consequence of this paper concerns partial pro-drop. The analysis of pro proposed here for the consistent NSLs doesn’t apply to the null subject in BP. In fact, our conclusion that subjects raise in BP may be seen as indirect confirmation of Holmberg’s findings regarding null subjects in Finnish where there is clear evidence for raising. Consequently, the null subject found in the consistent NSLs is of a different kind from that found in partial pro-drop languages, such as BP or Finnish.

Extending partial pro-drop in Modern Hebrew: A comprehensive analysis

Modern Hebrew is considered to be a 'partial pro-drop language'. Traditionally, the distinction between cases where pro-drop is licensed and those in which it is prohibited, was based on the person and tense features of the verb: 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects may be omitted in past and future tense. This generalization, however, was found to be false in a number of papers, each discussing a subset of the data. Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, dropped 3rd person pronouns subjects do occur in the language in particular contexts. Identifying these contexts by way of a corpus-based survey is the initial step taken in this study. Subsequently, a careful syntactic analysis of the data reveals broad generalizations which have not been made to date. Thus, what was initially assumed to be a uniform phenomenon of 3rd person pro-drop turns out to be manifested in three distinct types of constructions. Finally, the proposed HPSG-based analysis incorporates insights concerning locality, correlations between finite and non-finite control, non-canonical elements, and binding.

The role of the overt expression of first and second person subject in Japanese

While much attention has previously been paid to the well-known phenomenon of subject omission in Japanese, the flip side of the same phenomenon – namely, cases where the subjects are overtly expressed, in particular even in typical environments for the omission – has been neglected in the literature of Japanese linguistics. Focusing on first and second person subjects, the current study details the role of their overt use in conversations, and shows that in addition to the function in discourse contexts, such as ‘contrastiveness’ and ‘emphasis’, the overt expression of first and second person subjects is a useful tool to index the speaker's social relationship with the other participant, such as social difference or intimacy. This is particularly important for a group of pro-drop languages like Japanese and Korean, in which the expression of difference is the norm and a variety of personal references play a significant role in expressing such difference, as well as intimacy.

Modeling the Developmental Patterning of Finiteness Marking in English, Dutch, German, and Spanish Using MOSAIC

In this study, we apply MOSAIC (model of syntax acquisition in children) to the simulation of the developmental patterning of children's optional infinitive (OI) errors in 4 languages: English, Dutch, German, and Spanish. MOSAIC, which has already simulated this phenomenon in Dutch and English, now implements a learning mechanism that better reflects the theoretical assumptions underlying it, as well as a chunking mechanism that results in frequent phrases being treated as 1 unit. Using 1, identical model that learns from child-directed speech, we obtain a close quantitative fit to the data from all 4 languages despite there being considerable cross-linguistic and developmental variation in the OI phenomenon. MOSAIC successfully simulates the difference between Spanish (a pro-drop language in which OI errors are virtually absent) and obligatory subject languages that do display the OI phenomenon. It also highlights differences in the OI phenomenon across German and Dutch, 2 closely related languages whose grammar is virtually identical with respect to the relation between finiteness and verb placement. Taken together, these results suggest that (a) cross-linguistic differences in the rates at which children produce OIs are graded, quantitative differences that closely reflect the statistical properties of the input they are exposed to and (b) theories of syntax acquisition need to consider more closely the role of input characteristics as determinants of quantitative differences in the cross-linguistic patterning of phenomena in language acquisition.

Building Coherence and Cohesion: Task-Oriented Dialogue in English and Spanish (review)

Reviewed by: Building Coherence and Cohesion Joyce Bruhn De Garavito (bio) María Teresa Taboada . Building Coherence and CohesionJohn Benjamins. xiv, 262. US $138.00 This book offers a detailed examination of how coherence and cohesion are built in oral conversations. It focuses on task-oriented speech, namely scheduling dialogues, in two languages: Spanish and English. The data are not fully naturalistic, because they are part of experimental research carried out by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, originally designed to study machine translation possibilities. Pairs of speakers of each language were asked to try to negotiate a date and time in which they could meet. The speakers could not see each other, and the dialogues were recorded. The result, to judge by the examples, seems very natural. The book comprises eight chapters and an appendix. After a brief introduction in the first chapter, the author delves into a detailed examination of the theoretical issues related to the application of frameworks and methodologies developed primarily for written samples to the analysis of oral conversation. In fact, one of the strengths of the book is the in-depth review of the literature, spanning not only the field of genre analysis, but also cultural studies, linguistics, second language acquisition, and others. The third chapter describes the data, including the participants, the task, and the type of coding used. The results are summarized in the following four chapters, with chapter 4 focusing on the thematic structure of the dialogues, chapter 5 on the rhetorical relations, chapter 6 on the development of cohesion, and chapter 7 on coherence. Chapter 8 summarizes the conclusions. In this review I will focus on the comparison of the results for the two languages, because I found them interesting given the issues that they raise regarding the analysis. The author leans to a structural definition of Theme, as the first element or point of departure of the message. The problem, as she points out, is that in English subjects are obligatory, while Spanish is a Pro-drop language. It is easy to predict, therefore, that in English the point of departure is often going to be the Participant subject while in Spanish it is going to be a Process. This difference falls out naturally from the grammatical structure of the language, and one may wonder what new information is gathered from a Thematic analysis of this type that cannot be deduced from the purely syntactic analysis. This problem may be more serious if we look at typologically distant languages. The other main difference between the languages was found in the types of cohesion devices used. English speakers favoured substitutions, while Spanish speakers favoured ellipsis. Again, this seems to be the result of the structure of the two languages involved. The final difference is, I think, more related to cultural differences than syntactic ones. In the development of the Progression sequences of the dialogues (opening, proposal/discussion, closing), the closing section of the dialogues was slightly longer for the Spanish speakers. It is possible to predict longer openings also, but, as the author points out, the speakers had already talked when [End Page 185] the experiment started, so it is possible they did not feel the need to extend the introductory segments. This book is a very valuable contribution to the field. It is remarkable how easily Taboada applies the concepts of genre analysis to oral production. Her analysis is detailed and careful. The frequent use of examples from the data guides the reader towards a clear understanding of how these conversations have been put together, the glue that makes them cohesive and coherent. This is an important book not only for those interested in the structure of conversations per se, but also in particular for second-language teachers, who can benefit from such an in-depth understanding of what makes conversations in different languages work. [End Page 186] Joyce Bruhn De Garavito Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, Department of Spanish, University of Western Ontario Copyright © 2006 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

The morphosyntax of mood in early grammar with special reference to Swahili

In this paper we explore the development of the morphosyntax-semantics interface by comparing development in 4 typologically diverse languages: Dutch (a Germanic V2 language), Greek, Italian (a Romance pro-drop language) and Swahili (a Bantu language), with particular emphasis on Swahili, a relatively understudied language whose morphosyntactic structure is particularly relevant to the questions we address. We show that children acquiring these different languages all adhere to a morphosyntax-semantics mapping principle that forces a complementarity between the expression of mood and the expression of tense ñ the Semantic Opposition Hypothesis (SOH), following Hyams (2002). Our findings support the hypothesis that linguistic development is guided by universal principles which lie at the interface of semantico-conceptual structure and morphosyntax.

Third person null subjects in Hebrew, Finnish and Rumanian: an accessibility-theoretic account

Hebrew (past and future tenses) and Standard Finnish exhibit limitations on third person pro-drop, although their first and second person pro-drop follows the well-known Spanish/Italian pattern. This paper aims to show that only a detailed theory of discourse anaphora, such as the one proposed by Ariel (1990, 2001), can account for the distribution of third person pro-drop in Hebrew and Finnish; accounts proposing a syntactic analysis of the phenomenon cannot explain the whole range of data. A comparison between Hebrew and Finnish reveals a difference in the distribution of third person null subjects: Finnish appears to be significantly more restrictive than Hebrew. These two languages are also compared to Rumanian, a typical pro-drop language, which shows almost free third person pro-drop across the board.

ZeroMarking in French Impersonal Verbs: A Counter Trend to Clitic Morphologization?

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Is there anything there when there is not there? Null expletives and second language data

This article explores the issue of the psychological reality of null expletives, i.e., the silent counterparts of the so-called dummy subjects such as English it and there. Following Jackendoff’s (1997; 2002) notion of `defective’ lexical item, I define null expletives as extremely `defective’ words with syntactic properties but no semantic or phonological content. By comparing native speakers of pro-drop languages and those of topic-drop languages in terms of their grammatical judgement of and productive use of English, I argue that null expletives are very likely psychologically real to speakers of pro-drop languages but not to those of topic-drop languages. This conclusion is based on observations made in previous second language (L2) studies and the analysis of data obtained from a large corpus of nonnative English. The question of the unaccusative-unergative distinction in L2 grammar and the linguistic characterization of so-called free subject-verb inversion in pro-drop languages are also discussed in relation to the issue of the psychological reality of null expletives.

Right Node Raising, coordination and the dynamics of language processing

This paper proposes an account of Right Node Raising (RNR) within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (DS). The problematic properties of this construction are shown to emerge naturally from a theory that defines natural language syntax as the direct reflection of how Logical Forms are built up in time as the words of a string are processed. Within this framework, all syntactic processes, including lexical actions, are defined in terms of how partial logical structures are updated. An asymmetric account of coordination is given using the concept of linked structures, whereby the (partial) analysis of a tree representing the propositional content of one clause forms the context within which another is constructed. This approach, together with the same mechanism that is used to analyze right dislocated expressions such as subject inversion in pro-drop languages, is shown to provide an analysis of Right Node Raising, under the additional assumption that the distinctive intonation pattern of the construction licenses the postulation of segmentally empty, pronominal-like elements. The identification of the content of these is established through the analysis of the right dislocated expression where crucially the update that this provides is sensitive to the properties of the second conjunct only.

Referential Density in Discourse and Syntactic Typology

Narrative production experiments reveal systematic crosslinguistic differences in the preferred ratio of overt to possible argument NPs (called here the REFERENTIAL DENSITY value) between three pro-drop languages of the Himalayas (Belhare, Maithili, Nepali). These differences can be accounted for by the degree to which morphosyntactic features of NPs, especially case features, are relevant for syntactic processing. This degree is the higher the more there are pivots or controllers of syntactic rules (e.g. verb agreement) that are defined not only on the basis of a thematic role hierarchy but also by a case feature (as when, for example, verb agreement is blocked by quirky case on the thematically highest argument).

Brazilian Portuguese and the Null Subject Parameter (review)

Reviewed by: Brazilian Portuguese and the null subject parameter ed. by Mary Aizawa Kato, Esmeralda Vailati Negrão Kleanthes K. Grohmann Brazilian Portuguese and the null subject parameter. Ed. by Mary Aizawa Kato and Esmeralda Vailati Negrão. (Editionen der Iberoamericana/Ediciones de Iberoamericana: Serie B, Sprachwissenschaft/Lingüística 4.) Madrid: Iberoamericana, and Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2000. Pp. 270. ISBN 3893548831. €44.99. This collection of papers deals exactly with what the title promises and does so at an interesting point in time. On the one hand, the power of the principles-and-parameters theory allowed linguists to express variation among closely related languages very nicely, and this has been done increasingly over the past two decades within the Romance family and, more recently, specifically between European and Brazilian Portuguese. The null subject parameter, on the other hand, is one of the parameters par excellence, [End Page 807] with an ever-increasing amount of evidence for both its existence (qua best studied parameter) and its role in the bigger picture of the principles-and-parameters approach (e.g. by permitting the subsuming of a variety of apparently unconnected grammatical properties under its activation). Mary A. Kato succinctly summarizes the connection between the two in her ‘Preface’ (7–16) and draws connections to the multifaceted topics discussed in the contributions (concerning ‘rich’ vs. ‘poor’ inflection, binding properties, and developmental and diachronic issues). ‘The loss of the “avoid pronoun” principle in Brazilian Portuguese’ (17–36) by M. Eugênia L. Duarte discusses parametric change related to the development of Brazilian Portuguese from a null to a nonnull subject language and ties it to the loss of VS order, which distinguishes Brazilian Portuguese from the other Romance (null subject) languages. Also trying to reinterpret the ‘avoid pronoun’ principle, Marilza de Oliveira compares ‘The pronominal subject in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese’ (37–53), that is, the alternation between overt and covert subjects and the possibility of their complementary distribution. ‘Visible subjects and invisible clitics in Brazilian Portuguese’ (55–73) interest Sonia M. L. Cyrino, M. Eugênia L. Duarte, and Mary A. Kato, who propose to relate strong pronouns to referentiality and weak pronouns to ‘deficient’ referentiality. In the course of the discussion they look at English pronouns as well as differences in the pronominal system between European and Brazilian Portuguese, and they consider diachronic as well as developmental aspects. Luciene J. Simões investigates issues in language acquisition with ‘Null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese: Developmental data from a case study’ (75–103). This study fits in with the rich literature on early null subjects and offers with Brazilian Portuguese yet another language that supports the view that children exhibit a highly constrained type of null category in subject position. Esmeralda V. Negrão and Evani Viotti consider ‘Brazilian Portuguese as a discourse-oriented language’ (105–25) in light of new evidence they provide, arguing that the weakening of the inflectional paradigm is not responsible for the decrease of null pronominal subjects. The authors argue further that three main facts about Brazilian Portuguese can be explained only if it is assumed that it is a discourse-oriented language: asymmetries in the distribution of overt and covert subjects, some scope phenomena, and certain wh-extraction possibilities. ‘Main and embedded null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese’ (127–45) are the focus of Maria C. Figueiredo Silva’s contribution. Silva argues that Brazilian Portuguese is a partial pro-drop language distribution of lexical pronouns and empty categories in finite subject positions. The role of ‘Null subjects without “rich” agreement’ (147–74) is explored by Marcello Modesto. Concentrating on Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese, Modesto reaches the conclusion that there is not always a tight relationship between agreement and the licensing of null arguments. Rosane de Andrade Berlinck’s paper is ‘Brazilian Portuguese VS order: A diachronic analysis’ (175–94). Looking at the two properties in the history of Brazilian Portuguese, she focuses on the second part of the question—what kind of null subject and what kind of subject inversion has been lost. Helena Britto examines...

Riječi na granici punoznačnosti by Snježana Kordić (review)

REVIEWS 7 I 3 Amid all the genuine syntactic excitement, some morphosyntactic detail receives less attention. For example, aspects of the implicative (John Lotz's term) verb suffix -lak/-lekare discussed under both agreement (pp. 53-55) and infinitivephrases (pp. 203-04, with some repetition):but a present-tense example in the firstsection (Igyekezlek meglatogatni (teged)) has doubt cast upon it in the second ('Infact, intransitivematrixverbscan also apparentlyagree (sic) with a second person object, at least in the past tense'), with an example only in the past: Siettelek megldtogatni benneteket. The point being made is thoughtprovoking ,but is there or is there not a tense restriction?Similarlyincomplete is the work on the representation of the object (agreement) marker: 'the combination, or sometimes the fusion, of -(j)a/j(a) (inthe case of a frontvowel stem: an -i)' (p. 49, 1.6), j(a)/(j)a (p. 49, I-IO), -(j)a/j(a)/i (p. I73). In fact, none of these seems right, even if one is treatingonly the present tense (which ought not, surely,to be the case). As the foregoing might suggest, there are small problems not only in the language of the text but also in the English of the examples (ignoring some most likelydeliberate near-Englishin starredsentences and in the attemptsto demonstratefocus though the line is not easy to draw).With a separateline for morphological glossing, the translationline of examples shouldbe used for unambiguouslyaccurate English to help those without Hungarian appreciate the important but sometimes subtle points being made. The selection that follows can be easily addressed in the next edition: 'there can be no doubt about it that' (p. 69), 'a set of alternative individuals' (p. 78), 'the verb of existence' (p. 148);mellett glossed 'near'insteadof 'beside' (pp. i86, I88, I89), megszoli't glossed 'approach'insteadof 'address'(pp. 222, 223); 'itwas stupidity ofJohn' (p. 213), 'it is impertinence forJohn' (p. 2I4); 'The train did not go acrossthe bridge (yet)when the accident happened' (= The trainhad not yet crossedthe bridge)(p. I32); 'ithasn'trained forlong' (= it'sa long time since it rained) (p. 2I 2), 'I try to lose things more seldom' (= I'll... less often) (P. 203, twice);the stinging of sickpeople (= pricking... by) (p. I77). 'John learned himself sick' (= made himself ill by studying too hard) (p. 74); 'I would like the best if I could get to know you' (= what I'd like more than anything is)(p. 55); 'Only from that do I thinkthatJohn is sickthat he did not show up at class' (p. 238 and many othersin the same chapter).The sublative is glossed as 'translative'on p. 74 (threetimes). As there is so little in English about the genetic relatives of Hungarian, it is dispiriting to see so many careless errors in the cursory remarkson them on the first page (inter alia: Mansyfor 'Mansi', Permi[twice] for 'Permic', Zuryen for 'Zyryan', and the overstatementthat the Samoyed languagesare 'practicallyextinct'). School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies PETER SHERWOOD University College London Kordic, Snjezana. Ryec'i nagranici punoznac"nosti. Hrvatskasveucilisnanaklada, Zagreb, 2002. 227 pp. Tables. Notes. Indexes. Priceunknown. THISvolume is the doctoral thesis of Snjezana Kordic, defended successfully at MunsterUniversity inJanuary 2002, but publishedfirstin German in 200 I underthetitle, Wdrter imGrenzbereich von Lexikon undGrammatik imSerbokroatischen. 714 SEER, 8i, 4, 2003 In this work the author examines eight problem areas of Serbo-Croatian involving words that oscillate between having a full lexical status and a functional grammatical status, a factor that has complicated their lexicographicand grammaticaldescriptionin dictionariesand grammars.These are mainly lexemes which have a high frequency usage and are used in many differentways. In allthereareeight chapters.The firstdealswith the semantic, grammaticaland pragmatic characteristicsof the personal pronouns. It starts with a general descriptionof these pronouns in Serbo-Croatianand Slovene, then contrasts their basic use in certain Slavonic languages e.g. SerboCroatian , Polish,Macedonian (pro droplanguages),where they are omitted if not used in contrastor are not emphasized, with the situationin so-callednon drop languages (e.g. English, German, Russian). The author then goes on to analyse the transpositions of the grammatical person illustratingthe many pragmatically conditioned ways of expressing the person used in SerboCroatian and various Slavonic languages. Such metaphorical usage includes for example the...

