Null subject language
Encyclopedia
In 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, rendering a subject noun phrase
redundant. In the principles and parameters
framework, the null subject is controlled by the pro-drop parameter, which is either on or off for a particular language.
For example, in Italian
the subject "she" can be either explicit or implicit:
The subject "she" of the second sentence is only implied in Italian. English
and French
, on the other hand, require an explicit subject in this sentence.
Of the thousands of languages in the world, a considerable part are null subject languages, from a wide diversity of unrelated language families
. They include Albanian
, Arabic
, Basque
, Finnish
, Hindi, Hungarian
, Italian
, Catalan
, Chinese
, Japanese
, Persian
, Portuguese
(especially European Portuguese), Russian
and other Slavic languages
, Spanish
, Greek
, and Tamil
, as well as most languages related to these, and many others still.
of syntax
, the term null subject refers to an empty category
. The empty category in question is thought to behave like an ordinary pronoun
with respect to anaphoric reference
and other grammatical behavior. Hence it is most commonly referred to as "pro".
This phenomenon is similar, but not identical, to that of pro-drop language
s, which may omit pronouns, including subject pronouns, but also object
pronouns. While pro-drop languages are null subject languages, not all null subject languages are pro-drop.
In null subject languages that have verb
inflection
in which the verb inflects for person, the grammatical person
of the subject is reflected by the inflection of the verb, and likewise for number
and gender
.
:
As the examples illustrate, in many null subject languages, personal pronoun
s exist and can be used for emphasis
but are dropped whenever they can be inferred from the context. Some sentences do not allow a subject in any form while, in other cases an explicit subject without particular emphasis, would sound awkward or unnatural.
Most Bantu languages are null-subject. For example, in Ganda, 'I'm going home' could be translated as Ŋŋenze ewange or as Nze ŋŋenze ewange, where nze means 'I'.
Literal Translation: Came, saw, conquered.
Actual Translation: I came. I saw. I conquered.
Latin text: Cogito ergo sum.
Literal Translation: Think, therefore am.
Actual Translation: I think, therefore I am.
(The above is a rather ambiguous example. In Latin the subject is not necessarily stated through a (personal) noun, but implied through conjugation. Therefore, the subject is present indeed: the first person singular is stated through the “i” in “ven-i“, “vid-i”, “vic-i”, and through the “o” in “cogit-o”. “To think, therefore to be” would be the literal translation of “Cogitare ergo esse“; “I think, therefore I am” is the truly literal translation of “Cogito ergo sum”. The stated examples are hence not a case of null-subject.)
Transliteration: muṭintuviṭṭatu
Literal Translation: ended
Actual Translation: It has come to an end.
is considered a null subject language, as demonstrated by the following example:
Arabic text: ساعد غيرك، يساعدك
Transliteration: sā‘id ghayrak, yusā‘iduk
Literal translation: help other, helps you
Idiomatic translation: You help another, he helps you.
and several other null subject languages are topic-prominent language
s; some of these languages require an expressed topic in order for sentences to make sense. In Japanese, for example, it is possible to start a sentence with a topic marked by the particle wa, and in subsequent sentences leave the topic unstated, as it is understood to remain the same, until another one is either explicitly or implicitly introduced. For example, in the second sentence below, the subject ("we") is not expressed again but left implicit:
In other cases, the topic can be changed without being explicitly stated, as in the following example, where the topic changes implicitly from "today" to "I".
In Spanish, sentences with a null subject are used more frequently than sentences with a subject. In some cases, it is even necessary to skip the subject to create a grammatically correct sentence.
. "*Rains" is not a correct sentence; a dummy "it" has to be added: "It rains", French "Il pleut". In most Romance languages, however, "Rains" can be a sentence: Spanish "Llueve", Italian "Piove", Catalan "Plou", Portuguese "Chove", Romanian "Plouǎ", etc. Uralic and Slavic languages also show this trait: Finnish "Sataa", Hungarian "Esik"; Polish "Pada".
There are some languages that are not pro-drop but do not require this syntactic gap to be filled. For example, in Esperanto
, "He made the cake" would translate as Li faris la kukon (never *Faris la kukon), but It rained yesterday would be Pluvis hieraŭ (not *Ĝi pluvis hieraŭ).
