OSVALDO JAEGGLI AND KENNETH L SAHR

THE NULL SUBJECT PARAMETER AND PARAMETRIC THEORY

The central challenge for modern linguistic theory is to develop a mode) of Universal Grammar that is, on the one hand, general enough to capture the universal features of natural language, and on the other, flexible enough to account for the variation among languages that is in fact observed. Moreover, insofar as Universal Grammar (UG) is assumed to he part of the innate human endowment, the problem of linguistic variation becomes crucially related to the logical problem of how linguistic variation can be mastered by the language learner. One conceptualization of this problem that we believe is on the right track is the parametric theory of linguistic variation, which is designed to provide both a theory of linguistic typology as well as an answer to the logical problem of language acquisition. In fact it is probably fair to say that the recent proliferation of theoretically informed generativist studies of languages other than English is a direct result of the conceptualization of the rote of parameters in syntactic theory. The articles in this collection exemplify the potential of this sort of research with respect to a rather well-defined set of phenomena centering around the null subject phenomenon within the paradigm of research known as Government-Binding theory (Chomsky (1981,1982)). The goals of this essay are threefold. In the Section 1 we will give an overview of the central concepts and concerns of parametric theory within the context of Government-Binding theory. We will focus on the aspects of the conceptualization of parameters that most, if not all of the contributors to this volume, agree upon STANDARD PARAMETER THEORY (SPT) we shall call it. We shall also stress how SPT departs from earlier assumptions about linguistic variation in ways that are crucial to the investigation of Universal Grammar. In the second section, we present some of the more specific theoretical and eMpirical issues that are raised by the existente of null subject phenomena, and we also review some of the standard GB assumptions about the distribution of phonetically null syntactic entities. In so doing, we will address some of the sorts of issues that arise when one confronts an unfamiliar language with the tools provided by generative grammar and SPT specifically, providing also what we hope are useful diagnostic probes that may be used to reveal theoretically important empirical regularities. In Section 3 we will briefly evaluate some of the important results reported by our contributors as they bear on the issues and relatively standard assumptions presented in Sec on 2. We will also examine some 1
0. Jaeggli and K. Safir (eds.), The Null Subjett Parameter, 1-44.

OSVALDO JAEGGLI AND KENNETH J. SAFIR

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of the issues that arise for the distribution of clitic, inversion and extraction phenomenza. and highlight some issues that provide a context for nur discussion in section 4. In the last section we will present our own, somewhat programmatic theory of the Null Subject Parameter. In so doing, we will try to clarify the notions !DENT!FICATION and RICH AGREEMENT as we develop our theory that morphological uniformity in inflectional paradigms is the key to the null subject property.
1.0. LINGUISTIC VARIATION AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

theory of parameters is at once a program for a language typology and a scenario that provides a plausible framework for a theory of acquisition. 1.1. Standard Parameter Theory More specifically, the contributors to this volume spare a general approach based on Chomsky's (1981) conceptualization which we will call STANDARD PARAMETER THEORY (henceforth, SPT). According to SPT, a child may succeed in language acquisition because it is innately provided not only with a set of universal principles of grammar (henceforth, UPGs) which are invariant across languages, but also a set of parameters that provide optional grammatical postulates that result in significant linguistic variation. For example, a child may set some formal grammatical parameter P, which ranges over n possible settings, as having the value m, so that Pm, once fixed, will interact with other value-fixed parameters and with the UPGs. The resulting interaction hetween value-fixed parameters and UPGs results in a CORE GRAMMAR - one of the particular grammars made possible by the innate schema of parameters and the innate universal principles. Given the complexity of the potential interactions, a single parameter setting may result in a variety 'of superficially unrelated effects. This is an attractive feature of the theory with respect to the acquisition problem, as it predicts that, on the basis of a single setting triggered by data from one construction, a child may then come to have knowledge about superficially unrelated constructions that are then acquired as a result of the setting. The project of research that emerges from this account is (A) to identify the relevant formal parameters and their settings that distinguish languages from one another, (B) to separate these parameters from one another and from the UPGs, and (C) to give a plausible account of how these parameters might be fixed on the basis of positive evidence (assuming that the child has n other sort of evidence available to him/her).' 1.2. From Standard Theory to Standard Parameter Theory At this point it is perhaps worthwhile to consider how the parameters approach to linguistic variation contrasts with earlier treatments of this problem in generative grammar, and why the parameters approach seems attractive in comparison. In Standard Theory and Extended Standard Theory, syntactic theory largely consisted of formats for rules actual rules, and general constraints on rules or filters on the outputs of the rules. For example, there were general formats for transformations and constraints on transformations, which formed part of the theory of UG, and then the actual rules that were written were considered language specific. Thus grammars could

Since its inception, generative grammar has always been concerned with the question of what one knows when one knows a language. As has been repeatedly pointed out, knowledge of grammar is unconscious, systematic and complex, though it appears to arise without explicit instruction. Since the environment is not rich enough to give rise to this highly subtle knowledge unless strong assumptions about the nature of the learner are adopted, the innateness hypothesis seems amply justified. Moreover, since the knowledge of native speakers appears to be systematic and regular, we 'assume that the state of knowledge attained by an adult native speaker consists of a grammar a formal device which generates all and only the grammatical sentences of a given natural language. From this perspective, the problem of linguistic variation is largely reduced to the following question: What is the dass of possible natural language grammars provided by (the correct theory of ) UG? Of course there is a further fact about the linguistic knowledge attained by adult native speakers that also muss be accounted for, namely, the fact that this knowledge may vary quite dnimatically cross-linguistically. Speaker A in China may acquire a grammar which is quite different from that of Speaker B in Central Australia, and as a result the syntax of their respeetive languages may contrast drastically. While Chinese has a relatively stritt word order, Warlbiri, for example, has an extremely free word order. While syntactic analysis may reveal that Chinese and Warlbiri grammars are fundamentally similar in their adherence to universal principles of grammar, we are still faced with the logical problem of how different types of grammars are acquired on the basis of limited evidence. The approach to the acquisition problem that informs a central contention of GB theory is that language variation can be accounted for by the existente of PARAMETERS a set of language (dass) specific options expressed as postulates that interact with universal_principles_to form the grammars of particular langaues. These parameters, generally perceived as options made available by universal grammar, are presumed to be `fixed' or `set' in one direction or the other on the basis of experience available to the language learner in the acquisition process. Thus the

De{

OSVALDO JAEGGLI ANI) KENNETH J. SAFIR

PARAMETRIC THEORY

differ with respect to the rules they contained, but not with respect to the rule schema or the conditions on rules. A problem that arose in [his way of viewing things is that theory grew too descriptive. Not only were the rules too flexible, but the restrictions on rules proliferated and seemed insufficiently general. Starting with Chomsky (1973), attempts were made to reduce the major constraints on rules to deeper principles. Then in Chomsky (1975a, 1977), the possibility was considered that transformations, once constraints and language specific conditions were abstracted away from them could be reduced to a single general rule: MOVE ALPHA. The same reductive program has also been extended to other modules of the grammar. This extension was deemed especially necessary to avoid simplifying one component by simply complicating another (e.g., simplifying transformations while complicating the lexicon). Another module that emerged as a natura) candidate for reduction was the phrase structure component. In the earlier theories, PS-rules could be stipulated to generate a wide variety of structures that never occur (e.g., verb phrases headed by N or prepositions that could rewrite as verbs or adjectives), and languages could vary as far as the expressive power of PS-rules allowed (and the allowances were great). Moreover, most of the complexity of PSrules reslted from attempting to capture the Full range of complementation, which had to lx stated independently in the lexicon anyway, and so spe.cifying complementation in PS-rules was redundant. In current GB-theory, PS-rules are now reduced to a very simple K.schema which accounts for hierarchical relations and the headedness of structures with a few primitives like LEXICAL HEAD PROJECTION and SPECIFIER (see for example, Stowell (1981), Farmer (1980), Nash (1980)). The actual generation of structures is treated as optional so long as it is consistent with general principles and subtheories of grammar. Chomsky's (1981) PROJECTION PRINCIPLLrequires that lexical properties, such as complementation and the assignment of thematic roles, must be achieved at every syntactic level (D-structure, S-structure, and LF). This insures that a verb like kill must take an NP object at every level, and thus derives the existcnce of the trace that is assumed to result from Whmovement or NP-movement from object position (e.g., in questions or passive sentences). Thus all of the properties of complementation except word order can be made to follow from what is independently required by the lexicon as it interacts with the Projection Principle and X theory. Because word order varies, it is naturally left out of the reduction of PS-rules to universal schema, and so in just such a case we must appeal to the parametric theory. For example, we can assume that a language like English is more or less uniformly left-headed a lexical category such as a verb or preposition always precedes its complements whereas a language like Hindi is more or less uniformly right-headed. This generali,

