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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Dear Yiming and Omri,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">You may already be familiar with the work on partial pro-drop by me and my co-authors (for example in Biberauer, T. et al. 2010.
<i>Parametric variation: Null subjects in minimalist theory</i>. CUP.) but still, here is a thought on the question why 3<sup>rd</sup> person is the one that is not null, in many of the partial pro-drop lnguages: A property that many of the partial pro-drop
languages share is that they have a null generic 3<sup>rd</sup> person pronoun, like English ‘one’, which the consistent pro-drop languages don’t have. In those, the generic pronominal subject has to be overtly expressed, somehow. A way to understand this
is that the subject agreement morpheme in consistent pro-drop languages, including 3<sup>rd</sup> person, is referential. It can function as a referential subject, so no pronoun is required (that’s pro-drop). But then, because it’s referential, it can’t be
used as a generic pronoun. In partial pro-drop languages the agreement morpheme isn’t referential, it’s just agreement, so if the subject is referential, a pronoun is required, either an overt one, or one that has an overt antecedent in a higher clause – which
is the typical situation. The first and second person pronouns can be null because they always have a ‘contextual antecedent’, the speaker and the addressee, the 3<sup>rd</sup> person can if it has an overt linguistic antecedent or if it’s generic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> BTW, a least some Indo-Aryan languages have partial pro-drop, of the same type as Hebrew, Finnish, etc. (Marathi, Assamese, …)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"> For your research on partial pro-drop, can I also recommend that you take a look at Holmberg, A. 2017. ‘Linguistic Typology’. In Roberts, Ian (ed.) 2017.
<i>Oxford handbook of Universal Grammar</i>, 355-376, the section on pro-drop. There is a word of caution there regarding relying on descriptive grammars when it comes to explicit claims about pro-drop in the language. Since most or probably all languages use
<u>some</u> ‘pro-drop’ it can be hard for a grammarian to say what kind of pro-drop the language uses. What you can do instead, though, is look at example sentences in the grammar that are
<u>not</u> intended to exemplify pro-drop, and see how pronouns are used in those examples.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Good luck with your research!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Anders<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Omri Amiraz via Lingtyp<br>
<b>Sent:</b> 29 October 2025 15:39<br>
<b>To:</b> lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Lingtyp] Partial pro-drop<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear colleagues,<br>
<br>
We are conducting a study on the inverse correlation between the frequency of pro-drop (omission of the subject argument) and syncretism in verbal subject-marking paradigms.<br>
<br>
We are particularly interested in partial pro-drop languages, where subject omission is restricted to certain persons or other grammatical conditions. For example, in Hebrew, pro-drop is fairly common in the past tense for first and second person, but relatively
rare for third person. This is puzzling, since the past-tense paradigm in Hebrew shows no syncretism, so it is unclear why the third-person pronoun cannot generally be omitted as well.<br>
<br>
We would greatly appreciate your input on the following points:<br>
<br>
1. Are you aware of other languages that exhibit partial pro-drop?<br>
We are currently aware of Hebrew, Finnish, Yiddish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. This might point to an areal phenomenon, so examples from other areas would be especially valuable.<br>
<br>
2. In the languages you are familiar with, does third person indeed tend to be the least likely to allow pro-drop?<br>
If so, are you aware of any proposed explanations for this asymmetry?<br>
<br>
Many thanks in advance for your insights,<br>
Yiming and Omri<o:p></o:p></p>
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