, such as English
and German
, but also in French
(unlike most other Romance language
), and many others. In some cases, colloquial expressions, particularly in English, less so in German, and occasionally in French, allow for the omission of the subject in the same way that languages such as Spanish and Russian allow using "correct" grammar:
to lack explicit subjects; for example:
An explicit declaration of the pronoun in English in the imperative mood is possible, usually for emphasis but not necessary:
French and German offer less flexibility with regards to null subjects. In French, it is neither grammatically correct nor possible to include the subject within the imperative form (the vous in the expression taisez-vous would stem from the fact that se taire, to be silent is a reflexive verb and is thus the object).
In German, the informal form du may be added to the imperative in a colloquial manner for emphasis (Mach du das, you do it). The formal imperative requires the addition of the subject Sie (as in Machen Sie das) because the formal, addressee-specific imperative form of a verb is morphologically identical to the infinitive, which when used by itself belongs in final position and indicates a "neutral" or addressee-nonspecific imperative (e.g., "Bitte nicht stören" ["Please do not disturb"]).
s, while not officially pro-drop, permit pronoun omission with some regularity. In Interlingua
, pronoun omission is most common with the pronoun il, which means "it" when referring to part of a sentence or to nothing in particular. Examples of this word include
Il tends to be omitted whenever the contraction "it's" can be used in English. Thus, il may be omitted from the second sentence above: "Es ver que ille arriva deman". In addition, subject pronouns are sometimes omitted when they can be inferred from a previous sentence:
Similarly, Esperanto
sometimes exhibits pronoun deletion in casual use. This deletion is normally limited to subject pronouns, especially where the pronoun has been used just previously:
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
, a null-subject language is a language
Language
Language 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...
whose grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
permits an independent clause
Independent clause
An independent clause is a clause that can stand by itself, also known as a simple sentence. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate; it makes sense by itself....
to lack an explicit subject
Subject (grammar)
The 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...
. Such a clause is then said to have a null subject. Typically, null subject languages express person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
, number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and/or gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In 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....
with the referent
Coreference
In linguistics, co-reference occurs when multiple expressions in a sentence or document refer to the same thing; or in linguistic jargon, they have the same "referent."...
on the verb, rendering a subject noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
redundant. In the principles and parameters
Principles and parameters
Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles and specific parameters that for particular languages are either turned on or off...
framework, the null subject is controlled by the pro-drop parameter, which is either on or off for a particular language.
For example, in Italian
Italian language
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...
the subject "she" can be either explicit or implicit:
- Maria non vuole mangiare. lit.Literal translationLiteral translation, or direct translation, is the rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-word" rather than conveying the sense of the original...
[Maria not want [to]-eat], "Maria does not want to eat". - Non vuole mangiare. lit.SubjectSubject (grammar)The 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...
not want [to]-eat], "[She] does not want to eat."
The subject "she" of the second sentence is only implied in Italian. English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and French
French language
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...
, on the other hand, require an explicit subject in this sentence.
Of the thousands of languages in the world, a considerable part are null subject languages, from a wide diversity of unrelated language families
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
. They include Albanian
Albanian language
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish 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...
, Hindi, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian 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....
, Italian
Italian language
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...
, Catalan
Catalan language
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...
, Chinese
Chinese language
The 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...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is 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...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
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...
(especially European Portuguese), Russian
Russian language
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...
and other Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The 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...
, Spanish
Spanish language
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...
, Greek
Greek language
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;...
, and Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, as well as most languages related to these, and many others still.
Characterization
In the framework of government and binding theoryGovernment and binding theory
Government and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s...
of syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, the term null subject refers to an empty category
Empty category
In linguistics, in the study of syntax, an empty category is a nominal element which does not have any phonological content and is therefore unpronounced; they may also be referred to as covert nouns, in contrast to overt nouns which are pronounced. There are four types of empty category:...
. The empty category in question is thought to behave like an ordinary pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
with respect to anaphoric reference
Anaphora (linguistics)
In 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...
and other grammatical behavior. Hence it is most commonly referred to as "pro".
This phenomenon is similar, but not identical, to that of pro-drop language
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
s, which may omit pronouns, including subject pronouns, but also object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
pronouns. While pro-drop languages are null subject languages, not all null subject languages are pro-drop.
In null subject languages that have verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
inflection
Inflection
In 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...
in which the verb inflects for person, the grammatical person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
of the subject is reflected by the inflection of the verb, and likewise for number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
.
Examples
The following examples come from PortuguesePortuguese language
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...
:
- "I'm going home" can be translated either as Vou para casa or as Eu vou para casa, where eu means "I".
- "It's raining" can be translated as Está chovendo, but not as *Ele está chovendo, where ele would correspond to English it.