zation is possible because we are generalizing across entities of X theory (LEXICAL HEADS and MAXIMAL PROJECTIONS). In the simplest case, we might assume that all a child has to learn is that English has prepositions and that Hindi has postpositions in order to know that all lexical heads act the same way. Of course, matters are rarely so simple, and so a number of accounts of word order have emerged within the parametric approach to deal with a wider range of cases (e.g., Travis (1984), Koopman (1984), Huang (1982), Li (1985)). A slightly simplified example may be employed to illustrate how the parametric approach with reduced and generalized components of grammar represents an improvement over the earlier `rufe format' approach to linguistic variation. Consider for example the Standard Theory (Chomsky (1965)) approach to (English) passives. First there is a set of PS-rules that will be stipulated to generate NP AUX V NP order (in particular a rule for VP generating V NP order). The lexicon also informs us that kill, for example, takes a direct object to its right. Then the structural description of the passive transformation recognizes that a structure of the type NP AUX V NP can undergo the rule of passive, which demotes the subject into a by-phrase, and replaces the former subject with the deep object. This rule then applies to yield the desired output. The passive transformation, as just described, accomplishes (essentially by stipulation) a number of operations which are common to several other rules, e.g., affixation of ed, movement of an NP into subject position (as in raising and middle constructions), Insertion of the preposition by to mark a demoted agent (as in nominals and some adjectives in able), etc. But within the Standard Theory it is impossible to factor out the operations which are shared by other rules, Thus, important generalizations are missed because the rules are both too construction-specific and redundant. Furthermore, the passive transformation posits a strict correfation between demotion or suppression of the deep subject and promotion of the deep object to surface subject position, a connection that must be stipulated by the rule, and which, as we shall see, does not hold in other languages that even have the same word order. The decomposition of the passive transformation into more ,elementary, yet more generally applicable 9perations is thus frustrated by the language and construction specific requirements imposed by Standard Theory. Now compare the standard GB account, which is based on Case theory, Theta theory, Move alpha, and a lexical rule. In the lexicon, the external thematic role of kill is suppressed by passive morphology (part of a wordformation rule), which means that the subject position in syntax will be a non-thematic position. Another effect of passive morphology in the lexicon is to suppress Objective Case assignment to the object thetaposition (a position required by the complementation of kill as it interacts with the Projection Principle). Most of the rest of the passive construction
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OSVALDO JAEGGLI AND KENNETH J. SAFIR

PARAMETRIC THEORY

is derived by general properties of English or of UG. 2 The failure of Case assignment to the D-structure lexical NP complement will result in ungrammaticality at S-structure due to the CASE FILTER, which requires all lexical NPs to have Case at S-structure. Thus only movement to the nonthcmatic subject Position is possible, since the subject of a tensed sentence will get Nominative Case and pass the Case Filter. Notice that the GB account of passive never mentions word order, unlike the transformational rule of Standard Theory rather it is enough to simply assume that in English, VP is leftheaded. Neither does this approach have to stipulate as part of the formulation of the rule of passive that NP-preposing, i.e., the promotion of the deep object to surface subject position, is obligatory in English if the deep object is an NP (cf. *lt was wbbed a bank by thieves vs. A bank was robbed by thieves). The obligatoriness of the NP-preposing simply follows from the Case Filter, a principle of grammar which is motivated independently of passive structures, and its effects are independent of the dethematization required by passive morphology. The advantage of the parameter account emerges quite clearly when we consider a language like German, which, like English, has passive structures, but underlying NP NP V order for transitive verbs, i.e., German differs from English in that VP is head-final. The Standard Theory account must assume not only a rule for VP which states this (as the GB account would in the worst case), but it also must have a transformational rule for passive that recognizes structures of the form NP NP V. Thus the Standard Theory requires substantially different rules for the two languages. Yet the two constructions share important similaritics that are not fully captured by the two different rules. By contrast, the GB account of passive in English can be generalized to German without any adjustment required by word order differentes between the two languages. 3 This account extends smoothly to Spanish, which is head-initial just like English. In Spanish, however, NP-preposing of a deep object is not an obligatory feature of passive structures as it is in English. Rather, the deep object may be left in its original position, cf. Fue robado un banco por ladrones, lit. '00 was robbed a bank by thieves' (the same point holds for Italian, cf. Burzio (1981) and Rizzi (1982)). This follows without any added stipulation within the GB account because Spanish independently has the option to Case-mark NPs in [NP, VP1 position with Nominative Case even in intransitive structures. Given that within the GB account the `obligatoriness' of NP-preposing is reduced to a function of the Case Filter, the rule of passive for Spanish need not reflect this difference at all; rather it follows naturally from independent considerations. Although the latter demonstration seems conclusive, it is important to keep in mind that the move away from a rule based theory to one based an principles and parameters is intended to establish a much more

abstract (and explanatory) relationship between the grammar and the constructions it generates. Thus it would be a very unsatisfactory development if each parameter were to correspond to a single contrast between languages with respect to a particular construction. So for example, if there were a parameter that determined whether or not one, two or three auxiliary verbs arc allowed in a row in a language, where one setting corresponded to each possibility, the theory would approach the level of pure description. Rather, variation such as this we would descrihe as a property of the lexicon, and in so far as such cases actually arise, it would he unproblematic to do so. If, however, separate parameters were needed only to permit Wh-extraction from each grammatical function position (extraction from subject, from verb object, from prepositional object, from genitive object) in a language without morphological Case, then once again the theory would be just descriptive, especially since there is no obvious way to incorporate such information into the lexicon." By contrast, if a single parameter were to determine the direction of complement-taking across every construction in the language, and all languages worked one way or the other, then such a parameter would indeed have considerahle explanatory force. Thus, issues related to the proper balance between descriptive power and explanatory force also arise within the GB theory instantiation of Standard Parameter Theory. Unlike Standard Theory, however, SPT explicitly aims at accounting for surface variation with principles which are stated at a level of abstraction which allows us to encompass within one, or relatively few descriptive statements, the behavior of several different constructions across different languages. The several-rules approach of the Standard Theory lacked the sufficient level of abstraction to achieve the desired generalization. Al the same time, however, the greater level of abstraction required by an explanatory version of SPT raises important questions concerning the nature of the triggering evidente needed by the language learner to set a parameter. (We return to the question of triggering in section 3.4). 1.3. What is a Language Universal? lt is important to keep in mind that the parametric approach to linguistic variation has crucial implications not only for how the empirical investigation of UG should proceed, but also for the notion LANGUAGE UNIVERSAL. lndeed SPT differs somewhat from the Standard Theory concept ualization of language variation in there respects. Before the advent of the parameters approach, linguistic variation was largely a fact about how different rules permitted by Universal Grammar were formulated for the grammars of the different languages. The rules themselves were interesting only in so far as they conformed to what was

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PARAMETRIC THEORY

permitted by general constraints and rule formats. An evaluation procedure for grammars determined whether or not the grammatical rules formulated by the language learner were optimum from the point of view of markedness. From this perspective, deep principles of UG can be expected to emerge from the investigation of any one carefully studied language. Chomsky (1975a; p. 118) makes the point as follows:
ithe foregoingl discussion has been restricted to English, a serious limilation. Nevertheless, I have not hesitated to suggest that the principles that appear to have explanatury power for English are principles of universal grammar On the assumption of uniformity of language capacity across the speeies, if a general principle is confirmed empirically for a given language and if, furthermore, there is reason to believe that it is not learned (and surely not taught), then it is proper to postulate that the principle belongs to universal grammar, as part of "pre-existent - knowledge that makes learning possible.

But how then may we investigate the nature of UPGs'? Notice that we cannot determine that any deep unlearned generalization we discover about English results from a UPG without determining how the parameter settings of English are or are not influencing the generalization in question. Non-intuitional evidence from psycholinguistic methods, language acquisition studies, neurolinguistic research, language historical studies, etc., might then be brought to bear in determining the correctness of nur grammar of English, and of the parameter settings and UPGs we hypothesize to account for it. Since the parameters and UPGs a linguist chooses to hypothesize will inevitably make predictions about other possible languages, close comparison of detailed analyses can provide crucial evidence, of the most readily available sort, to distinguish between competing parameter theories. White we cannot be assured that every language the linguist might need to provide insight into UPGs is currently in existente, in practice, we face a bewildering range of diversity in the historical and contemporary sample that has frequently frustrated predictions of non-existence. 5 Thus / 77 cross-linguistic investigation provides perhaps the best corrective in our le/ examination of UPGs .5 C7
2.0. EMPTY CATEGORIES AND NULL SUBJECT PHENOMENA

The crucial assumption is that any linguistically significant generalization that cannot be plausibly Iearned on the basis of positive evidence must belong to UG. In the Standard Theory conceptualization, this must be the case, as all linguistic rules are Iearned i.e., not part of UG. In the parameters approach, the same point holds, but in a different sense. If parameters are options incorporated into the formulation of UG, then fixing a value v for parameter P on the basis of limited evidence availahle about construction CI will result in knowledge about a range of constructions C.... m that does not arise as a result of experience of C_, Yet the generalization captured by value fixed Pv, while a property of a core grammar permitted by UG, is not a language universal. Rather Pv has its effects on the basis of its interaction with other value fixed parameters, the lexicon and the Universal Principles of Grammar (UPGs), the latter being the only true language universals. This knowledge of C n...m does not result out of experience of Cn...m but neither does it necessarily constitute or reflect a UPG. lt arises as a side-effect of setting P at value v based on the experience of C I. Of course one could devise a rule theory that might ultimately have similar properties, insofar as one explicit phrase structure rule may condition other processes, or the ordering of a highly limited set of transformations may explain more than one construction, though it may he learned on the basis of only one. The evaluation metric must play a more active role in acquisition, however, if every native speaker of L must converge on exactly the same rule for L. From the latter perspective, if rules are constructed rather than selected from an inventory, then formulating a rule has something of the character of hypothesis testing, whereas in the parameters approach, one might conceive of the setting of parameters as more automatic and uncreative triggers). Ultimately, there can be no mathematical differente between the two conceptions in so far as they must both converge on the adult grammar.

