Subject Pronouns 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.

The interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in Spanish compared to Greek and Italian

In recent years, several studies have suggested that Null Subject Languages (NSLs) do not exhibit uniform behaviour in all respects. This paper aims to determine whether the interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in Spanish differs from that in two other NSLs: Italian and Greek. To this end, we replicated the sentence interpretation experiment conducted by Torregrossa et al. (2020) on Greek and Italian to obtain a fully comparable set of data.The results indicate that Spanish differs significantly from both Italian and Greek in the interpretation of null and overt pronouns. Spanish participants accept null subjects referring to both subject and object antecedents to the same extent. The same pattern is observed for overt subject pronouns. To explain the observed differences, we propose that two properties of its grammar influence the interpretation of null subjects and overt pronouns in Spanish: i) a flexible word order, allowing for SVO, VSO, and VOS; and ii) the existence of differential object marking (DOM). We hypothesise that these two factors may affect antecedent selection, thereby partially accounting for the differences observed among the languages under consideration.

Null subject pronouns in Papiá Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese)

This paper investigates variation in the subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Papiá Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese), a language without verb inflection. Previous accounts of Kristang (Baxter, 1988, 2012b; Hancock, 1969, 1973; Knowlton, 1964; Rêgo, 1942) present the language as predominantly displaying overt subject pronouns. However, the overall null subject pronoun rate in the oral corpus contemplated is substantial, registering a frequency of 45.7% (input pr. 0.32). As such, the paper focusses on the distribution of null subject pronouns and the constraints directing that distribution. The study considers the effects of priming, structural location, verb semantic class, and tense-mood-aspect (TMA), and addresses the effect of the individual speaker. It is found that while null subject pronoun use in Papiá Kristang resembles, with minor differences, many attributes of this mechanism in other languages, it displays one notable trait: TMA particles favor null subject pronoun use. Extralinguistic constraints on SPE within the Papiá Kristang speech community are seen to concern more the characteristics of individual speakers, and clusters of individuals, rather than predictors based on a pan-community age and gender classification.

Racial segregation and language variation in Louisiana Creole: Social meaning in language loss

Abstract This paper investigates how and whether speakers of endangered languages employ variation as a stylistic resource to make social meaning and index their identities. The study is set in historically Creole-speaking communities in rural Louisiana, which have now shifted almost completely to English. The Americanization of Louisiana induced language shift, but also a shift to the Anglo-American racial binary which supplanted local constructs of ethnicity and race. The study crafts a historical-sociolinguistic account of this process of Americanization, examining how linguistic differentiation was enacted through the enregisterment of iconic ‘Creole’/‘French’ variants as indexical links to the ‘Black’/‘White’ racial binary. Today, to a very limited extent, some speakers of Louisiana Creole still consider some variants socially meaningful and employ them to stylistic ends. This depends especially on racial identity and the variant in question. Subject pronouns retain some indexical value, occasionally employed stylistically by speakers racialized as White. However, front vowel rounding has fossilized: highly meaningful in the early-20th century, its social meaning has been lost resulting in synchronic personal-pattern variation. The paper ends by trying to reconcile classic studies of Language Death with contemporary variationist critique, answering recent calls for more nuanced approaches to sociolinguistic variation in threatened languages.

Beyond the Basics: A Deep Dive into French Subject Pronouns with Targeted Strategies for Proficient Learning

Beyond the Basics: A Deep Dive into French Subject Pronouns with Targeted Strategies for Proficient Learning

The Acquisition of Pragmatically Constrained Japanese Pronouns by L1 English Learners: Results from a Context Translation Task

The allocation of explicit and implicit pronouns and the literature extensively discusses the syntactic and pragmatic conditions that permit and necessitate the use of overt and null pronouns in Romance languages, such as Spanish and Italian. This topic has been explored by various researchers, including Alonso-Ovalle and D’Introno (2000), Fernández-Soriano (1989), Luján (1987, 1999), Montalbetti (1984), Rigau (1986, 1988), and Rizzi (1997). Rothman (2009) argues that the employment of overt subject pronouns in Spanish is pragmatically unusual, except in select discursive situations when their existence contributes more to semantic interpretation than just agreement features. In Japanese, null forms of pronouns are more common than overt pronouns, as observed by Martin (1976). However, like Spanish, the distribution of pronouns in Japanese is influenced by both syntax and pragmatics. In pro-drop languages, overt pronouns, as well as lexical subjects, have the role of resolving any potential uncertainties that may occur when new referents are introduced in a conversation.

