Abstract
Modern Hebrew is considered to be a ‘partial pro-drop language’. Traditionally, the distinction between cases where pro-drop is licensed and those
in which it is prohibited, was based on the person and tense features of the
verb: 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects may be omitted in past and future tense. This generalization, however, was found to be false in a number of
papers, each discussing a subset of the data. Thus, contrary to conventional
wisdom, dropped 3rd person pronouns subjects do occur in the language in
particular contexts.
Identifying these contexts by way of a corpus-based survey is the initial
step taken in this study. Subsequently, a careful syntactic analysis of the data
reveals broad generalizations which have not been made to date. Thus, what
was initially assumed to be a uniform phenomenon of 3rd person pro-drop
turns out to be manifested in three distinct types of constructions. Finally, the
proposed HPSG-based analysis incorporates insights concerning correlations
between finite and non-finite control, non-canonical elements, locality, and
binding
in which it is prohibited, was based on the person and tense features of the
verb: 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects may be omitted in past and future tense. This generalization, however, was found to be false in a number of
papers, each discussing a subset of the data. Thus, contrary to conventional
wisdom, dropped 3rd person pronouns subjects do occur in the language in
particular contexts.
Identifying these contexts by way of a corpus-based survey is the initial
step taken in this study. Subsequently, a careful syntactic analysis of the data
reveals broad generalizations which have not been made to date. Thus, what
was initially assumed to be a uniform phenomenon of 3rd person pro-drop
turns out to be manifested in three distinct types of constructions. Finally, the
proposed HPSG-based analysis incorporates insights concerning correlations
between finite and non-finite control, non-canonical elements, locality, and
binding
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 2007 HPSG Conference |
| Editors | Stefan Muller |
| Place of Publication | Stanford, California |
| Publisher | CSLI Publications |
| Pages | 173-193 |
| State | Published - 2007 |