The Pro-drop Parameter

recoverability is guaranteed by the rich verbal inflection.⁹⁴

This dichotomy does not however fully explain the case of French and other languages such as German and certain Arab dialects. Even though these are strong inflection languages, they do not have null subjects. It seems clear that morphological richness per se is not, at least on its own, a term refined enough to account for the differences among languages. When focusing on French, we are confronted with a peculiar situation where roots are found in the phonetic component: French, having strong inflection, does license null subjects.

Nevertheless, when checking theory applies, it cannot check them due to the phonetic convergence of French inflections. This loss of phonetic differentiation or, as one may call it, this loss of inflection in the phonetic form, is what prevents French from having null surface subjects.

Regarding the literature, Perlmutter (1971) was the first to differentiate between two types of languages on the basis of the obligatory presence of the subject in surface structure. Under Perlmutter's analysis, English and French were grouped together.

Rizzi (1986) proposes that for a language to have null subjects, it has to both license them and, at the same time, identify them: recoverability requires identification. Therefore, Spanish has null subjects, since it both licenses (because

94 Nevertheless, some languages such as Irish, Chinese and Japanese, despite the fact that they do not have rich inflection, allow the presence of null arguments (Jaeggli and Safir 1989). The opposite situation is also found in French, for instance, which, being a [+ strong] language, does not allow null subjects, as will be shown later.

Jaeggli and Safir's (1989) proposal contends that only languages with homogeneous paradigms allow null subjects: either fully inflected languages, such as Spanish and Italian, or those with no inflection at all, such as Chinese. On the contrary, those languages with a heterogeneous paradigm, with a mixture of pure roots and inflected forms, such as English and French, are not allowed to have null subjects. This principle is referred to in acquisition studies as the principle of morphological uniformity. Thus, as Liceras (1997) states, children would set the null-subject parameter as [+/- null subject] depending on whether they are confronted with verbs with a [+uniform] or a [-uniform]

morphological paradigm.

of its strong Agr) and identifies its subjects (because of its rich morphology), whereas French does not because, even though it licenses them, it cannot identify them.

Consequently, the link that could be established between Rizzi's (1986) proposal and Pollock's (1989) [weak/strong] Agr parameter has to be adjusted:

weak agreement languages, such as English, can neither license nor identify their subjects and therefore no null subject is accepted. Strong agreement languages, such as French and Spanish, should license and identify their subjects, thus allowing null subjects. Nevertheless, at this point the [+/- phonetic] dimension has to be included and combined with the two previous dimensions, such that only in the case of strong agreement [+phonetic] languages, will null subjects be allowed, as shown in (85):⁹⁵

(85) a. they play the piano I play the piano you play the piano

b. (ellos) pro tocan el piano c. (ils,) ils jouent du piano (yo) pro toco el piano (moi,) je joue du piano

95 As previously mentioned, languages such as Chinese or Japanese cannot be analyzed in exactly the same ways in terms of licensing and identification (Huang 1984, Jaeggli and Safir 1989). Regarding the case of subjects in these languages, a different proposal considers them not as empty or null subjects but rather as empty operators whose content could be recovered from the context. Thus, Chinese pro, for instance, is licensed by a discourse-bound operator in the specifier of CP and identified by null topics (Liceras and Díaz 1995, 1999).

(tú) pro tocas el piano (toi,) tu joues du piano

This analysis of French is based on Authier's (1992) and Roberge's (1986, 1990) proposals concerning present-day French. Roberts (1993) argues in his diachronic analysis of French that Old French allowed null subjects. These null subjects were subject to more restricted conditions than their Modern Italian and Spanish counterparts. For instance, null subjects in Old French were more widely attested in root clauses than in embedded clauses. At the beginning of the Old French period, the verbal paradigm had six distinct Person inflections like Spanish, as shown in (86):

(86) chant chantons chantes chantez

chante (t) chantent

Nevertheless, this paradigm was already reduced to three in spoken Old French. According to Roberts (1993), this phenomenon is the result of two processes: (1) phonetic erosion of final consonants and (2) an operation of analogy which added -e in the first Person singular. Even though he specifically denies suggesting that there is a direct relationship between the identification of pro and morphophonemics, we think that phonology may not be totally excluded.

At this point, Roberge's (1986, 1990) and Liceras and Díaz's (1999) proposals can be included, as shown in table (III):⁹⁶

Table III: null-subject parameter: Rizzi (1986), Roberge (1986, 1990), Liceras and Díaz (1995, 1999)

ENGLISH FRENCH SPANISH

licensing NO [-strong]

YES in [Spec IP]

[+strong]

YES in [Spec IP]

[+strong]

identification NO YES via subject clitic pronouns

YES via phi-features in Agr

category overt pronoun overt pronoun pro

According to these authors, English (due to its [- strong] feature) does not license nor identify null subjects, while both French and Spanish do. The licensing in both Spanish and French occurs at the level of [Spec IP], as in (87). The difference between French and Spanish lies in the fact that in Spanish identification takes place through the phi-features in Agr, while in French it does so via the subject clitic pronouns.

The English examples in (85a) and (87) reveal a weak agreement language both lexically and phonetically: the information provided by the verb fails to discriminate amongst the three sentences so that the subject can only be identified via lexical realization. Notice that the very same verbal form corresponds to three

96 Authier (1992) argues as well that French is a pro-drop language on the basis of D.

IP

I VP I’

Spec

a letter una carta une lettre write

escriben écrivent they

Agr-3^rdpp ils

a.

b.

c.

