Cover not available

In:Null or Nothing: Zero elements in Romance syntax and morphology
Edited by Peter Herbeck and Natascha Pomino
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 291] 2026
► pp. 218–250

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Indefinite object drop in Spanish

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 27 February 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.291.08mar
Abstract
The criticism cast on Campos’ (1986) analysis for Spanish indefinite null objects motivates the consideration of other analyses, such as an analysis by null pronominals, nominal ellipsis and verb-stranding VP-ellipsis. Even though some of these analyses are said to explain the properties of null objects in some Romance languages, I claim they should be discarded for Spanish indefinite null objects. By contrast, in line with Martínez-García (2023, 2025b, 2025c), I claim that indefinite null objects are better analyzed as argument ellipsis, specifically as NP-ellipsis derived by PF-deletion. This analysis correctly explains the properties of the ellipsis site, namely, its indefinite, non-specific readings, the availability of sloppy readings, its narrow scope with respect to other operators and its inability of being visible as subject of secondary predication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Constraints on Indefinite object drop
    • 1.2Motivating the issue
  • 2.Some tentative proposals
    • 2.1Null pronominals
    • 2.2Nominal ellipsis
    • 2.3Verb-stranding VP-ellipsis
  • 3.Interim summary
  • 4.Indefinite null objects as argument ellipsis
    • 4.1How is argument ellipsis derived?
    • 4.2Predictive capability
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (80)
References
Agulló, Jorge. 2024. “El pronombre átono en las construcciones existenciales como pronombre partitivo.” Études Romanes de Brno 45: 190–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Armstrong, Grant. 2014. “Spanish Unspecified Objects as Null Incorporated Nouns.” Probus 28: 1–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Authier, Jean-Marc. 1989. “Arbitrary Null Objects and Unselective Binding.” In The Null Subject Parameter, edited by Osvaldo A. Jaeggli, and Kenneth J. Safir, 45–67. Netherlands: Springer Netherlands. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola. 1980. “Nomi senza articolo.” Rivista de grammatica generativa 5: 51–63.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh, and Roumyana Pancheva. 2006. “Implicit Arguments.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, edited by Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 558–588. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 2015. “La recuperación de los argumentos implícitos: el problema de dónde mirar.” In Studium grammaticae. Homenaje al profesor José A. Martínez, edited by María Ángeles Álvarez et al., 149–164. Oviedo: Editorial de la Universidad de Oviedo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brucart, José María. 1999. “La elipsis.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, Vol. 2, edited by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 2787–2863. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brucart, José María, Ángel Gallego, and Javier Fernández-Sánchez. 2023. “Ellipsis in the Romance Languages.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Linguistics, edited by Mark Aronoff, 1–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2005. Binding Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Camacho, José, Liliana Paredes, and Liliana Sánchez. 1997. “Null objects in Andean Bilingual Spanish.” In Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual BUCLD, edited by Elizabeth Hughes, Mary Hughes, and Annabel Greenhill, 133–146. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campos, Héctor. 1986. “Indefinite Object Drop.” Linguistic Inquiry 17: 354–359.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. 2002. “Against optional and null clitics. Right dislocation vs. marginalization.” Studia Linguistica 56: 29–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna, and Giuliana Giusti. 2017. “Quantified Expressions and Quantitative Clitics.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, edited by Martin Everaert, and Henk van Riemsdijk, 1–61. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1982. Some concepts and consequences of the theory of government and binding. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clements, J. Clancy. 2006. “Null Direct Objects in Spanish.” In Functional Approaches to Spanish Syntax, edited by J. Clancy Clements, and Jiyounh Yoon, 134–150. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cyrino, Sonia. 2019. “Indefinite null objects in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.” Caderno De Squibs: Temas Em Estudos Formais Da Linguagem 5: 14–26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Demonte, Violeta, and Pascual José Masullo. 1999. “La predicación: los complementos predicativos.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, Vol. 2, edited by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 2461–2523. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Depiante, Marcela A. 2000. The Syntax of Deep and Surface Anaphora: A Study of Null Complement Anaphora and Stripping/Bare Argument Ellipsis. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Dimitriadis, Alexis. 1994. “Clitics and Island-Insensitive Object Drop.” Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 24: 1–15.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, and Brenda Laca. 2003. “Les Noms Sans Déterminant Dans les Langues Romanes.” In Les Langues Romanes. Problèmes de la Phrase Simple, edited by Danièle Godard, 235–281. Paris: Editions du CNRS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doron, Edit. 1999. “V-movement and VP-ellipsis.” In Fragments: Studies in ellipsis and gapping, edited by Elabbas Benmamoun, and Shalom Lappin, 157–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duguine, Maia. 2014. “Argument Ellipsis: A Unitary Approach to pro-drop.” The Linguistic Review 31: 515–549. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eguren, Luis. 2010. “Contrastive Focus and Nominal Ellipsis in Spanish.” Lingua 120: 435–457. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Espinal, María Teresa. 2010. “Bare Nominals in Catalan and Spanish: Their Structure and Meaning.” Lingua 120: 984–1009. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Espinal, María Teresa, and Sonia Cyrino. 2019. “A New Syntactically-Driven Approach to Romance Plural Indefiniteness, Specificity and Anti-Specificity in Romance.” Journal of Linguistics 1: 535–570. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Lotus Madelyn. 2005. Verb-stranding VP-ellipsis: A Cross-linguistic Study. PhD dissertation, McGill University.