Ever since the ground-brcaking observations of Perlmutter (1971), the contrast between languages that allow Subjetts of tensed sentences to he null (like Portuguese, Spanish and Italian) and those that do not (like English and French) has been a classic problem for any serious theory of linguistic typology. English and Spanish are contrasted in (1). (1) a. John/*0 saw that film h. Juan/0 vio ese Hirn The problem has grown more interesting over the years as the presence of the null subject property in a language has been claimed to correlate with a number of other syntactic phenomena, suggesting that a single abstract gramniatical property might account for a whole complex of contrasts between null subject languages (NSLs) and non-NSLs. This is, in the best case, the sort of effect we would expect a parameter settingto have. The null subject data is especially interesting, however, because it involves a more general concern in generative grammar determining the nature and distribution of phonetically null but syntactically present entities commonly called EMPTY CATEGORIES. The special interest in this sort of entity follows from the question of how the language learner can come to have information about them if they are by definition, absent from the phonetic speech signal. As mentioned earlier, any phenomenon

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11

that could not have resulted from sufficiem experience evokes the role of VG. But perhaps our undcrlying theoretical assumptions are running too far ahead of us here. After all, just because sentences in some language lack a subject does not immediately imply that the langvages in question must have an empty syntactic subject what evidence is there to assume that any empty subject position exists at all? The existence of an empty suhject position is typically justified by the assumption that the gap where a lexical subject might have appeared acts as an antecedent for the I3INDING CONDITIONS (2) of Chomsky (1981), the force of which is illustrated in (3). (2)

Binding Conditions
(A) An anaphor is boural in its governing category (B) A pronoun is free in its governing category (C) A name is free

(3) a. John/He saw himself/*John/*him b. John/He said Mary saw him/*himself/*John In (3a), the coreferent interpretation is only possible for the direct object reflexive, hut not the pronoun (by Principle B) or the name (by Principle C), whereas in (3b), where the governing catener9 is the lower S for the direct Object, the reflexive is excluded by Principle A and the name by Principle C, while the pronoun is permitted. Exactly the same pattern holds for Spanish whether the subject is overior not. (4) a. Juan/6I/0 siempre habla de si mismo

Conceived of in this way, some of the issues that arise are the following: (A) White some sort of subject is needed, given a Binding theory based an C-command, to get the right binding resulis in (4) and (5), what, we may ask, requires the presence of (empty category) subjects in (4) and (5) in fact what principles require the presence of empty categories altogether? (B) Let us suppose that the empty category subject found in tensed sentences in NSLs is called pro while the empty subject of infinitives (available in any language) is called PRO. Given the descriptive contrast between pro and PRO, is there any independent reason to suppose that different ernpty category types must be distinguished from one another in systematic ways, or should we simply assume that all empty categories are essentially the same? (C) Assuming that the answer to (B) is that empty categories differ, is there reason to believe that pro and PRO contrast in other significant ways? (D) Why is the suhject in (4) optionally empty while it is obligatorily empty in (5)? In effect, what is the Null Subject Parameter? Although our contributors differ quite substantially as to how (A)(D) should be answered, their differences are to be better understood if they are seen as reactions to, or developments of, some common GB assumptions (some of which have been widely challenged within GB). The next 3 subsections address the first questions in turn. 2.1. What Forces Etnpty categories to Exist? The first question raises the issue of what requires the existence of empty categories in syntax generally, and we have already seen that the Projection Principle plays a role with respect to traces (cf. the discussion of passive in 1.2). The Projection Principle requires, in effect, that the Theta Criterion hold at .everysyntactic level. The essential intution behind the Theta Criterion is informally stated in (7). (7)

John/he/O always talks about hnseif

b. Juan/C1/0 dijo que Maria siempre habla de *si mismo/61/*Jutin

John/0 said that Mary always talks about *himself/hinz/*John

This is just the sort of argument that is made for the existence of an empty category subject in infinitive contexts in both English and Spanish, as illustrated below. (5) a. John was happy to kill himself rhim/*John Juan intent hablar de si mismorel/*Juan h. John was happy to say that Mary would marry *himself / him/*John Juan intent6 decir que Maria hablarfa de *si mismo/61/*Juan The lack of contrast in (4) and (5) is the reason that the basic missing subject 'problern' has been to account for the property described in (6).

Theta Criterion a. Every syntactic argument must he assigned a unique thetarole b. Every theta-role must he assigned a 'unique syntactic argument
Wherc syntactic arguments include some empty categories, and all referential lexical N Ps.

pro

(6)

NSLs may have phonologically null subjects in tensed sentences.

If the Theta Criterion holds at every syntactic level then the active form of a verb like kill will have to have a subject argument that corresponds to the agent theta-role kill assigns to subject position. Presumably an empty

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OSVALDO JAEGGLI AND KENNETH J. SAFIR PARAMETRIC THEORY 13

Je

cat:;gory can serve this function, as in (4) and (5) (for the relevant verbs). Thus the Theta Criterion accounts for the obligatory presence of a structural subject in any sentence with a verb that assigns a theta-role to the subject lt now follows that the behavior of null subject sentences with respect to Binding Theory, as illustrated in (4) and (5), is predicted by the assumptions of GB that determine the distribution of empty categories generally. There are, however, lexical nonthematic NPs in English and other languages that appear in subject position, such as it and there, and these subjects too may be missing in INSLs, as indicated in (8). (8) a. 41) Parece que Juan esta enfermo
seeins that John is sick

achieved by the assumption that Wh-traces, like lexical NPs, are regulated by the Case filter, as stated in (10), while PRO does not count as lexical, and can be present when Case is not available, as in the subject Position of an Infinitive. (10) Case Filter: *NP where NP is lexical and has no Case.

lt follows that there is no extraction from the subject position of an Infinitive (unless Case can be exceptionally assigned there) and this is quite clean (11) a. lt is impossible PRO/*John to like Bill b. Es imposible PRO/*Juan amar a Bill (12) a. *Who, is it impossible [lel ; to like Bill] h. *Quien, es imposible !lel ; amar a Bill' PRO is also assumed to differ from Wh-trace in that PRO can he C- commanded by a coreferent NP in an A-position (a grammatical function position such as subject, object indirect object etc.) while Wh-trace can never be C-commanded by a coreferent NP in an A-position (an effect known since Postal (1970) as STRONG CROSSOVLR). The contrast is illustrated in (13) and (14) for both languages. (13) a. John; tried PRO, to leave b. Juan ; intent PRO ; salir 9)

0
4^

3
ds3 Lt ts lt
ho n

b. Existen varias soluciones

exist several solutions

Since it and there are EXPLETIVE elements, elements that do not bear theta-roles, it is not obvious why lexical non-thematic elements are required in English, no less empty subjects in Spanish, as the Theta Criterion is not relevant. For this reason Chomsky (1981) proposed what has come to be known as the EXTENDED PROJECTION PRINCIPLE, which is informally stated in (9). (9)
Extender' Projection Principle

Every S must have an (NP, S) (i.e., a structural subject). We will show that (9) appears motivated in section 2.3.3. Willie the status of (9) is quite controversial, it is clear that it does insure the presence of an empty category subject for the examples in (8), and it provides a rationale for the existente of non-thematic lexical NPs in non-NSLs as well. 2.2. Sonne Empty Category Types
Given the necessity of empty categories, we may now consider whether all

(14) a. *Who ; did John ; say !that Mary saw 141 b. *Aquin ; dijo Jutin ; lque Maria viole1,1

Thus there are systematic etnpirical differentes between at least two empty category types, the empty subject of infinitives (PRO), on the onc hand, and Wh-trace on the other. The contrast between (13) and (14) is assumed to hold because variables obey the following condition
.

1)

empty categories are of the same type. Put this way, the answer to this question is no. Within G13 it is uncontroversial that syntactic traces of Wh-movement are enmty categories different in nature from the null subject of an Infinitive (PRO) for example. Without recapitulating too much of Ulis evidente, it is enough to point out that PRO and Wh-trace appear to be in complementary distribution (with a few explicable exceptions). Essentially, a Wh-trace is possible wherever a lexical NP is (as long as other general restrictions on Wh-extraction are met), while PRO usually_only appears where a lexical NP cannot. This rough complementary distribution is

(15)

An empty category is a variable if and only if it is in an A-position and it is locally A-bound

The empty category in (14), then, cannot he a variable, as it is not locally A-bound (e.g., bound from COMP position), but rather locally A-bound. The lauer reasoning assumes that die different empty category types have different licensing conditions, which, up to now, we have statecl descriptively. Chomsky's (1981) account of the distribution of PRO, vhich is still, despite considerable dissent, the most commonly assumed one, iceats_PRO as_having_the features of both a pronoun and an anaphor. This means that the distribution of PRO is regulated by both Principles A and

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15

13 of the Binding Theory. Since no element can be simultaneously bound and free in its governing category, PRO muss have no governing category

i.e..
(16)

,114

PRO Theorem: PRO is ungoverned.

