Pro-drop Parameter Research Articles

Grammaticality Judgments as Evidence for Null-subject Parameter Resetting by Young and Adult Libyan EFL Learners

This study investigates a number of issues related to the differences between young and adult second language learners concerning the process of parameter resetting in cases when the first and the second language have two different values of the same parameter. The case which is examined in this study is the fact that Arabic which is the first language of the target groups of participants in this study is a pro-drop (null-subject) language, while English which they are studying as a foreign language is a non-pro- drop (non-null subject) language. The study uses Grammaticality Judgment tasks to which group of the Libyan EFL learners, the young or the adult learners’ group have reset this parameter from its value in Arabic to its different value in English. These Grammaticality Judgment tasks were applied to 91 university students who are studying in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts at Misurata University. The young learners’ group included 45 pupils in the first grades at the International Knowledge School in Misurata. The academic performance level of the participants in the two groups was considered as a factor which may affect the grammaticality judgments of the participants. The results showed that younger learners performed better in the grammaticality judgment tasks and that their judgments were not affected by the fact that their first language had a different value of the pro-drop parameter. It was also noticed that the intensive academic study at a university level did not help the older participants to be better than younger participants in this task. Moreover, the level of academic achievement was not a factor in this study that participants with lower academic levels performed better than those with higher academic levels

Fortune and Decay of Lexical Expletives in Germanic and Romance along the Adige River

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP expletives required by the V2 constraint and, hence, by the necessity to lexicalize the position on the left of the inflected verb and (ii) TP expletives connected with the negative value of the pro-drop parameter and, therefore, with the necessity to lexicalize the ’structural‘ subject position, specifically, [Spec, TP]. The latter can, in turn, be divided into two subclasses: impersonal subjects and positional expletives, which occur with postverbal/low subjects and extraposed subject clauses. While CP expletives only appear in Germanic varieties that maintain V2, the subclassification of TP expletives yields interesting results when comparing Cimbrian and the Venetan varieties in Nord-East Italy, where the gradual disappearance of the positional expletive in free inversion structures and the residual maintenance of impersonal subjects from North to South along the Adige River confirms the distinction between two classes of subject expletives; furthermore, the resilience of impersonal subjects and their distribution in the northwestern part of the area under consideration sheds light on the role of language contact which is confirmed along the same axis—but crucially in the opposite direction—by the increasing employment of cleft constructions in WH-clauses replacing enclisis (i.e.,: pronominal subject inversion with the finite verb).

Concept of Parameters in Language (Pro-drop Parameter as an Example)

Languages consist basically of principles and parameters. The principles cover the biological aspect of language as well as the grammatical aspects common to all languages. While the parameters include those grammatical characteristics that differ between languages. This article is devoted to study the concept of parameters in general, and specifically that of the Pro-drop parameter. However, since understanding the concept of parameters thoroughly without having prior information about the concept of principles is unattainable, the study therefore, clarifies the concept of the latter in the natural languages before addressing the former. In addition, its discussion of the concept of parameters would be as the complement to the concept of principles. In return, it’s meant by parameters all the grammatical divergences that a child learns during the language acquisition process. This implies that the parameters are correlated to the linguistic experiences of humans in different cultural and social environments. It is then the linguistic experiences which determine a specific grammar for a specific language, within the limits of universal grammar. It is also worth mentioning that the grammatical varieties in languages, which have been studied in the context of various types of parameters, are plenty and multi-demensional, yet, the practical aspect of this study, discusses only one sort of parameters, which is Pro-drop parameter. This article finally demostrates the different analysises proposed for the discription of the null subjectivity of languages (Kurdish language in particular).