- "I'm going home. I'm going to watch TV" would not, except in exceptional circumstances, be translated as Eu vou para casa. Eu vou ver televisão. At least the subject of the second sentence should be omitted in Portugese unless one wishes to express emphasis, as to emphasise the I. In Brazilian Portuguese, "Eu" is commonly used in written and spoken language without any emphasis meant. Eu vou para casa or Eu vou ver televisão would, in BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, sound more natural than omitting the subject "Eu" ("I") and carry only the same meaning of "I'm going home. I'm going to watch TV" as it does in English.
As the examples illustrate, in many null subject languages, personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s exist and can be used for emphasis
Emphasis
Emphasis or emphatic may refer to:* Emphasis , intentional alteration of the amplitude-vs.-frequency characteristics of the signal to reduce adverse effects of noise...
but are dropped whenever they can be inferred from the context. Some sentences do not allow a subject in any form while, in other cases an explicit subject without particular emphasis, would sound awkward or unnatural.
Most Bantu languages are null-subject. For example, in Ganda, 'I'm going home' could be translated as Ŋŋenze ewange or as Nze ŋŋenze ewange, where nze means 'I'.
Latin language
Latin text: Veni, vidi, vici.Veni, vidi, vici
"Veni, vidi, vici" is a Latin sentence reportedly written by Julius Caesar in 47 BC as a comment on his short war with Pharnaces II of Pontus in the city of Zela ....
Literal Translation: Came, saw, conquered.
Actual Translation: I came. I saw. I conquered.
Latin text: Cogito ergo sum.
Cogito ergo sum
is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
Literal Translation: Think, therefore am.
Actual Translation: I think, therefore I am.
(The above is a rather ambiguous example. In Latin the subject is not necessarily stated through a (personal) noun, but implied through conjugation. Therefore, the subject is present indeed: the first person singular is stated through the “i” in “ven-i“, “vid-i”, “vic-i”, and through the “o” in “cogit-o”. “To think, therefore to be” would be the literal translation of “Cogitare ergo esse“; “I think, therefore I am” is the truly literal translation of “Cogito ergo sum”. The stated examples are hence not a case of null-subject.)
Tamil language
Tamil script: முடிந்துவிட்டதுTransliteration: muṭintuviṭṭatu
Literal Translation: ended
Actual Translation: It has come to an end.
Arabic language
ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
is considered a null subject language, as demonstrated by the following example:
Arabic text: ساعد غيرك، يساعدك
Transliteration: sā‘id ghayrak, yusā‘iduk
Literal translation: help other, helps you
Idiomatic translation: You help another, he helps you.
Japanese language
JapaneseJapanese language
is 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...
and several other null subject languages are topic-prominent language
Topic-prominent language
A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N...
s; some of these languages require an expressed topic in order for sentences to make sense. In Japanese, for example, it is possible to start a sentence with a topic marked by the particle wa, and in subsequent sentences leave the topic unstated, as it is understood to remain the same, until another one is either explicitly or implicitly introduced. For example, in the second sentence below, the subject ("we") is not expressed again but left implicit:
| Japanese text | は | いを | した。 | で | ごを | べた。 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transliteration | Watashitachi wa | kaimono o | shita. | Ato de | gohan o | tabeta. |
| Literal translation | We (TOPIC) | shopping (OBJ) | did. | After (COMPL) | dinner (OBJ) | ate. |
| Idiomatic translation | "We went shopping. Afterwards, we ate dinner." | |||||
In other cases, the topic can be changed without being explicitly stated, as in the following example, where the topic changes implicitly from "today" to "I".
| Japanese text | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transliteration | Kyō wa | gēmu no | hatsubaibi | na n da | kedo, | kaō ka | dō ka | mayotte iru. |
| Literal translation | Today (TOPIC) | game (GEN) | release date | is | but, | whether to buy | or not | confused. |
| Idiomatic translation | "The game comes out today, but (I) can't decide whether or not to buy (it)." | |||||||
Spanish language
The null subject also occurs in Spanish. Examples:- (Nosotros) Vamos a la playa: (We) go to the beach.
- (Tú/vos) Eres/sos mi amiga: (You) are my friend.
- (Ustedes/vosotros) No son/sois bienvenidos aquí: (You) are not welcome here.
- (Ellos) Están durmiendo: (They) are asleep.
- (Yo) Necesito ayuda: (I) need some help.
- (Él) Está en su habitación: (He) is in his bedroom.
- (Ella) Está cansada: (She) is tired.