subject of sleep to the matrix subject position. In (18b), by contrast, John is a thematic argument of happy (the subject of happy is a theta-position) and movement into a theta-position from a theta-position (subject of sleep) would be a Theta Criterion violation. Thus (18b) must have PRO in subordinate subject position or else John will end up with two thetaroles.8 The typology of empty categories that emerges from these considerations is summarized in the chart below, where the behavior of each empty category is characterized in terms of how it is treated by each subtheory (Gase theory, Theta-theory, and the last two columns for Binding theory): pronominal anaphoric Theta-role Case (19) PRO NP-trace Variable

lt is then assumed that the subject of infinitives (and gerunds) is an ungoverned position, in that INFL, the lexical head of S, is not a governor in infinitives as it is in tensed sentences. lt follows that if a Wh-trace cannot satisfy the definition in (15), then it cannot be PRO in (14), since the direct object is lexically governed by the verb. Thus Binding Theory and Case Theory serve to insure the complementary distribution of Whtrace and PRO. Finally we must mention an additional empty category type about which 3v e, and our contributors, have relatively little to say (with the . exception of Chung), namely, NP-trace. NP-trace is the trace of raising and passive. Like other empty categories, the existente of NP-trace is required by the Theta Criterion and the Projection Principle. The independence of NP-trace from Wh-trace is easy to establish in that NP-trace is assumed to appear in positions where no Case is assigned (as mentioned above with respect to passive). Unlike PRO, however, NP-tracc can be governed, as it is when it is the object of a passive verb. If it is governed, and if NP-trace falls under Binding theory as all other NPs do, then it must be assumed to be an anaphor, as it occurs in the same governing catetory as the A-position that binds it. In fact, if NP-trace is an anaphor, it must be A-bound, which further distinguishes it from Wh-trace. NPtrace is also distinguished from PRO in that PRO counts as an argtiment for the Theta Criterion while NP-trace does not. If NP-trace could be an argument, then the passive form of the verb kill in (17), which has only one theta-role to assign, would have two arguments, thus violating the Theta Criterion. (17) John ; was killed [eh

1)

Thus there seems to bc ample evidente that the empty category typen should be distinguished from one another in some way, although we leave open for now the possibility that it is only their contexts that determine the contrasting properties. With these distinctions in mind, we turn now to the third question raised in 2.0. 2.3.

Distinctions between PRO and pro

We have already noted that the subjects of tensed sentences Show crosslinguistic variation while the PRO subjects of infinitives, at least for the cases considered so far, do not. Now we must ask if this distinction between pro' and PRO is related to others. Recall that at this point, pro is just the name of the null entity found in NSLs, and we have male no assumptions about it. In this section we will tentatively adopt what is, at this point in time, the most standard assumption (Chomsky (1982)), namely that the null subject of tensed sentences (pro) is an empty category different in character from the null subject of infinitives (PRO) although it is an assumption that some of our contributors do not accept. One differente between PRO and pro that has been frequently been noted since Rizzi (1982) is that pro can be interpreted as free and specific whereas PRO almost never has this interpretation unless it is controlled by some other NP. Thus it is almost never the case that PRO in /t is

This fundamental distinction that PRO is an argument and NP-trace is not is a key factor in accounts of sententizil complementation in GB theory, accounting for contrasts like those in (18), where likely is a raising predicate and happy is not. (18) a. John, is likely [el, to sleep] b. John ; is happy[71e1, to sleep[ In (18a), PRO is excluded under the assumption that likely somehow managen to govern the complement subject position (by S-deletion, for example), and the same possibility permits this Caseless position to be inhabited by NP-trace. Since likely does not assign a thematic role to its subject position, John can move from its ll-structure position as the

intpossible PRO to leave is interpreted as someone in particular, but rather it is interpreted as 'arbitrary person or person' (for some contexts where PRO is interpreted as specific, cf. Bresnan (1982: p. 328). White it has also been claimed that pro can be interpreted as arbitrary (cf. Suner (1983)), there are differentes between PRO and pro in this regard which are discussed at length in Jaeggli (1986). Here it is enough to note that PRO never has the specific reading when it is not controlled. In the remainder of this section we will illustrate three sorts of

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diagnostics that may be uscfully employed in doubtful cases to determine whether a null subject is PRO or pro. 2.3.1. The Resamption Test
011C clear difference between PRO and pro involves the behavior of

(23) a. *.lohn ; , it is impossible PRO, to get there on time. b. *Juan ; , es imposible PRO ; Ilegar a tiempo. Null subjects of tensed clauscs, on the other hand, may function as resumptive pronouns (24a), just as overt pronouns in English can, both when they are found in tensed sentences (24h) and when they are found in infinitive subject position. (24) a. Juan ; , es imposible que pro, llegue a tiempo. b. (As for) John i , it is unlikely that he i will get there on time. c. (As for) John i , it is impossible for him ; to get there on time.

resumptive pronouns. PRO cannot be a resumptive pronoun if there is no other bindee, while pro can. The failure of PRO to nerve as a resumptive pronoun is perhaps universally true, but it is at least clear that this property does not distinguish NSL languages from non-NSL languages, as illustrated in (20). The examples in (21) show that resumption with an overt pronoun is otherwise possible in both languages, though considered substandard. (20) a. *That's the guy who we didn't know whether it was possible PRO to swint b. *Ese es cl tipo que no sahfamos si seria posible PRO nadar. (21) a. That's the guy who we didn't know whether we should talk to him. b. Ese es el tipo que no sabfamos si seria posible hablar con English and Spanish appear to contrast, however, with respect to (22). (22) a. That's the guy who Mary knows the woman who he/*0 married h. Ese es el tipo que Marfa conoce a la mujer con quien ?e1/0 se Case. In (22a), he is in a complex NP, and so who could not have been extracted by Wh-movement the resumptive pronoun renders the sentence a bit marginal but acceptable in colloquial speech. In the Spanish example, which is grammatical (but marginal), the Complcx NP Constraint still holds, and so the subject gap could not be Wh-trace but the empty category in subject position could be pro acting as a resumptive pronoun. In fact just such an analysis of Italian sentences structurally similar to (22b) was proposed by Rizzi (1982); pp. 57-58). The contrast in (22) thus follows from the null subject parameter as it interacts with the availability of resumptive st rategies in both languages. The contrast between English and Spanish in (22), however, renders more striking the fact that neither language permits PRO to act as a resumptive pronoun in (20). This, then, is a clear difference between PRO and pro. The same sort of contrast between PRO and pro was first noticed by Jaeggli (1982: p. 138, p. 173 fn. 9), where it is pointed out that PRO cannot function as a resumptive pronoun in a left-dislocation construction. 9

These facts can be accounted for if we assume that a phrase in an -position must locally bind Case (cf. Jaeggli (1982: p. 173 fn. 9) and Safir (1984: p. 617 fn. 17). This Stipulation might be made to follow from a treatment of Case that requires that chains, extended to the -operator, must have Case, but we will not attempt to develop this idea fiere)" We have thus established that the missing subjects of tensed sentences are sometimes available as resumptive pronouns in complex NPs, while infinitive null subjects are not abailahle as resumptives in any language. Criteria such as these highlight the difference between principles of universal grammar and the language typological differences involved in null subject phenomena. Simply as tool of analysis, however, the resumption test provides a very useful diagnostic for the presence of pro, and it has been so employed in other works, such as McCloskey and Hale (1984).

2.3.2.

Weak Crossover and PRO Gutes

An additional distinction between pro and PRO may he observed in what are generally known as WEAK CROSSOVER (WCO) configurations. The WCO effcct is observed in configurations such as those in the (b) examples of (25) and (26). (25) a. Who i [[e], loves his, mother]. b.*Who i Idoes his ; mother (26) a. Who, I[e] i hated the woman who betrayed him ;]. b. *Who i [did the woman who betrayed him ; hate In the grammatical examples (25a) and (26a), the trace of Wh-movement is locally -bound by the Wh-phrase which is in COMP and the pronoun is locally A-bond by the trace, while in the ungrammatical examples (25a) and (26a), both the pronoun and the trace are locally -hound by the Wh-phrase in COMP. lt is generally assumed that the WCO effect arises whenever a single Operator locally -binds both a pronoun and a gap a context of multiple variable binding (but see Reinhart (1983a,b),

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and Haik (1984) a different characterization of the WCO configurafor tion). A number of recent papers have proposed principles to account for this effect, including Koopman and Sportiche (1982), Safir (1984) and Seils (1984) among others. lt is also clear that WCO is not found in every multiple variable binding context (cf. Chomsky (1982), Seils (1984), Safir (1986), Lasnik and Stowell (1987) and references cited there). One multiple variable binding context where no WCO is found, first pointed out by Higginbotham (1980), also provides a means of distinguishing PRO and pro. Consider (27). (27) Who ; did [s [,,, PRO ; washing his ; car] upset ei].

2.3.3.

The Ernex Conditio!,

A further contrast between PRO and pro concerns the distribution of expletive elements. While every language that permits null thematic subjects also permits null expletive subjects, it is not the case that every language that permits null expletive subjects permits null thematic subjects (cf. Safir (1985a,b) and Travis (1984)). For example, Spanish permits both null thematic subjects and null expletive subjects, as in (30), but German only permits null expletive subjects, not null thematic subjects, as illustrated in (31). (30) a.

Higginbotham argued that the presence of PRO acted as a `gate' to permit coreference between his and the postverbal trace. Given the multiple variable binding generalization, the reason that his does not induce a WCO effect is that it is not locally -bound: rather the local -bindees are the trace and PRO, but for some reason this combination of multiple variable hindees does not yield WCO effects. By contrast, if the PRO is replaced with a pronoun the WCO effect is back in force. (28) *?Who did his ; washing his ; /the car upset lel,.

