| Pro-drop Language |
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A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a Language where Pronoun s can be deleted when they are in some sense Pragmatically Inferable (the precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate). In everyday speech there are often instances when who or what is being referred to can be inferred from Context . In a pro-drop language, the pronouns that in other languages would have those referents can be omitted, or be Phonologically null. Among major languages, a clearcut case of a pro-drop language is Japanese (featuring pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts). Mandarin and American Sign Language also exhibit frequent pro-drop features. Some languages are only partially pro-drop in that they allow deletion of the subject pronoun. These Null Subject Language s include many Romance Language s such as Catalan , Italian , Occitan , Spanish , Portuguese , and Romanian ( French is the most notable exception). Examples Consider the following examples from Japanese: Kono kēki wa oishii. Dare ga yaita no? :This cake TOPIC tasty. Who SUBJECT made? :"This cake is tasty. Who made it?" Shiranai. Ki ni itta? :know-NEGATIVE. liked? :"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.) Spanish is often categorised as pro-drop too, although only in the case of subject pronouns. Unlike Japanese, however, the missing pronoun is not inferred pragmatically; the grammatical person of the deleted subject pronoun is indicated by the Morphology of the verb. Example: ¿Ves este madero? Sería bueno para la fogata. Se secó completamente. :See this log? Would be good for the campfire. Completely dried ''(literal, direct translation)'' :Do you see this log? '''It''' would be good for the campfire. '''It is''' completely dried ''(correct translation)'' Altaic languages like Turkish are also pro-drop. Geldiğini gördüm. :Coming-POSSESSIVE 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. GENERALIZATIONS ACROSS LANGUAGES Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian can Elide subject pronouns only (Brazilian Portuguese can elide both subject and object pronouns), and they often do so even when the referent has not been mentioned. This is helped by person/number Inflection 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.), while 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 Japanese is obscure, and while there are exceptions to this observation, it still seems to have considerable descriptive validity. 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 auxiliaries, may sometimes be dropped, especially from the beginnings of sentences:
In speech, when prounouns are not completely dropped, they are often the target of more agressive relaxed pronunciation 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. FINNO-UGRIC LANGUAGES In Finno-Ugric Languages such as Finnish , 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". There are no Possessive Pronoun s, but Possessive Suffix es, e.g. ''-ni'' as in ''kissani'' "my cat". 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 .)
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