The Importance of Linguistic Factors: He Likes Subject Referents.

We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first-mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' "prominence"/"accessibility"/"salience." The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that "prominence" or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronounresolution.

What Does That Mean? Complementizers and Epistemic Authority.

A core goal of research in language is to understand the factors that guide choice of linguistic form where more than one option is syntactically well-formed. We discuss one case of optionality that has generated longstanding discussion: the choice of either using or dropping the English complementizer that in sentences like I think (that) the cat followed the dog. Existing psycholinguistic analyses tie that-usage to production pressures associated with sentence planning (Ferreira & Dell, 2000), avoidance of ambiguity (Hawkins, 2004), and relative information density (Jaeger, 2010). Building on observations from cross-linguistic fieldwork, we present a novel proposal in which English that can serve to mark a speaker's "epistemic authority" over the information packaged within the embedded clause; that is, it indicates that the speaker has more knowledge of the embedded proposition compared with their addressee and thus has a perspective that they believe their addressee doesn't share. Testing this proposal with a forced-choice task and a series of corpus surveys, we find that English that is keyed to the use of embedded speaker (first-person) subject pronouns and occurs in sentences containing newsworthy information. Our account of that-optionality takes into account why that is associated with both (i) a dense information signal and (ii) semantic-pragmatic content, as well as extending to cases of non-optionality in subject/sentence-initial clauses (e.g., *(That) the cat is following the dog, I already know) and fragment answers (e.g., What do you already know? *(That) the cat is following the dog), where that is required.

An Analysis of Personal Pronouns Used by The Students in Writing Narrative Text at Senior High School

The research objective was to find out how personal pronouns used by the students in writing narrative text at SMAN 2 Koto Baru, Dharmasraya. The research method was descriptive qualitative method. The data source was documents. There were 38 sheets of student writing about narrative text. The research finding was the students still made mistakes in using personal pronouns such as subject pronoun (correct 61.1%), object pronoun (correct 32.2%), possessive adjective pronoun (correct 49.7%), possessive pronoun (correct 0%) and reflexive pronoun (correct 0%). It can be concluded the ability of the students in using personal pronouns still less.

Kurdish Sorani Dialect Morphology Generation Using a Concatenative Strategy

In natural language processing, morphological generation refers to the creation of the appropriate inflected forms of words based on a predetermined set of morphological rules. However, it might be difficult to generate morphology in languages with intricate morphological systems, like the Kurdish Sorani dialect. The concatenative morphology-based unique technique to morphological generation in Kurdish Sorani is proposed in this research. The suggested strategy tries to get over the drawbacks of current approaches and enhance the precision and effectiveness of morphological generation in Kurdish Sorani. The suggested technique generates all conceivable subjective and objective pronouns in both positive and negative forms, together with the various verb tenses for Kurdish morphology. The study presents a detailed examination of Kurdish Sorani’s morphology and points out the difficulties in coming up with the right verbforms. The authors suggest a concatenative morphology-based morphological generating system that comprises of a morphological analyzer and a morphological generator.

AN ANALYSIS ON THE USE OF PRONOUN IN SPOOF TEXT “HONEY, WHAT IS FOR SUPPER?”

When acquiring English, we begin with the fundamentals. The fundamental elements are portions of discourse. Noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection are the parts of speech. The frequent use of pronouns in daily life is one of the inspirations for this study. Understanding pronouns allows a person to build basic sentences that may be used to learn vocabulary and enable someone to become fluent in English. The purpose of this study is to determine the proportion of subject pronouns in the Spoof version of "Honey, What's for Supper?" In this research, a qualitative descriptive methodology is employed. This study reveals that the subject pronoun "He" is 12.0% more prevalent than other pronouns in the Spoof text "Honey, What's for Supper?". This finding is hoped to be a good reference for students and motivate them to improve their reading and writing skills in English.

L’acquisition des pronoms personnels par des apprenants de FLE hispanophones

"The acquisition of personal pronouns in French as a foreign language (FFL) is one of the key points in the learning of French grammar. In order to study this aspect, we have compiled the written production of Spanish-speaking speakers of FFL. The results show that these speakers acquire the personal pronoun system at different at different stages in the learning process in the following order: firstly, they acquire the subject pronouns, secondly the tonic pronouns, then the atonic pronouns, and lastly the pronouns en/y, these results are in line with the studies carried out on the acquisition of personal pronouns in FLE. In this order of acquisition, linguistic competence is also significant."