de Granda, Germán. 1996. “Origen y mantenimiento de un rasgo sintáctico (o dos) del español andino: La omisión de clíticos preverbales.” Lexis 20: 275–298. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hankamer, Jorge, and Ivan Sag. 1976. “Deep and Surface Anaphora.” Linguistic Inquiry 7: 391–426.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoji, Hajime. 1998. “Null Object and Sloppy Identity in Japanese.” Linguistic Inquiry 29: 127–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert. 1999. “Movement and Control.” Linguistic Inquiry 30: 69–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, James. 1984. “On the Distribution and Reference of Empty Pronouns.” Linguistic Inquiry 15: 531–574.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, Kyle. 2001. “What VP Ellipsis Can Do, and What it Can’t, but not Why.” In The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, edited by Mark Baltin, and Chris Collins, 439–479. New Jersey: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Topics in Ellipsis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Soowon. 1999. “Sloppy/Strict Identity, Empty Objects, and NP Ellipsis.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8: 255–284. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kornfield, Laura, and Andrés Saab. 2004. “Nominal Ellipsis and Morphological Structure in Spanish.” In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002, edited by Reineke Bok-Bennema et al., 183–198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laca, Brenda. 1996. “Acerca de la semántica de los plurales escuetos en español.” In El sustantivo sin determinación. La ausencia de determinante en la lengua española, edited by Ignacio Bosque, 241–268. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. “Presencia y ausencia de determinantes.” In Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, Vol. 1, edited by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 891–928. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Spanish Bare Plurals and Topicalization.” In New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance Languages and Beyond, edited by Johannes Kabatek, and Albert Walls, 95–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landa, Alazne. 1995. Conditions on Null Objects in Basque Spanish and their Relation to ‘Leísmo’ and Clitic Doubling. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California.
Landau, Idan. 2010. “The Explicit Syntax of Implicit Arguments.” Linguistic Inquiry 41: 357–388. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Missing Objects in Hebrew: Argument Ellipsis, not VP Ellipsis.” Glossa 3: 1–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. “On the Nonexistence of Verb-Stranding VP-Ellipsis.” Linguistic Inquiry 51: 341–365. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leonetti, Manuel. 2006. “Clitics Do Not Encode Specificity.” In Proceedings of the Workshop “Definiteness, Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages”, Arbeitspapier — Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Konstanz, edited by Georg Kaiser, and Manuel Leonetti, 111–139. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Indefinidos, nombres escuetos y clíticos en las dislocaciones del español.” Cuadernos de la ALFAL 3: 100–123.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional Heads, Licensing, and Identification. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. “Reference and Proper Names: A Theory of N-Movement in Syntax and Logical Form.” Linguistic Inquiry 25: 609–665.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martínez-García, Carlos. 2023. “Indefinite Readings of Referential Null Subjects and Null Objects in Spanish.” Borealis 12: 135–159. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2025a. “Null Objects in Spanish Recipes.” Verba 52: 1–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2025b. “Indefinite Argument Drop in Spanish.” In Proceedings of the Thirty-sixth Western Conference on Linguistics, edited by Keira Colleluori, 114–123. Fresno: California State University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2025c. Los objetos tácitos en español: propuesta de análisis y consecuencias teóricas. PhD dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Martínez-García, Carlos, Esther Rinke, and Nelli Kerezova. 2025. “Indefinite Object Drop Is Lexically Constrained.” Glossa 10: 1–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Masullo, Pascual José. 2017. “La interfaz sintaxis-pragmática: Caída del objeto acusativo definido sin clítico en el español rioplatense.” Saga Revista de Letras 7: 53–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2001. The Syntax of Silence. Sluicing, Islands and the Theory of Ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Diagnosing Ellipsis.” In Diagnosing Syntax, edited by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, and Norbert Corver, 537–542. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mittwoch, Anitta. 2004. “Unspecified Arguments in Episodic and Habitual Sentences.” In The Syntax of Aspect: Deriving Thematic and Aspectual Interpretation, edited by Nomi Erteschik-Shir, and Tova Rapoport, 237–255. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo, and Cynthia Zocca. 2009. “Lack of Morphological Identity and Ellipsis Resolution in Brazilian Portuguese.” In Essays on Brazilian Portuguese, edited by Jairo Nunes, 178–195. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oku, Satoshi. 1998a. A Theory of Selection and Reconstruction in the Minimalist Perspective. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.