(87)

different pronominal subjects: 3^rdpp, 1^stps and 2^ndps.⁹⁷ Both French and Spanish, on the contrary, present a lexical variety of endings for each Person. In the case of Spanish, this lexical variety is paired with a phonetic variety. This is what allows for null subjects in Spanish sentences since the Person/Number information can be traced in the verbal endings at both lexical and phonetic levels. The pronouns in parenthesis could be used for emphatic or contrastive purposes, in this way pairing the French tonic pronouns (moi, toi ...).⁹⁸

The importance of morphology and specifically the degree of contrastive value, which gives saliency to the various functional categories, has been formalized in Johnson (1990). He proposes a hierarchical arrangement of functional categories, as shown in (88), where Number and Person have their own projections:

(88) PerP NumP TnsP VP

Assuming Johnson's (1990) hierarchy, Hoekstra, Hyams and Becker (1996) propose three language-types according to a variation in the degree of morphosyntactic specification, as indicated in (89):

(89) language type Pers Num Tense

a-type m 0 Ø (Spanish, Italian)

b-type Ø m 0 (English, Dutch)

c-type Ø Ø m (Japanese)

97 The only residual case of verbal endings left in the English paradigm is found in the simple present 3^rdps –s, as in (i):

(i) he/she plays the piano.

[m = marked in the morphosyntax; 0 = not marked; Ø = N/A]

In this proposal, the English third Person s is a specification of the functional head Number, so that, like Dutch, English is a b-type language.⁹⁹ As these authors maintain, Spanish is an a-type language since it displays Person distinctions as previously shown in (85). Within this analysis, as we have already mentioned, the case of French presents a somewhat different behavior, as reflected in (90):

(90) parler

[je parl] [nu parlõ]

[tu parl] [vu parle]

[il parl] [il parl]

According to Hoekstra, Hyams and Becker's (1996) typology presented in (89), the non-pro-drop property of French is explained in terms of a paradigm that marks Person distinction in the plural but not in the singular. Consequently, this implies that French is neither a straightforward a-type nor a b-type language.

Turning now to checking theory, it has to apply regardless of whether one is dealing with a pro-drop language or with a non pro-drop one. According to this theory, verbs which are taken from the lexicon are already fully inflected. The inflectional morphological features must be checked against the abstract features of the functional heads (Mood, Tense and Agreement). These abstract features must then be eliminated in the course of the derivation if the derivation is to converge,

98 As we will see in the next chapter, all languages have a paradigm of strong pronouns (used for emphatic or contrastive purposes) as well as a paradigm of weak pronouns.

that is, if it is to be accepted. As indicated in table (IV), checking theory can apply covertly, as in Spanish and French, or overtly, as in English. Even when it is covert, a difference still exists between the type of identification with which each language is associated (Spanish and phi-features in Agr; French and subject clitic pronouns):

Table IV: the application of checking theory English

α adjoins to I before Spell-Out, that is, the checking is overt

French / Spanish

α adjoins to I after Spell-Out, that is, covertly at LF

I always eat apples¹⁰⁰ je mange toujours des pommes¹⁰¹ pro como siempre manzanas [e [ M [ 1^stps [pres [always eat apples]]]]]

[e [Indicative [1^stps [ pres [ toujours mange des pommes]]]]]

As follows from the previous discussion, Spanish emerges as a strongly inflected language with a greater degree of lexical visibility than French, since a different and separate phonetic realization corresponds to each lexical form (verbal inflection in Spanish consists of the combination of three Persons and two Numbers). Thus, as shown in table (V), progressive gradation among the three languages could be established instead of a clear-cut division between English-type versus French-type languages, which then complements the distinction proposed by

99 This idea was first suggested by Kayne (1989b).

100 Pollock's (1993) principle states that only morphologically identified (strong) functional heads can be checked overtly. Therefore, no main verb in English can be raised to Mood overtly. In our opinion, the phonetic component that is proven to be of great contrastive value between Spanish and French also has to be taken into consideration.

101 Pollock (1989) assumes that there are principles of UG which ban insertion of adverbs between a verb and its complements. This may be true of English in some cases, but not of French and certainly not of Spanish:

(i) *my friends love all Mary mes amis aiment tous Marie

*John hugs often Mary Juan abraza a menudo a María

Roberge (1986, 1990) and Liceras and Díaz (1995, 1999):

Table V: comparative agreement features

English French Spanish

WEAK STRONG STRONG

[- lexical] [+ lexical] [+ lexical]

[- phonetic] [- phonetic] [+ phonetic]

Contreras (1991) adds to Pollock's [+/- strong] Agr the [+/- lexical] Agr, Spanish Agr being [+lexical] and English and French being [-lexical]. Nevertheless, at least in the cases under analysis, the [+/- lexical] dimension is not enough and not even completely true as far as the [- lexical] feature attributed to French: French does have lexically distinctive features even though they are not phonetically realized.

That is why the [+/- phonetic] feature is included. Thus, although it has to be formalized further, this set of features accurately captures the differences.

Hence, neither the weak/strong dimension nor the [+/- lexical] dimension are enough to capture the important differences between the two [+ strong] Agr languages, Spanish and French. Thus, an explanation will require the interaction of other processes in order to account for the fact that Spanish is a pro-drop language and French is not.

In Spanish, the preposition a works as a marker of accusative which endows the complement with a greater degree of independence from the verb in terms of adjoinment.

1.5.4. Recent Accounts of the Pro-drop Parameter (Null-subject Parameter)