Pro-Drop in Hijazi Arabic: A Minimalist Perspective

This paper focuses on investigating the null subjects in Hijazi Arabic and addresses how they are derived and interpreted. There is a strong connection between rich verbal agreement inflection and pro-drop in HA due to the language's highly inflectional nature. It is shown in this paper that HA is a consistent null subject language. This study is framed within Holmberg's (2005, 2010) theory of null subjects. Holmberg proposed that null subjects (henceforth NSs) are defective subject pronouns labeled Ps. The null subjects are derived via incorporation into T after the features valuation and union take place. The head T (a probe) has unvalued -features which are valued by the defective subject pronoun (a goal) and in return, the [u case] feature on P is valued by T. The incorporation of P into T forms a chain which is subject to chain reduction where the lower chain copy (the defective subject pronoun in spec-VP) receives a null spell out. The pronounced elements consist of the valued φ-features of T, which manifest as a verbal affix on the finite verb subsequent to the verb's incorporation into T. This reflects the deletion of the subject in spec-VP. The null subject is interpreted as a definite 3rd person null subject when the [uD(efiniteness)] feature of P is valued by an A-Topic (antecedent) in spec-TopP. On the other hand, it is interpreted as a definite 1st or 2nd person null subject if it is valued by speaker/addressee features in the domain of C (Complementizer).

Written Subject Pronoun Expression among Spanish Heritage Language Learners

Este artículo analiza la producción del pronombre sujeto en español desde una nueva perspectiva: el género escrito. A través del análisis de 90 ensayos escritos por estudiantes de español como lengua de herencia, el presente estudio ofrece avances en el entendimiento del comportamiento del pronombre sujeto en la escritura. Aunque el comportamiento del pronombre sujero varía en cuanto a su frecuencia de uso en las diferentes variedades de español, se han encontrado patrones similares que predicen el comportamiento de dichos pronombres (Carvalho et al., 2015). El presente estudio explora si estos patrones de comportamiento (explorados hasta ahora solo en el ámbito de la oralidad) se mantienen en la escritura de nuestros participantes: hablantes de herencia.

Students’ Abilities in Translating Personal Pronouns from Khmer to English

Unlike personal pronouns in English, personal pronouns in Khmer do not have the different forms of subject pronouns and object pronouns since a certain word can function both as a subject and as an object of a sentence. Another fact is that the personal pronouns in Khmer have many alternative words for one specific kind of personal pronouns based on the context in terms of age, social position or status, and intimacy. Therefore, the current study aims at investigating students’ abilities in translating personal pronouns from Khmer to English. Specifically, it intends to measure the proportion (percentage) of correct and incorrect translation, and explore types of errors within the translation. The qualitative study employed a set of translation exercises given to 40 students in a class of grade 10 in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023. To investigate the kinds of errors, the researcher employed the framework of Corder (1974) which categorized errors into 4 types namely error of omission, addition, selection, and error of ordering. The results of the study showed that 82% of exercises were translated correctly. In addition, three types of errors were found. The error of omission was (51%) followed respectively by the error of selection (46%), and the error of addition (3%) but the error of ordering could not be found. The results suggested that the teacher should focus specifically more on the problematic areas of personal pronouns to help the students translate and learn personal pronouns better.

Svenska generiska pronomen hos finska språkbadselever. En jämförelse mellan två årskurser

This is a study of the use of generic pronouns in Swedish as a second language (L2) by L1 Finnish immersion students. We compare two groups, 12-year-olds, and 15-year-olds, to see if there is a difference and to identify which the most challenging cases are in both groups. Norm deviations are compared to see if they mainly consist of overuse of generic pronouns or more formal aspects, such as the pronoun which is chosen, and the understanding of the relation between the generic subject, object, possessive and reflexive pronouns. Both groups use generic pronouns in the subject position in a manner which mostly follows the standard, and mainly have problems with possessive pronouns in connection to generic pronouns. It is possible that object generic pronouns would also be problematic, but there are none in our data. Generic pronouns are sometimes left out as subjects, which is ungrammatical in Swedish. There is also occasional overuse of man where it is not idiomatic, and some mixed forms with man and s-passive. Results show possible transfer from the first language (L1) of the learners, but less in the older group. Furthermore, there also appears to be transfer from L3 English, which our informants are learning at school. This seems more present in the older group.