. 1998b. “LF Copy Analysis of Japanese Null Arguments.” In CLS 34: Papers from the Main Session, edited by M. Catherine Gruber et al., 299–314. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Otani, Kazuyo, and John Whitman. 1991. “V-Rraising and VP-Ellipsis.” Linguistic Inquiry 22: 345–358.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palacios, Azucena. 2000. “El sistema pronominal del español Paraguayo: un caso de contacto de lenguas.” In Teoría y práctica del contacto: el español de América en el candelero, edited by Julio Calvo Pérez, 122–143. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paparounas, Lefteris, and Ioanna Sitaridou. 2018. “Indefinite Object Drop in Modern Greek: Towards a Minimalist Typology of Null Objects.” SinFonIJA 11: 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinzin, Francesco, and Cecilia Poletto. 2022. “Indefinite Objects in Micro-variation. A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of the Distribution of Partitives, Articles, Bare Nominals and Definite Determiners in Northern Italy.” Studia Linguistica 76: 13–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raposo, Eduardo. 1986. “On the Null Object in European Portuguese.” In Studies in Romance Linguistics, edited by Osvaldo A. Jaeggli, and Carmen Silva-Corvalán, 373–390. Dordrecht: Foris. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rivas, Alberto. 1977. A Theory of Clitics. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986. “Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of pro.” Linguistic Inquiry 17: 501–557.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roca, Francesc. 1992. “Object Clitics in Spanish and Catalan.” CatWPL 2: 245–281.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ross, John Roberts. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Saab, Andrés. 2014. “Syntax of Nothing. Some Theoretical and Empirical Remarks on Implicit Arguments.” Borealis 3: 125–132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Nominal Ellipsis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ellipsis, edited by Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, and Tanja Temmerman, 526–561. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Gramática de los silencios. Balance y propuesta. Madrid: AKAL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 2007. “Notes on East Asian Argument Ellipsis.” Language Research 43: 203–227.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez, Liliana. 1999. “Null Objects and Dº Features in Contact Spanish.” In Formal Perspectives on Romance Linguistics, edited by Jean-Marc Authier et al., 227–242. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sato, Yosuke. 2014. “LF Copy Theory and Definiteness at the Syntax-Discourse Interface: New Evidence from Argument Ellipsis in Javanese.” Studia Linguistica 69: 1–39.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Şener, Serkan, and Daiko Takahashi. 2010. “Ellipsis of Arguments in Japanese and Turkish.” Nanzan Linguistics 6: 79–99.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suñer, Margarita. 1982. The Syntax and Semantics of Spanish Presentational Sentence-Types. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suñer, Margarita, and María Yépez. 1988. “Null Definite Objects in Quiteño.” Linguistic Inquiry 19: 511–519.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Takahashi, Daiko. 2013. “Argument Ellipsis in Japanese and Malayalam.” Nanzan Linguistics 9: 173–192.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Argument Ellipsis, Anti-Agreement, and Scrambling.” In Japanese Syntax in Comparative Perspective, edited by Mamoru Saito, 88–116. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verdecchia, Matías. 2022. “Object Drop in Spanish Is Not Island-Sensitive.” Journal of Linguistics 58: 901–906. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue