A pro-drop language is a
languageLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
in which certain classes of
pronounIn linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s may be omitted when they are in some sense
pragmaticallyPragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
inferableInference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...
(the precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate). The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is also commonly referred to in linguistics as zero or null
anaphoraIn linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. Usually, an anaphoric expression is represented by a pro-form or some other kind of deictic--for instance, a pronoun referring to its antecedent...
.
In everyday speech there are often instances when who or what is being referred to can be inferred from context. Proponents of the term "pro-drop" take the view that pronouns which in other languages would have those referents can be omitted, or be
phonologicallyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
null. Among major languages, one which might be called a pro-drop language is
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
(featuring pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts).
ChineseThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
,
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, and
American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
also exhibit frequent pro-drop features.
Some languages might be considered only partially pro-drop in that they allow deletion of the subject pronoun. These
null subject languageIn linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. Such a clause is then said to have a null subject. Typically, null subject languages express person, number, and/or gender agreement with the referent on the verb,...
s include all the Romance languages, with
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
being the most notable exception, as well as all the Balto-Slavic languages and to a limited extent
IcelandicIcelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
.
Japanese
Consider the following examples from Japanese:
- このケーキは美味しい。誰が焼いたの？
- Kono kēki wa oishii. Dare ga yaita no?
- This cake TOPIC tasty-PRESENT. Who SUBJECT bake-PAST EXPLAIN.?
- "This cake is tasty. Who baked it?"
- 知らない。気に入った？
- Shiranai. Ki ni itta?
- know-NEGATIVE. like-PAST?
- "I don't know. Do you like it?"
The pronouns in bold in the English translations (it in the first line, I, you, and it in the second) appear nowhere in the Japanese sentences, but are understood from context. If nouns or pronouns were supplied, the resulting sentences would be grammatically correct but unnatural. (Learners of Japanese as a second language, especially those whose first language is non-pro-drop like English or French, often make the mistake of supplying personal pronouns where pragmatically inferable. This is an example of language transfer.)
Chinese
The above-mentioned examples from Japanese are readily rendered into Chinese:
- zhè kuài dàn gāo hĕn mĕi wèi. shì shéi kăo de?
- This piece cake very beautiful taste. Is who bake?
- "This cake is very tasty. Who baked it?"
- bù zhī dào. xĭ huān ma?
- Not know. like [QUESTION MARKER]?
- "I don't know. Do you like it?"
Turkish
- Gel-diğ-i-ni gördüm.
- Coming saw.
- I saw you/him/her/it come.
The subject "I" above is easily inferrable as the verb gör-mek is declined in the first person simple past tense form. The object pronoun is supposed to be deduced from the context; where context is not clear enough, it should be supplied. For example, if one wants to make it sure that it was the person spoken to who was seen, one would say:
- Senin geldiğini gördüm.
Arabic
Arabic language is considered a null subject language. Look at the example:
- ساعد غيرك يساعدك
- yusaa'idk ghairaka saa'id
- help else, helps you
- You help others, he helps you.
In this example the two pronouns 'you' and 'he' are not realized phonetically, i.e. they are covert; still the meaning is clear.
English
English is considered a non-pro-drop language. Nonetheless, subject pronouns are almost always dropped in commands (e.g., Come here); and in informal speech, pronouns and other words, especially copulas and
auxiliariesIn linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
, may sometimes be dropped, especially from the beginnings of sentences:
- [Have] you ever been there? or [Have you] ever been there?
- [I'm] going to the store. [Do] [you] want to come [with me]?
- Seen on signs: [I am/We are] out to lunch; [I/we will be] back at 1:00 P.M.
- What do you think [of it]? – I like [it]! (only in some dialects)
Relative pronouns are often dropped from restrictive clauses:
- The person [whom] I saw was older.
In speech, when pronouns are not completely dropped, they are more often
elidedElision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
than other words in an utterance.
Note that these elisions are generally restricted to very informal speech and certain fixed expressions, and the rules for their use are complex and vary among dialects.
Modern Greek
Subject pronouns can be often omited in modern
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. Example:
- Βλέπεις εκείνο το κούτσουρο; Θα ήταν καλό για τη φωτιά. Είναι τελείως ξερό.
- See that the log? Would be good for the fire. Is completely dried (literal, direct translation) you see this log? It would be good for the fire. It has completely dried. (idiomatic translation)
Another phenomenon commonly encountered in modern
GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
is the omition of the preposition and article in phrases denoting place or movement to place.
- "I'm going [there]!"
- Greek
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
Πάω!
Romance languages
Most Romance languages (with the notable exception of French) are often categorised as pro-drop too, most of them only in the case of subject pronouns. Unlike in Japanese, however, the missing subject pronoun is not inferred strictly from pragmatics, but partially indicated by the
morphologyIn linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
of the verb. Example:
- ¿Ves este tronco? Sería bueno para la fogata. Está completamente seco. (Spanish)
- See this log? Would be good for the campfire. Is completely dried (literal, direct translation)
- Estás a ver este tronco? Era bom para a fogueira. Secou completamente. (Portuguese)
- Are to see this log ? Was good for the campfire. Dried completely (literal, direct translation) you see this log? It would be good for the campfire. It has completely dried. (idiomatic translation)
In Portuguese object pronouns can sometimes be omitted, especially in the spoken language. Once more the context helps. Example:
Situation: Maria puts on her new dress, comes to her husband and asks:
– Gostou? (BP) Gostas? (EP)
like PAST THIRD PERSON
Do you like it?
From the situation, one can understand that she is talking about the dress.
Spanish and Portuguese are also notable amongst Romance languages because they have no specific pronouns for circumstantial
complementIn grammar the term complement is used with different meanings. The primary meaning is a word, phrase or clause that is necessary in a sentence to complete its meaning. We find complements that function as an argument and complements that exist within arguments.Both complements and modifiers add...
s (arguments denoting circumstance, consequence, place or manner, modifying the verb but not directly involved in the action) or
partitiveIn linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...
s (words or phrases denoting a quantity of something). Compare the following:
- "I'm going [there]!"
- Spanish
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
¡Voy!
- Portuguese
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
Vou!
- Romanian
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
Mă duc!
- Catalan
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
Hi vaig!
- French
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
J'y vais!
- Occitan I vau!
- Italian
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
Ci vado!
- "I have four of them."
- Spanish
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
Tengo cuatro.
- Portuguese
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
Tenho quatro.
- Romanian
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
Am patru.
- Catalan
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
En tinc quatre.
- French
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
J'en ai quatre.
- Occitan N'ai quatre.
- Italian
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
Ne ho quattro.
While French, like English, is a non pro-drop language, pro-drops may occasionally appear in colloquial and so called diary speech. Examples:
(Je ne) sais pas. – (I) don’t know.
(Je) t’appellerai demain. – (I) will call you tomorrow.
(Il ne) comprend rien, machin. – That guy don’t understand a thing.
Also expletive subjects are dropped in French while they are obligatorily expressed in English:
Je crois __ difficile d'atteindre ce but. FR.
I find it difficult to reach that goal.
Slavic languages
All
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
behave in a similar manner to the Romance pro-drop languages. Example:
- Vidim ga. Ide. / Видим га. Иде. Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
- Vidim ga. Prihaja. Slovene
- Виждам го. Идва. Bulgarian
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
- Widzę go. Idzie Polish
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
- Vidím ho. Jde. Czech
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
- Vidím ho. Ide. Slovak
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
- Вижу [его]. Идёт. Russian
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
- Бачу [його]. Йде. Ukrainian
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
- Бачу [яго]. Ідзе. Belarusian
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
- See-1stPERS-SING he-ACC. Come-3rdPERS-SING.
- Го гледам. Доаѓа./ Go gledam. Doagja. Macedonian
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
- 1stPERS-SING he-ACC - SEE. Come-3rdPERS-SING.
- "I see him. He is coming."
Here he in the second sentence is inferred from context.
In Russian even the objective pronoun "его" can be omitted in the present and future tenses (both imperfect and perfective). In most Slavic languages (especially the East Slavic ones), this rule is broken in the past tense of both imperfective and perfectve, since the conjugations agree with the gender of the person. As with the Romance languages mentioned above, the missing pronoun is not inferred strictly from pragmatics, but partially indicated by the morphology of the verb (Вижу, Widzę, Vidim, etc...).