EI /0 dijo que 0 mato al perro said that killed the dog he

He said that he/she killed the dog

b. E1/0 dijo que 0 le

parece que Juan mato al perro

-

he

said that to him seeins that Juan killed the dog

He said that it seeins to him/her that J. killed the dog (31) a. *Er
-

sagte, dass _ den

-

Hund gettet hat

In (28), the first his is locally -bound by results the second pronoun is irrelevant.

who, as is the trace, and WCO

He NOM said that

the ACC dog killed has

He said that she/he has killed the dog b. Er

-

However the well-formedness of 'PRO Gates' is accounted for," it is clear that overt pronouns in multiple variable binding contexts cannot be paired with Wh-traces, while PRO can. The question that then arises is the following: does pro pattern with overt pronouns or with PRO? The Spanish example in (29a) illustrates the WCO effect for overt pronouns in the question construction, while (29h) Shows that pro patterns with overt pronouns. (29) a. ?*A qui6n ; acus dl,] [la mujer; que; [e]; bail con

sagte, dass _ ihm

-

scheint, dass Hans

He NOM said that

den
-

him DAT seemed that Hans

Hund gettet hat

the ACC dog killed has

He said that (it) seemed to him that Hans killed the dog lt appears that no language, however, allows PRO to be expletive, even though it is clear that German allows expletive pro. Thus in a context where PRO must appear, an expletive cannot inhabit the structural subject position. Thus neither English, nor German, nor Spanish permit an expletive to be the null subject of an infinitive. (32) a. *lt is possible to please him that Mary is sick

whom accused [the woman that " him Feh

danced with

Who did the woman who danced with him accuse? b. ?*A quieln ; acus bail jel4 [e] ; [la mujer; con quien; pro ; b. *Es ist mglich ihn zu gefallen, dass Maria sei krank that Maria be sick it is possible him to please c. *Es posihle agradarle
-

whom accused the woman with whom danced

Who did the woman with whom he danced accuse? Thus whenever a multiple variable binding context evidentes WCO effects with an overt pronoun, a diagnostic for the presence of pro as opposed to PRO is available pro will pattern with the overt pronoun.

que Maria este' enferma

is possible to please him that Maria be sick

The same fact holds for the expletive element in the impersonal passive constructions in German as the minimal pairs in (33) and (34) illustrate (cf. Safir (1985b) for discussion).

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(33) a. Es ist mglich, dass it is possible that

getanzt Wurde danced was

lt is possible that there was dancing h. *Es ist mglich, getanzt zu werden it is possible danced to he (34) a. Es ist mglich, dass an den Hund gedacht wurde it is possible that of the-ACC dog thought was lt is possible that the dog was thought of b.*Es ist mglich,_ an den Hund gedacht zu werden it is possible,_ of the dog thought to be lt is possible for the dog to be thought of One proposal that is intended to account for the ungrammatical examples in (32) (34) (among others) is the EMEX CONDITION of Safir (1985a, b), which stipulatcs that empty expletive elements must he governed. (35) The Ernex Condition An expletive empty category must be governed. lt' PRO is a pronominal anaphor, it follows that it cannot exist in a governed position, or else it will have a binding clomain in which it must be both free and bound. Thus the Emex Condition precludes the existente of expletive PRO. Another approach intended to have this result is that of Sportiche (1983: chapter 4), but however the effeet is accounted for, it is clear that PRO, winke pro, can neuer be expletive. 2.3.4. Stuntnary of PRO vs. pro Thus the universally available PRO seems to contrast with the paratnetrically available pro however the differente is characterized. In each of the three contrasts pointed out above, however, it appears that pro patterns in exactly the way that overt pronouns du, in that overt pronouns can be resumptive, overt pronouns yield WCO effects when matched with Wh[rare in multiple variable binding contexts, and overt pronouns can be expletive, while none of these properties hold of PRO. One should not immediately conclude, however, that pro is distinguished from overt pronouns only by the fact that pro is phonetically null. lt has been pointed out by Montalbetti (1984) that PRO and pro act similarly in other respects that pul Mem in Opposition to overt pronouns. Perhaps the most striking conclusion to he drawn from these contrasts between PRO and pro is that whatever the Null Subject Parameter is, it

has many subtle effects that no superficial theory will eapture. To pul it another way, the theory that will derive the properties we have just described will have to be quite abstract to be sufficiently general to account for fliese contrasts.
3.0. SOME OF THE NSL CONTROVERSIES

Whatever the right account of the null subject property turns out to be, it is likely that it will extend to other sorts of contrasts between NSLs and non-NSLs. This section examines how mir contributors have approached the null subject property and its related effects. 3.1. Clitics and Identification
An important question which arises in all theories of null categories

concerns the way in which thc person-number features (henceforth, phifeatures) of the syntactic gap are determined. The process responsihle for this is often called IDENTIFICATION. While a comprehensive theory of identification is something that lies beyond the scope of the articles in this collection, several of our contributors point out a number of important properties that such a process must satisfy. In section 4, where we develop our own theory of identification, it will becorne useful to bear these properties in mind. I2 The conneetion between agreement and identification of null subjects has been implicit in all studies of these phenomena (including studies in the prescriptive Tradition). More recently, this relation has become the core property associated with null subject phenomenology. White different theories assign a different role to this relation, all of them agree that it is the special status of the inflectional system of a language and its agreement markers that allows null subjects. Kenstowicz's work, for example, shows that in certain dialects of Arabic, person intlection appears to be a necessary property for licensing null subjects. Bani-liassan Arabic has a participial verbal form which falls to intlect for person, showing only tense distinctions. This form does not permit subject pronouns to be omitted, in contrast with the perfect form of the verb, which does inflect for person (and tense) and which does allow null subjects. A similar paradigm shows up with the verb to be in all dialects of Arabic. The presence of person and number agreement in a particular construction, an the other hand, does not necessarily guarantee the null subject option. Raposo's paper analyzes certain st ructures in European Portuguese which show person and number agreement with their subjects but which nevertheless do not allow pro in that position, the so-called Inflected prepositional infinitival construction'. In fact these eonstructions pattern

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closely in several respects with uninflected constructions, and differ crucially in this respect from the much discussed inflected infinitival construction of Portuguese. Such structures show quite clearly that the presence of agreement morphology is not sufficient to permit null subjects. We will return to Raposo's treatment of this issue in section 4. Brandi and Cordin's stucly of two Italian dialects, Trentino and Fiorentino, analyzes the role of subject clitics in relation to null subject phenomena. They contend that the subject clitics of Trentino and Fiorentino differ from the subject clitics found in French in both categorial status and syntactic position, in (hat subject cilties in the dialects are the spelling out of AGR in the INFL node which then licenses and gives content to pro in subject position. Their work will be of special relevance to any treatment of null subjects that must distinguish the role of clitics from the role of agreement. Finally Kayne's contribution investigates a link between restructuring in Romance languages and the null subject property. Restructuring was originally proposed (in Rizzi (1982)) to account for certain possibilities of clitic climbing in Italian, but Kayne shows that the range of-variation in the distribution of clitic climbing closely parallels the possibility of null subjects across a wide range of Romance dialects, and he attributes this correlation to special properties of INFL, and the extraction possibilities made available by the `barriers' framework of Chomsky (198613). 3.2. The Twology of Null Arguments

Willie the theory of identification of empty categories, whatever it tums out to be, will determine what sort of person, number and genderfeatures a null subject will have in what sort of context, the empty category in question must also be endowed with the properties that determine its referential type. The typology of empty categories in (19), extended to include pro in (36), has been represented as symmetrically divided by the referential features [+/-anaphoric[ and [+/-pronominal[. (36) pronominal anaphoric PRO pro NP-trace Variable White Brandi & Cordin, Raposo, and Kenstowicz essentially adopt the more or less standard position that of Chomsky (1982) which treats the null subject as pro, some of our other contributors propose unorthodox views about the empty categories they investigate. Hyams, for example, develops an analysis which is similar to that of Jaeggli (1982) (adopted and adapted in Chomsky (1981)) in that she

treats the missing subject property as induced by a PRO element. In her account the missing subject property is related to the distribution of overt auxiliaries (see also the contributions by Huang and Raposo). She argues that the INFL node consists of an agreement element she identifies as PRO and a tense element that can be filled by a finite verb. In languages where the tense marker does not vacate INFL, the missing subject property is blocked, because the PRO in INFL will be governed by tense (assuming PRO must he ungoverned), but in languages with a tensehopping rule akin to Rute R (Chomsky, 1981), the PRO in INFL will be ungoverned; PRO will be licensed, as in the NSLs. A different approach is taken by both Huang and Borer who collapse the entities PRO and pro into a single empty category type and then attempt to derive the apparent differentes of distribution between PRO and' pro in the standard account by means of other independently rnotivated principles and parameters. Borer, for example, argues that the apparent anaphoric nature of control relations is reduced to a relation between an anaphoric AGR and its antecedent in a higher clause, on the one hand, and a relation between AGR and an empty category subject on the other. As in the Chomsky (1982) approach, pro must be identified by a governor with sufficiently rieh features, and the governor in question, when pro is well-formed, will be AGR. In control contexts, the AGR of the complement clause will be anaphoric and without features, which it will inherit from its binder in the higher clause. Once anaphoric AGR inherits features from an NP, it can identify the PRO subject of the complement clause (e.g., in '1 hope [pro AGR to leave'', the features of / are inherited by AGR which can then identify a pro-subject). In Borer's system, tensed inflection will not license pro unless it is itself rieh enough to identify the subject without inheriting features. The parametric differente between NSLs and non-NSLs is then stated in familiar terms: In NSLs, agreement is assumed to he rieh enough, Alle in non-NSLs, it is not. Any theory that collapses the entities PRO and pro, especially one that relies on a binding account similar to that of Manzini (1983), must also account for the full range of contexts where PRO is employed, and Borer extends her system accordingly. :Very much the same sort of recuction of PRO and pro is attempted by Huang, who reduces the distribution of pro/PRO to a generalized theory of control instead of one of binding. In Chinese, the absente of agreement creates different configurational conditions on the distribution of the empty pronominal according to how the control domain for PRO is determined. In Chinese, any sentence can have a null subject, but only those that are finite may have overt subjects. Clauses with obligatory null subjects, which correspond to the classic control case in English, act similarly to the English cases, but Huang shows that some finite clauses