In Spanish, sentences with a null subject are used more frequently than sentences with a subject. In some cases, it is even necessary to skip the subject to create a grammatically correct sentence.
Impersonal constructions
In some cases (impersonal constructions), a proposition has no referent at all. Pro-drop languages deal naturally with these, whereas many non-pro-drop languages such as English and French have to fill in the syntactic gap by inserting a dummy pronounDummy pronoun
A dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used in non-pro-drop languages, such as English....
. "*Rains" is not a correct sentence; a dummy "it" has to be added: "It rains", French "Il pleut". In most Romance languages, however, "Rains" can be a sentence: Spanish "Llueve", Italian "Piove", Catalan "Plou", Portuguese "Chove", Romanian "Plouǎ", etc. Uralic and Slavic languages also show this trait: Finnish "Sataa", Hungarian "Esik"; Polish "Pada".
There are some languages that are not pro-drop but do not require this syntactic gap to be filled. For example, in Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, "He made the cake" would translate as Li faris la kukon (never *Faris la kukon), but It rained yesterday would be Pluvis hieraŭ (not *Ĝi pluvis hieraŭ).
Pro-drop in infants
Research shows that until around 3 years old, children often omit subjects. For Example:- Drop bean.
- Brushing my teeth.
- Going to school.
- Want an apple.
Null subjects in non-null subject languages
Other languages (sometimes called non-null subject languages) require each sentence to include a subject: this is the case for most Germanic languagesGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, such as English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, but also in French
French language
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...
(unlike most other Romance language
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
), and many others. In some cases, colloquial expressions, particularly in English, less so in German, and occasionally in French, allow for the omission of the subject in the same way that languages such as Spanish and Russian allow using "correct" grammar:
- "Bumped into George this morning." (I)
- "Agreed to have a snifter to catch up on old times." (We)
- "Told me what the two of you had been up to." (He)
- "Went down to Brighton for the weekend?" (You)
The imperative form
Even in such non-null subject languages as English, it is standard for clauses in the imperative moodImperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
to lack explicit subjects; for example:
- "Take a break; you're working too hard."
- "Shut up!"
An explicit declaration of the pronoun in English in the imperative mood is possible, usually for emphasis but not necessary:
- "Don't you listen to him!"
French and German offer less flexibility with regards to null subjects. In French, it is neither grammatically correct nor possible to include the subject within the imperative form (the vous in the expression taisez-vous would stem from the fact that se taire, to be silent is a reflexive verb and is thus the object).
In German, the informal form du may be added to the imperative in a colloquial manner for emphasis (Mach du das, you do it). The formal imperative requires the addition of the subject Sie (as in Machen Sie das) because the formal, addressee-specific imperative form of a verb is morphologically identical to the infinitive, which when used by itself belongs in final position and indicates a "neutral" or addressee-nonspecific imperative (e.g., "Bitte nicht stören" ["Please do not disturb"]).
Auxiliary languages
Many international auxiliary languageInternational auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
s, while not officially pro-drop, permit pronoun omission with some regularity. In Interlingua
Interlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, pronoun omission is most common with the pronoun il, which means "it" when referring to part of a sentence or to nothing in particular. Examples of this word include
- Il pluvia.
- It's raining.
- Il es ver que ille arriva deman.
- It is true that he arrives tomorrow.
Il tends to be omitted whenever the contraction "it's" can be used in English. Thus, il may be omitted from the second sentence above: "Es ver que ille arriva deman". In addition, subject pronouns are sometimes omitted when they can be inferred from a previous sentence:
- Illa audiva un crito. Curreva al porto. Aperiva lo.
- She heard a cry. Ran to the door. Opened it.
Similarly, Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
sometimes exhibits pronoun deletion in casual use. This deletion is normally limited to subject pronouns, especially where the pronoun has been used just previously:
- Ĉu vi vidas lin? Venas nun.
- QUESTION-PARTICLE you see him? Comes now.
- Do you see him? He is coming now.
See also
- Agreement (linguistics)Agreement (linguistics)In 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....
- Anaphora (linguistics)Anaphora (linguistics)In 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...
- Impersonal verbImpersonal verbIn linguistics, an impersonal verb is a verb that cannot take a true subject, because it does not represent an action, occurrence, or state-of-being of any specific person, place, or thing...
- Pro-drop languagePro-drop languageA pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
External links
- List of languages including pro-drop (PD) or non-pro-drop (NPD) status, which is usually related to null subject or non-null subject status.