Finno-Ugric languages
In
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, the verb inflection replaces first and second person pronouns in simple sentences, e.g. menen "I go", menette "all of you go". Pronouns are typically left in place only when they need to be inflected, e.g. me "we", meiltä "from us". In the
Estonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, a close relative of Finnish, the tendency is less clear. It generally uses explicit personal pronouns in written language, but these are often omitted in spoken language.
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
is also pro-drop, subject pronouns are used only for emphasis, as example (Én) megyek "I go", and because of the definite conjugation, object pronouns can be often elided as well; for example, the question (Te) láttad a macskát? "Did (you) see the cat?" can be answered with just láttam "(I) saw (it)", because the definite conjugation renders the object pronoun superfluous.
Hebrew
Modern Hebrew, like Biblical Hebrew, is a "moderately" pro-drop language. In general, subject pronouns must be included in the present tense. Since Hebrew has no verb forms expressing the present tense, the present tense is formed using the present participle (somewhat like English I am guarding). The participle in Hebrew, as is the case with other adjectives, declines only in grammatical gender and number (like the past tense in Russian), thus:
- I (m.) guard (ani shomer) = אני שומר
- You (m.) guard (ata shomer) = אתה שומר
- He guards (hu shomer) = הוא שומר
- I (f.) guard (ani shomeret) = אני שומרת
- We (m.) guard (anachnu shomrim) = אנחנו שומרים
Since the participle lacks the distinction between grammatical persons, pronouns must be added in the majority of cases.
In contrast, the past tense and the future tense are composed of "non-degenerate" conjugations – the verb has a different form for each grammatical person, and a properly conjugated verb contains all the information about the subject. The subjective pronoun is therefore normally dropped, except in third-person.
- I (m./f.) guarded (shamarti) = שמרתי
- You (pl./m.) guarded (shamartem) = שמרתם
- I (m./f.) will guard (ehshmor) = אשמור
- You (pl./m.) will guard (tishm'ru) = תשמרו
Many nouns can take suffixes to reflect the possessor, in which case the personal pronoun is dropped. In daily modern Hebrew usage, inflection of nouns is common only for simple nouns, and in most cases, personal pronouns are used. In Hebrew, personal pronouns are treated mostly like adjectives and follow the nouns which they modify. In biblical Hebrew, inflection of more sophisticated nouns is more common than in modern usage.
Generalizations across languages
Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Occitan and Romanian can
elideElision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
subject pronouns only (Portuguese sometimes elides object pronouns as well), and they often do so even when the referent has not been mentioned. This is helped by person/number
inflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
on the verb. It has been observed that pro-drop languages are those with either rich inflection for person and number (Persian, Portuguese, etc.) or no such inflection (Japanese, Chinese, etc.), but languages that are intermediate (English, standard French, etc.) are non-pro-drop.
While the mechanism by which overt pronouns are more "useful" in English than in Japanese is obscure, and while there are exceptions to this observation, it still seems to have considerable descriptive validity. As Huang puts it, "Pro-drop is licensed to occur either where a language has full agreement, or where a language has no agreement, but not where a language has impoverished partial agreement."
Other language families and linguistic regions
Among the Indo-European and
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
of India, pro-drop is the general rule, though many Dravidian languages do not have overt verbal markers to indicate pronominal subjects.
Mongolic languagesThe Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
are similar in this respect to Dravidian languages, and all
Paleosiberian languagesPaleosiberian languages or Paleoasian languages is a term of convenience used in linguistics to classify a disparate group of languages spoken in some parts of north-eastern Siberia and some parts of Russian Far East...
are rigidly pro-drop.
Outside of northern Europe, most non-Bantu
Niger–Congo languagesThe Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
,
Khoisan languagesThe Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion...
of
Southern AfricaSouthern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
and
Austronesian languagesThe Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
of the Western Pacific, pro-drop is the usual pattern in almost all linguistic regions of the world. In many non-pro-drop Niger–Congo or Austronesian languages like
IgboIgbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...
,
SamoanSamoan Samoan Samoan (Gagana Sāmoa, is the language of the Samoan Islands, comprising the independent country of Samoa and the United States territory of American Samoa. It is an official language—alongside English—in both jurisdictions. Samoan, a Polynesian language, is the first language for most...
or
FijianFijian is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken in Fiji. It has 450,000 first-language speakers, which is less than half the population of Fiji, but another 200,000 speak it as a second language...
, however, the subject pronouns do not occur in the same position as a nominal subject and are obligatory even when the latter is present. In more easterly Austronesian languages like
Rapa NuiRapa Nui , also known as Pascuan or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island....
and
HawaiianThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
, subject pronouns are often omitted even though no other subject morphemes exist. Pama–Nyungan languages of Australia also typically omit subject pronouns even when there is no explicit expression of the subject.
Many Pama–Nyungan languages, however, have
cliticIn morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s which often attach to nonverbal hosts to express subjects. The non-Pama–Nyungan languages of Northwestern Australia are universally pro-drop for all classes of pronoun.
Papuan languagesThe Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
of
New GuineaNew Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
and
Nilo-Saharan languagesThe Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...
of
East AfricaEast Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
are similarly universally pro-drop.
Among
Native American languagesIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
, pro-drop is almost universal, as would be expected from the generally
polysyntheticIn linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e., languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. Whereas isolating languages have a low morpheme-to-word ratio, polysynthetic languages have extremely high morpheme-to-word ratios.Not all languages can be...
and
head-markingA head-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads of the phrase in question, rather than the modifiers or dependents. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the...
character of the languages. This character generally allows eliding of all object pronouns as well as subject ones: indeed, most reports on Native American languages show even emphatic use of pronouns exceptionally rare. Only a few Native American languages, mostly
language isolateA language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
s (
HaidaThe Haida language is the language of the Haida people. It contains seven vowels and well over 30 consonants.-History:The first documented contact between the Haida and Europeans was in 1774, on Juan Pérez's exploratory voyage. At this time Haidas inhabited the Queen Charlotte Islands, Dall...
,
TrumaiTrumai is an endangered language isolate of Brazil. Most Trumai are fluent in languages of wider communication, and children are not learning it well.-Grammar:Phonology...
) are known to normally use subject pronouns.
Pragmatic inference
Classical ChineseClassical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
exhibits extensive dropping not only pronouns, but also any terms (subjects, verbs, objects, etc.) pragmatically inferable, giving a very compact character to the language. Note, however, that Classical Chinese was a written language, and such word dropping is not necessarily representative of the spoken language or even of the same linguistic phenomenon.
History of the term
The term "pro-drop" stems from
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's "Lectures on Government and Binding" from 1981 as a cluster of properties of which "null subject" was one (for the occurrence of pro as a
predicateThere are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
rather than a
subjectThe subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
in sentences with the copula see Moro 1997). According to this parameter, languages like Italian and Spanish may be classified as pro-drop languages, while English and French may not. The exploration of the properties related to the pro-drop was also crucial in identifying the notion of parameter. Empirically, the comparison between English and Italian became very important (cf. Rizzi 1982).
Thus, a one-way correlation was suggested between
inflectional agreementIn languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
(AGR) and empty pronouns on the one hand and between no agreement and overt pronouns, on the other. It is worth noting that in the classical version, languages which not only lack agreement morphology but also allow extensive dropping of pronouns—such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese—are not included, as is made clear in a footnote: "The principle suggested is fairly general, but does not apply to such languages as Japanese in which pronouns can be missing much more freely." (Chomsky 1981:284, fn 47).
The term pro-drop is also used in other frameworks in
generative grammarIn theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
, such as in
lexical functional grammarLexical functional grammar is a grammar framework in theoretical linguistics, a variety of generative grammar. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar. The development of the theory was initiated by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, in reaction to...
(LFG), but in a more general sense: "Pro-drop is a widespread linguistic phenomenon in which, under certain conditions, a structural NP may be unexpressed, giving rise to a pronominal interpretation." (Bresnan 1982:384). For a general history of this term within the development of syntactic theory, see Graffi 2001.
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