Exploring the pseudo-longitudinal development of specific morphosyntactic features and syntactic complexity in CLIL young learners

Abstract CLIL studies on language specific areas such as morphosyntax are still quite limited, particularly those with young learners. Likewise, the pseudo-evolution of morphosyntactic aspects across age and proficiency deserves particular attention. This paper will fill these gaps by investigating production accuracy and syntactic complexity in two different age/proficiency groups of CLIL primary school learners (grade 4 and 6). In terms of accuracy, L1 Spanish transfer effects associated with the pro-drop parameter (i.e. subject omission and subject-verb inversion), and the third person singular -s morpheme omission will be explored. Syntactic complexity will be operationalised through the production of simple and complex clauses. The findings obtained align with previous research in that the accumulated hours of CLIL + EFL exposure by grade 6 seem to positively affect the development of complexity measures. However, the lack of progress in the case of the rest of the features examined (i.e. subject omission, inversion of the subject and the third person singular -s omission) calls for the incorporation of focus-on-form components in CLIL programmes.

Positive Evidence and Parameter Resetting in the Teaching of English Grammar to Libyan University Students

This study builds on Chomsky’s principles and parameters framework (Chomsky, 1986) by applying it to the study of second language (L2) acquisition. In other words, it makes use of a parameter resetting model to explain aspects of the second language learning process. It aims to investigate whether classroom instruction which presents only positive evidence, that is to say grammatically correct samples of the L2, is sufficient to enable adult second language learners to acquire certain properties of L2 parameters which differ from their mother tongue (L1). The participants in the study have Arabic as their L1, and are learning English as an L2. The study hypothesizes that the participants, who are all adult students studying English language at an advanced level in Misurata University, Libya, will not be able to reset the pro-drop parameter and the verb raising parameter from their properties in Arabic to their different properties in English. The hypothesized reason is that they are taught using only positive evidence-based samples of English, and that is not sufficient to lead to parameter resetting. The results show that the students had great difficulty in resetting the pro-drop parameter and the verb raising parameter from Arabic to English.

Il soggetto nullo nel processo di acquisizione del portoghese brasiliano

This paper is part of a research project - still at an early stage - on the process of acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese as a foreign language in the Italian university context. We present here the first data on the acquisition, by Italian-speaking learners (all students of the University of Salento), of morphosyntactic properties associated with the positive/negative value of the pro-drop parameter, also showing the pragmatic-discursive properties that can determine a distribution of null pronominal subjects in different contexts.

Experimenting with pro-drop in Telugu and Indian English

This paper investigates pronominal subjects dropping in Telugu and Indian English and the severity of first language impact on learning and usage of a second language. Numerous languages from various language families are spoken in India. Many of the languages among them are pro-drop languages. Telugu is a full-fledged consistent null subject language with rich verbal agreement. So, pro-drop is common in spoken Telugu. This paper aims at how first language (L1) influences its rules and morpho-syntactic properties on second language (L2) in relation to pro-drop at various levels. To some extent, pro-drop parameter helps us to understand how the language acquisition takes place in children and adults mind/brain in setting the parameter in a specific language. Based on the empirical evidence, several Telugu-speaking children and adults are examined on how they drop pronouns in spoken Telugu and Indian English.

Patterns of 1st and 3rd person marking in Oïl-Galloromance

SummaryThis article is a contribution to the long-standing discussion of subject marking in Romance. Its originality lies in its systematically considering data from Oïl-Galloromance dialects, i.e. non-pro-drop varieties, which had been ignored because they were thought to pattern like French. On the contrary, a detailed survey of the means of 1sgand 3sg.m. Marking in these dialects reveals that the obligatoriness of the subject clitics in all grammatical persons does not guarantee the absence of ambiguous marks, since cases of syncretism between these two persons were found, besides cases of marking even more redundant than in French. I then conclude that it is yet another refutation of the now generally abandoned wisdom according to which the subject pronouns exactly compensate the loss of verb endings. Moreover, the results make the pro-drop parameter and parametric theory hard to maintain, as has been observed from other microvariational studies. I also argue against a functionalist interpretation of the correlation between the different means of subject marking based on the assumption of avoidance and repair strategies underlying language change/dialectal fragmentation. My own analysis then relies on the assumption of a strong and stable typological property of accusative languages like Romance, called here the principle of recovery of the subject. The surface microvariation within (Oïl)-(Gallo)romance is simply seen as the result of non-deterministic properties of language change/dialectal fragmentation.

Lexical Parametrization and Early Subjects in L1 Italian

Italian is a pro drop language, since it allows subject drop and subject inversion. The pro-drop parameter is fixed early on (Orfitelli,2008), but both grammatical and informational factors might regulate the distribution of overt clausal subjects. On the grammatical side, the verb class influences the distribution of overt subjects: overt subjects in Italian are more likely to be found with unaccusative verbs (Lorusso, Caprin & Guasti 2005). On the informational side, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are more likely to e dropped than 3rd person NPs because the latter are more informative (Serratrice, 2005): 1st and 2nd ab ne recovered by the discourse, while 3rd persons are totally event anchored and have to be identified referentially within the linguistic stimuli. The parametric differences encoded in the lexical items, for example the unaccusative vs unergative distinction for verbs or the person ‘informative’ morphology, influence the subject drop in Italian: we propose a Lexical Parametrization account (Manzini & Wexler 1987) for subject drop in Italian, since the characteristic of lexical items influence the likelihood of appearance of an overt syntactic structure. Furthermore the distribution of indefinite postverbal subjects found just with unaccusatives in early stages of acquisition of Italian (Lorusso, 2014) confirms that the lexical characteristics of both the subject NPs and the verbs (in a subset relation with other NPs and verbs respectively) determine the parametric overt variation across the different stage of the acquisition of Italian, as Lexical Parametrization predicts.

The Activity Condition as a Microparameter

Using data from agreement in three Algonquian languages (Ojibwe, Cheyenne, and Plains Cree), this squib shows that effects typically attributed to Chomsky’s ( 2000 , 2001 ) Activity Condition (AC) can vary not only across languages, as in Baker’s (2008b) macroparametric proposal, but within a language as well. AC effects are thus another instance in which an apparent macroparameter turns out, on closer inspection, to be a microparameter instead, as in prominent cases such as the pro-drop parameter and the polysynthesis parameter ( Kayne 2005 , Baker 2008a ).

The Highest Subject Restriction and the Pro-drop Parameter in Arabic

The Highest Subject Restriction and the Pro-drop Parameter in Arabic

Early null and overt subjects in the Spanish of simultaneous English-Spanish bilinguals and Crosslinguistic Influence

This study assesses the scope of the Crosslinguistic Influence (CLI) hypothesis’ predictions with regard to early bilingual acquisition. To this end, we analyze longitudinal corpus data from four bilinguals attesting the acquisition of subjecthood (null versus overt; preverbal versus postverbal) and the pragmatic adequacy of early null and overt subjects in a null-subject language (i.e., Spanish) in combination with a language differing in its pro-drop parameter setting (i.e., English). Our results indicate that CLI barely affects the development of subjects in the null-subject language at the initial stages, namely at the outset of null and overt subjects, and in turn support the Separate Development Hypothesis. Our bilingual cohort patterns with their Spanish-acquiring monolingual peer in that both groups display comparable proportions of null subjects as well as acquisitional trajectories of null and overt subjects at the early stages of acquisition. Much like monolinguals, bilinguals begin to produce preverbal and postverbal subjects concurrently. The bilingual children and the monolingual child of this study actually produce extremely high rates of pragmatically appropriate covert and overt subjects, which are for the most part target-like from the start, thus pointing to the absence of CLI effects. In light of monolingual and bilingual data, the paper also revisits the hotly debated issue of the ‘no overt subject’ stage of Grinstead (1998,et seq.), its existence in child Spanish being questionable.

Chomsky's Universal Grammar: A Case of Its Concepts of Government/Binding Theory

The purpose of this paper is to see the universality of the Government/Binding Theory in its concepts of government, the pro-drop parameter, and binding theory. Three languages English, Indonesian, and Javanese are analyzed based on the three concepts. From the analysis it is concluded that in some cases language is universal, but in some other cases every language is specific.

Content words in Hebrew child-directed speech

The goal of the study was to examine whether the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon, which exists in the lexicon of Hebrew-speaking children, also exists in Hebrew child-directed speech (CDS) as well as in Hebrew adult-directed speech (ADS). In addition, we aimed to describe the use of the different classes of content words in the speech of Hebrew-speaking parents to their children at different ages compared to the speech of parents to adults (ADS). Thirty infants (age range 8:5–33 months) were divided into three stages according to age: pre-lexical, single-word, and early grammar. The ADS corpus included 18 Hebrew-speaking parents of children at the same three stages of language development as in the CDS corpus. The CDS corpus was collected from parent–child dyads during naturalistic activities at home: mealtime, bathing, and play. The ADS corpus was collected from parent–experimenter interactions including the parent watching a video and then being interviewed by the experimenter. 200 utterances of each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that in CDS, when speaking to infants of all ages, parents’ use of types and tokens of verbs and nouns was similar and significantly higher than their use of adjectives or adverbs. In ADS, however, verbs were the main lexical category used by Hebrew-speaking parents in both types and tokens. It seems that both the properties of the input language (e.g. the pro-drop parameter) and the interactional styles of the caregivers are important factors that may influence the high presence of verbs in Hebrew-speaking parents’ ADS and CDS. The negative correlation between the widespread use of verbs in the speech of parents to their infants and the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon in the Hebrew-child lexicon will be discussed in detail.

The study of pro as an empty category in Azeri Turkish language

This paper examines the pro-drop parameter in Azeri Turkish. First, some basic concepts and theories in terms of Chomsky's generative grammar school and principles and parameters theory are introduced. Then some theoretical background on the subject of Persian and Turkish languages are briefly presented. Next part is about explanation and description of pro features and some evidence and samples of Italian and Persian and Azeri Turkish languages and the last section deals with the results of this study. After giving and comparing evidence of these three languages we conclude that is that Azeri Turkish is a pro-drop language which allows subject to drop and establishes pro as a null subject (an empty category) in the position of subject and object can also be removed in some instances and proarb is established in the position of object.

Overt subjects in early Basque and other null subject languages

This study focuses on person marking in early Basque and other null subject languages. From very early on, person marking on the verb and quite regular, adult-like, null subject rates are attested across early acquisition studies on genetically related and unrelated pro-drop languages. We survey several studies on bilingual children simultaneously acquiring two languages with the opposite value for the pro-drop parameter. The conclusion drawn is that children display a monolingual-like pattern in the production of person marking, overt subjects, and personal pronouns in the null subject language, whereas, in the non-null subject language, bilinguals evidence delayed target person marking and overt subject production. These data are compatible with the view that children correctly set the default parametric value at early stages and separate the languages being acquired. However, it is argued that accounts based on the lexical learning of features in the functional category T(ense) may better account for the crosslinguistic data. Moreover, the accuracy observed in overt person inflection production leads to the proposal that (the spelling out of) the [person] or [D] feature in T(ense) is the first subject feature available to the language acquirer, previous to other candidates such as number or case.

On Sloppy-like Interpretation of Null Arguments

Arguments. Linguistic Research 28(3), 471-492. This paper aims to show that what are considered to be apparent sloppy readings in the null argument construction in Korean and Japanese are well accounted for under Ahn & Cho’s (2009, 2010, 2011b,c) pro analysis. The environments where such readings arise are categorized into five types. First, the antecedent noun includes either a reflexive possessor or a numeral quantifier. Second, the antecedent noun is a universal quantifier. Third, the antecedent noun includes a reflexive possessor and it denotes plural entities. Fourth, the antecedent is a negative polarity item. Fifth, the antecedent itself is a reflexive pronoun. By exploring these five cases, we show how far the possible interpretation of pro is stretched. We also show that our pro analysis is conceptually superior to the one that assumes an additional parameter plus pro drop parameter such as the agreement parameter that correlates with the presence or absence of DP ellipsis.

Null arguments: the case of Japanese and Romance

The first half of this article presents an overview of theoretical and empirical issues raised by the phenomena of argument drop within the principles-and-parameters approach, with special attention to the comparison of the argument drop in Japanese and the Romance languages. The latter half of the article is devoted to reconsidering the two parameters dealing with argument drop that have been proposed in the literature, namely, the pro-drop parameter and the zero-topic parameter. This article attempts to eliminate the need for postulating the two parameters as independent parameters and derive the presence or absence of null arguments from a particular property of T, in accordance with the view that all parameters are morphological in nature. It is argued that the occurrence of null subjects in finite clauses is a consequence of the lexical, rather than functional, nature of T, which holds true in Japanese and Italian, but not in English. It is also argued that the presence of zero topics that plays a crucial role in identifying null arguments is allowed when they are licensed by a predication relation, and that such a predication relation can be made available by the predicative nature of the projection of T in Japanese, but cannot by the argument nature of the projection of T in Italian and English.

Knowledge of expletive and pronominal subjects by learners of Spanish

Abstract Abstract A number of studies investigating second language acquisition (SLA) from the perspective of Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P, CHOMSKY, 1981, 1995) have focused on the pro-drop parameter, and have argued that older second language learners are sensitive to the different, properties it purportedly covers (e.g., AL-KASEY & PÉREZ-LEROUX, 1998; LICERAS, 1989; PHINNEY, 1987; WHITE, 1986). In this paper we extend this work by investigating two of its syntactic corollaries, namely, referential pronominal subjects (ProS) and expletive pronominal subjects (ExpS). In so-called [+pro-drop] languages both may be realised as an empty element (pro). While on the surface these forms are identical, referential subject pro is different from expletive subject pro both syntactically and semantically; syntactically because referential pro co-exists with a set of overt subject pronouns (yo 'I' , tú 'you', etc), whereas there are no overt expletive pronouns; semantically because referential pro is distinguished for 3 persons, number and gender features, whereas expletive pro would appear to be a third person, singular, gender-neutral pronoun. We will examine whether older L2 learners are sensitive to these differences by using paired grammaticality judgement tests (PGJT). Results are consistent with the claim that learners have different mental representations for ProS and ExpS.

Left dislocated subjects and the pro-drop parameter: A case study of Spanish

Abstract The typical assumption in a pro-drop language like Spanish is that covert as well as overt subjects occupy a preverbal position at Spell Out in which their case and agreement properties are satisfied. This paper presents evidence against such a claim. On the one hand, we show that pre-verbal overt subjects pattern with left dislocated DOs and IOs in a wide range of syntactic contexts: ellipsis, extraction of quantifiers and interpretation of preverbal quantifiers. In these same contexts, sentences with a silent subject differ from sentences with overt ones. We conclude that overt pre-verbal subjects are necessarily left dislocated. In order to account for the left dislocated nature of overt subjects, we propose to eliminate AgrS as a functional projection. Instead we take the idea that subject agreement should be considered a clitic (Taraldsen, 1992), and the relation between the agreement and subject to be one of clitic doubling. Evidence in favor of this claim comes from striking parallelisms between standard clitic doubling constructions and agreement-subject constructions. Specifically, both cases pattern similarly in relation to the determination of binding in certain cases of mismatches in person between the doubling DP and the clitic. Since we take agreement to be a clitic that absorbs theta role and case, movement of the doubling DP subject to a preverbal position cannot be driven by agreement or case reasons. Instead, movement of the subject to a pre-verbal position is driven by discourse considerations as is typical in left dislocations.