[Lingtyp] typological studies of "pro-drop"

Mon Mar 5 14:44:57 UTC 2018

Dear all,

may I refer to a paper of mine, published in 2014 "On the strength of morphological paradigms: a historical account of radical pro-drop", published in: Robbeets, M. and Bisang, W. (eds.), Paradigm Change in Historical Reconstruction: The Transeurasian Languages and Beyond, 23–60. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.

With best wishes,

Walter Bisang

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Emily M. Bender <ebender at uw.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 5, 2018 3:30:18 PM
To: Martin Haspelmath
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] typological studies of "pro-drop"

Dear Maïa, Dear all,

Possibly also relevant is Safiyyah Saleem's MA thesis:

  *   Safiyyah Saleem<https://www.linkedin.com/in/safiyyah-saleem-59946117> (CLMA<http://compling.uw.edu/>) 2010. Argument Optionality: A New Library for the Grammar Matrix Customization System<http://www.delph-in.net/matrix/saleem-thesis.pdf>
  *   http://www.delph-in.net/matrix/saleem-thesis.pdf

This reports on a computational implementation of argument optionality patterns as understood from the typological literature.

Emily

On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 1:01 AM, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
See the APiCS chapter on the "expression of pronominal subjects" (http://apics-online.info/parameters/62.chapter.html), inspired by Matthew Dryer's corresponding WALS feature (http://wals.info/feature/101A).

I would also recommend Anna Siewierska's works, especially her 1999 paper (in Folia Linguistica) and her 2004 book (Person).

But I think it's important to recognize that the notion of "pro-drop" is very confusing, and remains popular only because many linguists don't know much more than English and Spanish (and they feel that Spanish "drops" what would be a personal pronoun in English). In fact, however, the Spanish type is FAR more common in the world's languages than the Swedish type (where subject personal pronouns are obligatory, and there is no person-marking on the verb at all), as can be seen in Matthew Dryer's WALS chapter. The English/German type (with obligatory personal pronouns, plus person-marking on the verb) is extremely rare (as noted by Siewierska 1999).

(Note also that "person-drop" would be a better term, because not all pronouns can be "dropped", e.g. interrogatives and demonstratives.)

Martin

On 05.03.18 08:10, Maia Ponsonnet wrote:

Hello,

Related to Honors supervision, I am looking for typological works on pro-drop.

Anything on pro-drop in creole languages will be particularly relevant.

With many thanks for your help, cheers,

Maïa

Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Fellow

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Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education
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