Subject ellipsis in English

Abstract English is probably least known as a language in which subject ellipsis in finite clauses may occur, given its extensive use of a dummy subject to keep the subject position filled. Subject ellipsis is a common phenomenon for pro-drop languages by definition, since the identity of the subject is morphologically shown by the verbal inflection. However, despite little presence of this subject–verb agreement in English, subject ellipsis is, in fact, a common phenomenon in conversation and casual letters. Based on a small corpus analysis, this paper delineates various features, constraints and connotations surrounding subject ellipsis in English from the viewpoint of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Subject ellipsis occurs in the casual register with first person as the predominant referent, but is also triggered mainly by anaphora and conventional expressions. While subject ellipsis under anaphora is restricted to occur immediately after the sentence with the referent, in conventional expressions it occurs without locational constraints, often implying evasive and dismissive motives and therefore discouraging responses. Moreover, it is often claimed that the prerequisite for subject ellipsis is recoverability of the referent and that anaphora, of which ellipsis is a part, creates discourse coherence. This study concludes that while recoverability must be maintained for subject ellipsis to emerge, discourse coherence is, on the contrary, often suspended by subject ellipsis.

The birth of a particle: know in Colloquial Singapore English

The discourse marker you know has been widely noted and analyzed in different varieties of English. However, it is less widely recognized that Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), in addition to the marker you know, has also developed the particle know. This paper provides data showing that know has distributional and collocational properties that distinguish it from you know, even though their discourse–pragmatic functions are similar. The differences between you know and know indicate that the latter has become a member of a linguistic category, referred to in this paper as the discourse particle. This category is exemplified by more familiar forms such as lah, lor, and meh. The paper suggests that the mechanism by which know has joined the other particles is that of analogical change, made possible because (1) CSE already contains a rich inventory of such particles, and (2) it is a pro–drop language. The first feature motivates the extraction of a category where members are monosyllabic, occur in clause–final position, and perform discourse–pragmatic functions. You know possesses two of the three characteristics, but is excluded because it is not monosyllabic. However, the pro–drop feature allows the monosyllabic know to emerge and join the category of discourse particle.

Character referencing in English and Chinese storybooks written for children

The texts of 12 English and 12 Chinese children's books were analysed for how they referred to the main characters in the stories. Comparisons were made between referring expressions used in six texts for early-level readers and six texts for mid-level readers in both languages. There were no differences found between early- and mid-level texts in their use of full expressions, pronouns or ellipsis within the two languages. However, the Chinese books at both levels contained significantly more elliptical expressions than the English books, and there was a trend for the Chinese books to use fewer pronominal expressions than the English books. Finally, contexts of use for the full expressions indicated that these expressions tended to occur where something in the discourse was changing: moves in and out of the story frame, moves involving a shift in character or time and place of the story, and moves in and out of quoted speech. Full expressions were also used to resolve ambiguity. These differences between Chinese and English books in the use of ellipsis and pronouns are related to the features of the languages (Chinese as a prodrop language). The occurrence of full expressions in contexts of discourse shift is used to refute Halliday and Hasan's (1976) closed text theory of discourse cohesion. Implications for literacy development in bilingual children are also discussed.