In:The Limits of Syntactic Variation
Edited by Theresa Biberauer
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 132] 2008
► pp. 331–348
Case morphology and radical pro-drop
Published online: 17 September 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.14nee
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.14nee
This paper focuses on the so-called discourse pro-drop languages,
i.e., those permitting radical pro-drop, which affects not just subjects,
but other pronominal arguments too. Whereas previous attempts to
understand the properties of these languages have focused on verbal
agreement, the proposal here is that it is in fact the properties of the
pronominal paradigm that determine the availability or otherwise of
radical pro-drop. In particular, we propose that radical pro-drop will
only be possible in languages with “transparent” (i.e., non-fusional)
pronominal paradigms, since pro-drop falls out as the consequence
of the zero spell-out of regular pronouns. On the empirical front, we
show that investigation of a wide range of languages would seem to
confirm our prediction.
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Zhang, Yan
Sheehan, Michelle
Frascarelli, Mara & Marco Casentini
[no author supplied]
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