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that allow an overt subject are nonetheless susceptible to control when the subject is allowed to he null (an instance of controlled pro, in the standard terms). The convergence between Huang's account and that of Borer suggests a potentially important new direction for research. Authier's article rounds out the range of possihle analyses for empty categories in that he analyses the French missing Object construction as involving a null variable. White this paper strays slightly from the null subject phenomenon, virtually the same issues are involved in the analysis of null objects. Unlike other analyses of similar phenomena, such as Huang (1984) and especially Rizzi (1986), Authier argues that null objects are unselective variables similar to indefinite NPs (as proposed by Heim (1982)). Finally Chung presents evidence that the whole typology of empty categories may need to be revised on the basis of the distribution of verbal morphology associated with the presence of an anaphoric NP in Chamorro. She argues that the pattern of agreement that shows up obligatorily when overt anaphoric NPs are present also shows up when certain arguments are missing, and she concludes that this provides evdence that the missing arguments are empty category anaphors. The curious result, from the point of view of the typology of empty categories, is that the elements in Chamorro that are treated as anaphors by this agreement phenomenon do not include the empty categories that would be classificd in GB as anaphoric, such as PRO and NP-trace. Pro acts as expected, as a nonanaphor, except when it is a possessive NP bound by the closest subject. Only the lauer pro induces the anaphoric agreement morphology. There also appears to he a pro that acts like a reflexive. Chung considers a range of possihle solutions to these puzzling facts. 3.3. The Inversion Extraction Analysis
-

support to Rizzi's original hypothesis based on Italian. Indeed one of the central motivations for characterizing these dialects as null subject languages is that they exhibit the phenomenon of free inversion and consequently allow apparent subject extraction, whereas French, which also has subject clitics, does not. Kenstowicz points out that the correlation in question is not restricted to the Romance two dialects of Arabic differ precisely along these lines. Levantine Arabic shares certain properties with English: it does not permit null subjects in that clauses, it does not permit subject extraction over a filled complementizer, and it does not allow subject inversion in that clauses either. The Bani-Hassan dialect of Arabic, on the other hand, allows all three possibilities. Kenstowicz shows further that the possihility of extracting a subject over a filled complementizer in this dialect is intimately connected with the possibility of positioning the subject in postverbal position, exactly as Rizzi (1982) has argued for Italian. 3.4. issues of Acquisition Up to this point, all of our discussion of the Null Subject Parameter, whatever it turns out to be, has concerned evidence from the 'final state ahstraction' rather than any intermediate state of language acquisition before adulthood as a native speaker has been accomplished. More specifically, all of the theories discussed so far are intended to capture the best linguistically significant generalization about Clusters of properties which appear cross-linguistically in final state (adult native speaker) grammars. When such a clustering is claimed to be found (e.g., missing subjects, free inversion, that trace effeet violations) then a formal property of grammars is postulated (e.g., Rule R applies in syntax, as in Chomsky (1981)) which must be shown to derive the Lull class of effects while it interacts with language specific conditions. These are more or less the rules of the game within the Standard Parameter Theory from the point of view of the linguist working with data from final state grammars. The only constraint on hypothesizing possihle parameters with respect to the process of language acquisition is that any proposed parameter must be compatible with the assumption that children have available to them only positive evidence (grammatical sentences). Thus a hypothesized parameter must have an unmarked value, one that is assumed without positive evidente to the contrary, and one or more marked values which require positive evidence. All of these considerations involve the logic of how language acquisition could be possible rather than any account of how the actual process of acquisition might Lake place. The latter issue is addressed by Hyams, who employs the Standard Parameter Theory to account for how the null subject parameter fits Mto a model of the stages of language acquisition. She hypothesizes that the
-

Null subject phenomena often co-occur with two other properties which are nevertheless theoretically and empirically independent of the null subject parameter: free subject inversion, and the possibility of extracting a subject long distance over a lexically filled complementizer (so-called thattrace condition violations). In some of the Romance languages, e.g., Spanish and Italian, the possibility of leaving a pronominal subject phonologically unrealized appears to be intimately connected with the possihility of positioning the subject in post-verbal position, and with the possibility of apparently violating the that trace filter (but see Chao (1980) and Safir (1985a) for arguments that these properties do not cluster together in all NSLs). Brandi and Cordin show that the peculiarities of free subject inversion in Trentino and Fiorentino have interesting consequences for the pattern of subject extraction in these languages, consequences which lend strong
-

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unmarked value of the NSP is for null subjects to be generally possible. In this way she accounts for how children in the earliest stages of acquisition tend to drop subjects systematically. The general strategy in this sort of examination of parameters is to look for clusters of syntactic properties which appear in child langvage at roughly the same point in the acquisition process and then Show that these properties all derive from a single parameter setting." Hyams argues that the key point in the acquisition of English as a non-NSL is when children become sensitive to expletive subjects such as it and there, which appear to be only syntactically motivated (that is to say, not functionally or pragmatically motivated). This fixes English as a non-NSL language. As soon as the AGR/PRO parameter (i.e., the NSP) is set, modals soon appear, as the existence of modals was precluded by the earlier parameter setting (PRO in INFL would be governed)." Hyams also treats the question of how children filier the positive data to which they are exposed. Hyams assumes that sentences with overt auxiliaries or modals are simply not utilized as triggers for parametersetting and only emerge in the child's grammar when the non-NSL option has already be- chosen. These modals are filtered, according to Hyams, en because there is no possible analysis of them in the child grammar. The selective attention involved in the notion 'filtering', in so far as it is determined by the nature of the child grammar itself, is thus also a consequence of the parametric mode{.
4.0. TOWARDS A NEW APPROACH

The foregoing discussion gives, we hope, a general background to the diverse sorts of issues that have arisen as a result of research into the null subject phenomenon. In this section, we want to address a limited set of those issues and suggest a new approach to them in a manner that is admittedly programmatic. The proposal developed in this section is intended to explain (A) why languages like Japanese and Chinese should be similar to Romance languages like Spanish and Italian with respect to the null subject property, (B) why null subject languages should differ from languages that do not allow null subjects in tensed sentences, and (C) why languages that permit expletive NPs to be missing do not necessarily permit full thematic NPs to be missing. 4.1. Null Subject Langvages and Rich' AGR A standard assumption made by every theory of null subjects, including those which fall within traditional grammatical frameworks, is that the

inflectional system of null subject language (like Spanish or Italian) is in some sense 'rieh' enough to allow for the phenomena in question, while this is not the case in other languages (e.g., English). While intuitively quite appealing, this idea raises more questions than it answers. What is the notion of inflectional richness' relevant to an accurate characterization of null subject phenomena? How is this richness to be compared crosslinguistically, especially when one considers systems as diverse as the ones found in Spanish, German, lrish, Japanese, and Chinese, for example. Why do some languages only allow expletive null subjects, and is this restriction somehow tied to the richness of the agreement system of those languages or not? Most GB accounts of these facts have either implicitly or explicitly approached the problem by positing what can be called a 'licensing condition' on the appearance of null subjects, and an identification' process responsible for recovering the referential value of the empty subject. For Chomsky (1981) and Jaeggli (1982), licensing requires Case and lack of government, while identificatiolf requires agreement with phifeatures in INFL. For Rizzi (1982, 1986), licensing requires government by a specially designated set of X categories, while identification requires coindexation with either 'rich' AGR or an extended notion of binding. For Safir (1985a), licensing was determined by whether or not NOM Case could be dropped (the NOM-drop Parameter) and identification was determined on the basis of whether or not an SCL was present. Although we will maintain the distinction between licensing and identification in our theory, we present a novel treatment of these two processes. We will begin by reviewing the typology of agreement systems which license null subjects. This list is not exhaustive, but we believe it is representative of the major classes to be included in any more comprehensive and exhaustive survey. On the one hand, we must consider systems like those found in Spanish and Italian, where a tensed verb is inflected for number, person, tense (and mood) and where it is offen the case that every number/person combination has a different ending. An example from Spanish, the present tense indicative of the verb hablar 'to say', a regular verb of the first conjugation: 1s I speak (37) habl-o 2s you (sg.) speak habl-as 3s he/she speaks habl-a Ipl we speak habt-amos 2p1 you (pl)speak habt-is 3p1 they speak habl-an Here the inflectional paradigm distinguishes all six persons uniquely.

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There is no possibility of confusion. The ending an the verb immediately identifies the referential valuc of the subject. This is not always the case in these languages. In certain cases, two verbal endings are identical, yielding an ambiguity. Even in such cases, however, Spanish allows subjects to remain null. Consider next the inflectional system of German. The verb is inflected for person, number, and tense; and often two (or more) forms are identical. (38) (ich) arbeit-e I work 1s (du) arbeit-est you (sg.) work 2s (er)/(sie) arbeit-et he/she works 3s (wir) arbeit-en we work I pl (ihr) arbeit-et you (pl.) work 2p1 (sie) arbeit-en they work 3p1 By contrast, however, German does not allow thematic null subjects though it does permit expletive subjects to he Is the lack of thematic null subjects due to the fact that not all forms are distinct, as they are in Spanish? This is not at all obvious. Indeed, if die relationship were this direct, we would expect that a language like Irish would pattern with German, never allowing null thematic subjects. Consider the situation that obtains in Irish, according to McCloskey and Hale (1984, 489): (39) Is chuirf-inn I would put. 2s chuirf-ea you (sg.) would pur. 3ms chuirf-eadh he would p u r. 3fs chuirf-eadh she would put. IpI chuirf-imis we would put. 2p1 chuirf-eadli you (pl.) would put. 3p1 chuirf-eadh they would pur. This paradigm is rich in that it has an "unusually large number of synthetic forms" (p. 492). Much more typical is the case illustrated below where most of the verb forms are 'analytic' (op.cit., 492): (40) Is cuir-im I put. 2s cuir-eann you (sg.) p u r. 3ms cuir-eann he puls. 3fs cui r-eann she puls. Ipl cuir-eann we p u r. 2p1 cuir-eann you (pl.) pur. 3p1 cuir-cann they put. Here only one form is distinct, and yet Irish does allow thematic subjects to remain phonologically null when the verb form is synthetic. The notion of `richness' involved, then, is certainly not as straightforward as one may

hone for. As McCloskey & Hale (1984; 492) observe: "Irish is not a language which is in any general sense rieh in its system of person-number marking morphology for verbs, though it has sometimes been claimed that this is the criterial differente between languages which show null subject phenomena and those which do not". Finally, languages like Japanese or Chinese show no number-person inflection at all. Japanese verbal paradigms are inflected for tense/mood/ aspect, and negation, but not for person and number. Consider the following examples from Japanese: (41) yom - ru yom - ta yom - anai yom - eba yom - oo yom - itai yom - are yom - ase

read-present read-past read-neg read-conditional let's read want to read was read ranke read

Chinese shows no inflection affixation whatsoevcr, and yet hoth Chinese and Japanese allow null subjects in thematic (and expletive) positions. Clearly, the notion of 'richness' involved cannot be a simple one, if indeed such a notion is useful at all. Given the diversity of inflectional systems which license null subjects reviewed above, and the difficulties in stating a notion of 'richness of AGR' which would encompass all of them (while excluding null subjects for systems like English, French, or Swedish), we will simply abandon the rich AGR idea and explore a different property of inflection instead.

4.2.

Morphological Unifortnity

Let us begin by stating outright what we believe to be the crucial property that determines when null subjects in tensed sentences are licensed.

(42)

The Null Subjett Parameter

Null subjects are permitted in all and only languages with morphologically uniform inflectional paradigms.

Let us say that given a word W of category K, W is 'underived' if it is morphologically non-distinci from the stem (or root) of W. (i.e., if it does not contain any affixcs attached to W). Further, Ict us say that a word W' is 'derived' if it is formed of a stem (or root) W plus an affix attached to W. (These affixes need not be limited to prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. In some instances other morphological processes of inflection may occur, such as suppletion, reduplication, stem vowel alternations, or filling

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consonantal skeleta with the appropriate vowels). Now we can state what we mean by 'morphologically uniform'.

(43)

Morphological Uniformity
An inflectional paradigm P in a language L is morphologically uniform iff P has either only underived inflectional forms or only derived inflectional forms.

In other words, a paradigm is uniform if all its forms are morphologically complex or if none of them are. If the paradigm is mixed, that is, if some of its forms are morphologically divisible into stem+affix while other forms, an the other hand, are bare stems, [hen it is not uniform. With the notion of morphological uniformity in mind, let us compare the paradigms reviewed above, all of which are morphologically uniform, with partial paradigms for English and French, given below:

(44)

English:
to talk talk talk-s infinitive present 15, 2s, lpl, 2p1, 3p1 present 3s infinitive (to talk') present 1 s, 2s, 3s, 3p1" present I pl present 2p1

French:
lparl-el [parll [parl-l Iparl-e]

lnsofar as all these paradigms have some forms which correspond exactly to the stein of the verb, these paradigms are not morphologically uniform. This lack of uniformity is a pervasive property of the inflectional paradigms of these languages. In the interest of brevity, we present only as many forms as are needed lo show that the inflectional paradigm is not morphologically uniform. For French, the cases given above suffice, though by no means do they even begin to exhaust the complete inflectional paradigm of the language. In the case of English, given the impoverished nature of the verbal inflectional paradigm, we present the full paradigm for a regular verb. Thus we do not expect these languages to allow empty expletive subjects. 17 Although we are reluctant to be too specific before undertaking a wider study, it appears that (43) will have to be taken in a fairly strong sense with respect to the variety of tense and aspect paradigms available in a language. For example, English is uniformly affixed ed in ihe past tense for regular verbs, but we do not expect expletives to drop in only the past tense paradigm, but not in the present tense paradigm. Preliminary study appears to indicate that languages that do drop expletives do not retain
-

them in some tenses or paradigms but not others." Such differentes do arise with respect to whether or not thematic subjects can be null, as will be discussed below with respect to our notion of identification. As mentioned earlier, the paradigms given above for Spanish, German, Irish and Japanese, are, by contrast with English and French, all morphologically uniform. Every form consists of a stem plus some affix. Notice that the notion of 'uniformity' we have in mied does not require that each form be inflected for number/person. In lrish, the affix signals a person-number distinction only sometimes, while in Japanese, the affixes in question never indicate a person-number distinction. What is crucial to the licensing of null subject phenomena, we claim, is only that all forms in the inflectional paradigm in lrish and Japanese are morphologically complex. There can be no mixture of morphologically complex forms with bare stems. For this reason, English and French are not NSLs. In Chinese, no form is complex, hence the paradigm is also morphologically uniform." Under the assumption that only referential null subjects need to be both identified and licensed, while expletive null subjects only need to meet the licensing condition, our system makes an extremely strong prediction about languages with inherently complex morphology. In the Semitic languages, for example, which have a system of CV skeletal roots and vowel melodies that are involved in the derivation of each paradigm (cf. McCarthy (1979) for a rccent theory of these processes), we predict that null expletive subjects are always a possihility, regardless of the richness of agreement. In Hebrew, for example, full thematic null subjects are possible in paradigms for past and future tense. But in the present tense, where person agreement is defective, null thematic subjects are disallowed as in (45b) (cf. Borer (1986: 392). Nevertheless, it is still possible to license expletive null' subjects with present tense verbs as in (45a). (45) a. Nir?a she-Itamar shuv me?axer.

lt seeins that hamar is late again. Margiz ?oll she Itamar tamid me?axer. lt annoys inc that hamar is always late.
-

b. ?Ani/Pata/hur0 ?oxel ?et ha tapuPax.

1/youllte/0 eat sg. the apple.

-

Thus the morphological uniformity hypothesis makes an extremely strong prediction about the cross linguistic distribution of null expletives?' 4.3. IdentiJication While our discussion of licensing is meant to determine when a null subject is possible, nothing we have said so far distinguishes NSLs like German,

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which drop only expletive suhjects, from languages like Italian, which drop thematic subjects as well as expletive ones. This distinction will be achieved by our treatment of identification, which we hypothesize may come about in a number of ways. Each type of identification we propose relies on recent work by a variety of scholars, some of them contributors to this volume. The essential role of identification in our system is based on the following statement, which may derived from the Theta Criterion. (46) A thematic null subject must be identified.

lt is possible to Show, however, that rich agreement is not a sufficient condition to achieve identification; government is also crucial, as has been demonstrated by Raposo's analysis of one of the Portuguese inflected infinitive constructions (this volume). He shows that though the full inflectional paradigm is available in the prepositional inflected infinitive construction, null suhjects are still excluded.' (47) *(Eu) vi jpro a roubarem automveisj I saw them stealing cars.

Presumably if a predicate selects a subject to be thematic a theta-role), then a null subject will be excluded whenever it is not identified; where identification is crucial to the determination of referential value, and referential value is crucial for determing the argument status of an NP. Thus an NSL with thematic null suhjects will be an NSL in which it is possible to identify the null subject. The ways in which identification of a null subject can come about are roughly as follows. First, we assume that agreement affixes with the relevant person/number features, assuming they are pari of the tense/ INFL node, may identify the null subject in the right configuration. Second, particularly in languages with no agreement, identification can be achieved by the inheritance of agreement features by a lower INFL from a higher INFL or C-commanding NP. The latter strategy thus reduces to the former alter inheritance of features, and may be thought of as identification by a head. We will also mention in passing an additional strategy that permits null thematic suhjects that does not involve pro, but rather a variable hound by a null Operator (for a further possibility, see note 26). 4.3.1. Idenlilienan by Agreement The most common notion of identification is by rieh (or what may best be called `strong') agreement, where inflectional affixes correspond to members of the conjugational paradigm. Thus in the Spanish paradigm given above, there is a distinct affix corresponding to every person, and so thematic subjects will always be identified. In fact it may be that the Split system of Irish, which has richly inflected synthetic forms and poorly inflected analytic forms, provide us with just the sort of rationale required to explain why thematic subjects can be omitted in sentences with synthetic forms, but not with analytic forms (see McCloskey and Hale (1984)). We still expect that Irish will allow expletive null subjects for both verb paradigms as appears to be generally the case (see McCloskey's (1984; p. 453) passing remark), since Irish is morphologically uniform, but thematic null subjects are only Iicensed by rieh agreement provided by the synthetic paradigm.

