Silent arguments without pro: The case of Basque

Duguine, Maia

doi:10.1075/la.132.13dug

In:The Limits of Syntactic Variation
Edited by Theresa Biberauer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 132] 2008
► pp. 311–329

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Silent arguments without pro: The case of Basque

Maia Duguine

Published online: 17 September 2008

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.13dug

Basque is traditionally described as a three-way pro-drop language, a

paradigmatic instance of the positive setting of the pro-drop parameter. This

article investigates the phenomenon of silent arguments in Basque and proposes

a novel account of this phonological emptiness. It is argued that Basque silent

arguments are best analyzed as elided DPs. This account avoids the shortcomings

of the pro-drop analysis with respect to the licensing and interpretation effects

of silent arguments, and its interaction with information structure allows a

straightforward explanation of the distribution of overt and silent arguments.

Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

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2022. Basque impersonals in comparison. Linguistics 60:4 ► pp. 1039 ff.

Rothman, Jason, Jorge González Alonso & Eloi Puig-Mayenco

2019. Third Language Acquisition and Linguistic Transfer,

Herbeck, Peter

2018. Deriving Null, Strong and Emphatic Pronouns in Romance Pro-Drop Languages. In Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface [Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 99], ► pp. 171 ff.

Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso & Lorena Sainzmaza-Lecanda

2018. Bilingualism effects in Basque Subject Pronoun Expression. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8:5 ► pp. 523 ff.

Slabakova, Roumyana & Maria del Pilar García Mayo

2017. Testing the current models of third language acquisition. In L3 syntactic transfer [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 5], ► pp. 63 ff.

García Mayo, María del Pilar & Roumyana Slabakova

2015. Object drop in L3 acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism 19:5 ► pp. 483 ff.

SATO, YOSUKE

2014. Argument ellipsis in Colloquial Singapore English and the Anti-Agreement Hypothesis. Journal of Linguistics 50:2 ► pp. 365 ff.

SATO, YOSUKE

2019. Comparative syntax of argument ellipsis in languages without agreement: A case study with Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Linguistics 55:3 ► pp. 643 ff.

Duguine, Maia

2013. Hutsune bizkarroiak eta sasi-A’-kateak. Lapurdum :17 ► pp. 55 ff.

[no author supplied]

2020. Silently Structured Silent Argument [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 259],

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