Morphosyntactic profiles among preschoolers with and without speech sound disorders

ABSTRACT The aim of the current study was to identify whether certain morphosyntactic constructs are more difficult for children with speech sound disorder than children with typical speech development. In this post-hoc study, we used chi-square analyses to identify group differences on individual questions on a standardised test of expressive morphosyntax. Participants included 80 preschool-age children, 40 with typical speech and language development (TD), and 40 with speech sound disorder and typical language development (SSD). A chi-square analysis revealed group (TD vs. SSD) differences in usage of subject pronouns, irregular past tense verbs, and yes/no interrogative formation. Ordinal logistic regression revealed that phonological awareness was related to irregular past tense verb use. Children with SSD may present with subclinical morphosyntax difficulties. Speech-language pathologists should consider incorporating morphosyntax assessment into test batteries for children with SSD.

On the Earlier Egyptian T-Passive: Analysis, Spread, Long-Term History

Introducing the topic, .t/.tỉ/.tw-marked forms of the verb are shown to be inflectional passives like V-passives, not active impersonal constructions as advocated in a recent proposal (§1). In a process seen unfolding already in the earliest record, then further during Earlier Egyptian and into the Middle Kingdom, T-passives are observed spreading over V-passives, superseding these in many functions (§2). Like perfective aspect, the prototypical passive views the event from the perspective of its Endpoint. It is proposed that T-passives spread over V-passives in those functions in which the Endpoint was partly or entirely out of focus: in the future, in negative constructions, and in constructions that set the perspective on the event itself, away from the Endpoint. Passives from intransitives are non-prototypical in lacking an Endpoint and in setting the perspective on the event itself: they might have played a supporting role in early stages of the process. Meanwhile, V-passives continued to be used regularly in those environments in which the Endpoint was in focus, with fully asserted events and in adjunct clauses. This macro-change is inserted into the longer-term history of T-passives (§3). Looking up in time, it is proposed that Earlier Egyptian {t} is cognate to {t} found across Afroasiatic languages with varying detransitive functions, and represents the outcome of a well-paralleled path leading from reflexive to anticausative to passive. Looking down in time, it is proposed that passives from intransitives and passives with imperfective aspect, both deviating from the passive prototype, were favorable loci for alternative construals of T-passives as generalized-Agent constructions. Given several favorable conditions on other levels, these contributed to making the extension of .t(w) to active impersonal constructions, beginning in the Twelfth Dynasty, possible. In the broader sweep, the story then goes from {t} as a reflexive marker (in Afroasiatic prehistory) to {t} as an inflectional passive marker (in Earlier Egyptian, with T-passives gradually extending their functional yield over V-passives); and further to innovative uses of .t(w) as an impersonal subject pronoun (emerging during the Twelfth Dynasty and generalizing in Late Egyptian). Three themes are recurrent in this long history: the morphological transparency of T-passives, voice-aspect correlations, and the role of passives from intransitives.

First person singular subject pronoun expression of young Spanish speakers from Quito, Ecuador

Abstract This variationist study analyzes the first-person subject pronoun expression (SPE) of speakers from Quito, Ecuador. To date, this morphosyntactic variable has not been explored in this Andean variety of Spanish. The data consists of 20 sociolinguistic interviews. Results reveal an SPE rate of 17%, comparable to other Andean Spanish varieties. As per Rbrul’s quantitative analysis, the predictors that promote the presence of the ‘yo’ in this variety of Spanish are co-referential Priming, switch reference, ambiguous TMA endings and main clauses. In addition, following Orozco and Hurtado (2021), lexical effects of the verb were observed by analyzing the verb lemma. This predictor revealed similarly opposing tendencies between verbs in the same lexical category. This study adds to the growing body of SPE research by examining which linguistic variables influence the use of ‘yo’ in this Ecuadorian Andean Spanish (EAS) variety and comparing these results to those of other Andean Spanish varieties.

‘Malgré la pandémie’

This article presents an analysis of the 2021 New Year address to the nation given by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after nine months of the COVID-19 crisis. The theoretical perspective used is systemic functional linguistics, and comparisons are made with my prior analysis of his address for the previous year. The study focuses on Macron’s use of personal pronouns. It was found that the first-person singular subject pronoun, je, occurs predominantly with mental processes, but that the plural subject pronoun, nous, occurs more frequently, and that the dominant process type is material. Further, whereas the first-person singular is rarely present other than as the subject, the first-person plural frequently occurs as a possessive. Thus, as is common in Macron’s discourse more generally, je is avoided in favour of nous, and Macron plays on the ambiguity of this pronoun to draw the public into shared responsibility for governmental policy. One difference with the 2020 address is that here he uses few expressions of modality, and these are rarely deontic (obligation), most being dynamic (physical possibility).