Raposo argues that thegovernor itself must contain the AGR morpheme, and that government by a higher verb which does not contain the rich agreement for the NP in question, i.e., the null subject of the infinitive (which is still present on the inflected infinitive) is insufficient to peruni the null subject. If this analysis is correct, then we must require identification by AGR to be conditioned hy government. (48) identification by Agreement (Provisional) AGR-TENSE can identify an empty category as pro iff AGRTENSE governs the empty category. But now we must ask why the same sort of identification would not serve to identify the thematic null subjects of German or even Icelandic, where five out of six members of the inflectional paradigm are distinct (the Icelandic paradigm is uniform and expletive null suhjects are permitted). A paradigm from Icelandic, the present indicative of the verb to say, Laken from Platzack (1987) is illustrated below. (49) segi segir segjum segid segja is 2s, 3s ipl 2p1 3p1

While rich agreement appears to play a role, apparently this role is not sufficient to insure identification for those conjugations that are represented by distinct forms. We believe the correct approach to this issue is to require that the tense and AGR elements of inflection be represented in the same node. Since both German and Icelandic are V/2 languages, it may be reasonable to argue that Tense is located in COMP (or C of CP in the Barriers system, see Chomsky (1986b)), while agreement is located in INFL (I of IP in the Barriers system). We would then argue that the distribution of INFL and AGR in separate nodes may be a property of V/2 languages, but not of Romance, for example.' lt is for this reason that we have included the term INFL/Tense in our definition of identifica tion hy AGR.

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We believe the analysis of West Flemish proposed by Bennis and Haegeman (1984) confirms our approach to the Germanic V/2 languages, in that in West Flemish, null thematic subjects are possible if and only if the tensed complementizer is inflected, as in (50a). As Bennis and Haegeman show, the uninflected complementizer does not permit thematic null subjects, as in (50b)." (50) a. . dase pro komt b. *... da pro komt

exceptionally Casemarked complement clause should be able to be missing when an object clitic is present, as is indeed the case for the small clause complement in (52). (52) ridicule crois Je le 1 him/it believe ridiculous I believe him/it ridiculous

that she comes. that he/she comes.

The reason that the inflected complementizer licenses the null subject is then simply an instance of a case where both AGR and tense are part of the same governing node, whereas the uninflected complementizer contains tense but not AGR. Thus we predict that (50b) will not be able to identify a thematic null subject.' Finally we would like to entertain a possihility. that might explain why the tense morpheme must be part of the governing AGR identifier. Suppose that the rote of tense in these identification configurations is crucial because it is the source of Case assignment (harking hack to Rizzi's (1982) analysis of null subjects in Italian). Support for this view comes from the Portuguese data discussed by Raposo. In the Prepositional Infinitival Construction, lexical subjects are not marked nominative, but rather accusative. Raposo argues that this Gase marking is provided by the higher verb, as with other Exceptional Case Marking predicates in English and Romance. Thus, even though the infinitives in this construction are fully inflected, they fail to identify null subjects because AGR is not a Case assigner. The reason why the PIC in Portuguese does not exhibit null subjects, then, is because the AGR morpheme is found an a category, INFL, which does not assign Case. The bare inflected infinitival construction in European Portuguese discussed by Raposo, in which Agr assigns (Nominative) Case to overt subjects, allows pro unproblematically. (51) E dificil [pro trabalharem tanto]

This might then appear to be a context where our theory of identification goes beyond the null subject phenomenon. But notice also that if we could somehow integrate our treatment of French object clitics with the Morphological Uniformity Condition, i.e., if we could claim that the object clitic paradigm in French is uniform in the sense of (43), then we could predict that expletive null subjects will be licensed when governed by a higher verb, even though no clitic identifier is present. (Normal direct object expletives are prohibited by the Projection Principle). As illustrated in (53), this prediction would be borne out, even though French is not normally a NSL. (53) Je crois ridicule que Jean soit innocent

I befiele ridiculous that Jean is

innocent

I believe it ridiculous that John is innocent Before such an extension is possible, however, we would have to he able to characterize what is uniform with respect to the argument positions within VP. English, for example, is uniformly uninflected for object agreement, yet the English translation of (53) is ungrammatical in contemporary English. Perhaps one could argue that only affixed paradigms are evaluated for uniformity within VP, in which case our theory of null subjects might be extended to null objects. If these conjectures about object clitics are correct, then we should revise our identification by agreement principle as in (54). 25

(54)

lt is difficult for them to work that hard.

Thus, the crucial factor appears to be whether the category containing the identifying features is also the locus of Case assignment, regardless of whether the category in question is Tensed or not, as it is clear that the Infinitive in (51) above is not a tensed category. Such an analysis, furthermore, suggests a new approach to the appearance of thematic pro in contexts where it is governed by a higher verb. We now expect that a governing verb with a full inflectional paradigm for ohjects should be able to identify a thematic pro in a governed position (e.g., direct object) in the same way. Suppose that this is precisely what we find in the Romance clitic system, even in French, which has a full paradigm of object clitics. Then we would predict that the subject of an

Idenekation by Agreement AGR can identify an empty category as thematic pro iff the category containing AGR Case-governs the empty category.

To summarize, it seems that the NSLs that lack identification by agreement can be of two varieties: Those in which AGR is simply not rich enough, and Chose in which AGR is somehow not accessible to the null subject, regardless of how rich it is, because it does not govern as part of the AGR/Case assigning morpheme. 4.3.2. Non local Identification by Agreement
-

Now we must consider languages like Chinese which show no tense or agreement and are thus uniformly unaffixed. Since thematic null subjects

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are possible in Chinese, we must allow that they are identified by a different means. We believe, following Huang, there are essentially two processes involved: one a null topic analysis, which involves Wh-movement of a null Operator leaving a Wh-trace (variable) in subject position, and one involving a sort of control of pro. The first process leaves a variable which, according to principle C of the Binding Theory, must be free in the scope of the operator. This type of null suhject, then, is always interpreted as disjoint in reference from all other C-commanding NPs in the relevant structures. Null subjects of main clauses also receive this analysis systematically. Consider now a case where a subordinate null suhject is interpreted as coreferential with a higher NP. Such cases instantiate the second process that interests us here. In this instance, whenever there is no local government by lense/agreement with morphological content, then a C-commanding NP must provide an antecedent much in a manner similar to what Huang (1984, volume) and Borer (1986, this volume) propose. this Suppose, following a variant of Borer's approach, that while pro must be identified locally by a Case-governor, as we have assumed above, in Chinese, where the AGR node is morphologically empty, pro cannot he identified by local AGR unless AGR itself gets features. For this reason, let us assume that AGR then inherits features from a C-commanding NP, usually a higher subject, and then these features identify the null subject of a complement clause. We assume, following Huang, that INFL governs the subject at all times in Chinese; the null subject in our system is still pro at all times. We do not necessarily assume as Borer does that the lower AGR is anaphoric, and therefore must be bound by a C-commanding AGR or NP from a higher clause, although we would not rule out this possibility. Here we are simply attempting to show that this sort of apparent 'control of pro' by a higher clause can be reduced to a local identification relation (as Borer shows for cases where the full AGR of a lower clause in Hebrew is dependent an the AGR of a higher clause, even though the lower AGR is fully inflected). One reason we remain neutral about whether the relation between an empty complement AGR and some higher NP involves anaphoricity is that we do not necessarily want to reduce the missing thematic subjects of infinitives to cases of local identification in the same way. It is, however, tempting to treat infinitives in languages like both English and Spanish in the manner of the Chinese paradigms as Huang in fact suggests, but we do not want to tackle the question of how the distinctions between PRO and pro are to be handled if PRO is actually just an instance of pro or viceversa. lt is worth noting, however, that the behavior of infinitives is in general morphologically uniform in both NSLs, e.g., while infinitives in English are uniform and unaffixed, infinitives in French are uniform and

affixed, and yet both languages are non-NSLs and control in infinitives in these two languages is the same in the relevant respects as it is in Spanish, which is a NSL. We suspect that this is an issue worth considering further, but we will not attempt to do so here. By now it should be apparent that by our definition, Japanese is a morphologically uniform (affixed language), and so we would expect it to act like Chinese. Indeed, Hasegawa (1985) analyzes null subjects in Japanese essentially along the lines suggested for Chinese by Huang. Null thematic subjects in main clauses and obviative null subjects in embedded clauses are analyzed as variables bound by a null operator, while null subjects which are coreferential with a higher subject are analyzed as pro's which are identified by the higher C-commanding NPs. We will assume, then that the free interpretation arises, as Hasegawa suggests, by recourse to the null-topic construction, but the control interpretation arises, we believe, in much the same way it does in Chinese. 26 These issues bring us back to Borer's (1986) account of Hebrew. In Hebrew, tensed selected complement clauses can be in a control relation with the matrix subject. Like Borer, we will assume that the lower INFL is coindexed with the higher one and that identification by agreement proceeds as in Japanese in the complement clause. One differente, however, is that agreement in Hebrew in past and future tense is rieh enough to achieve identification independently, and the coindexing relation between INFLs simply imposes control. The present tense in Hebrew is interesting in this regard in that it does not allow its subject to be controlled from a higher clause, as we might expect. We account for this differente by assuming that it is defective in person marking, and therefore it cannot inherit the full set of features required for identification. Thus thematic subjects can never Ire null in present tense clauses. This fact is important in so far as it shows that the subordinate agreement plays a role in the non-local identification relation. Similarly, we must stipulate that in Irish, analytic forms in a subordinate clause are not susceptible to non-local agreement, or else wc would expect the analytic forms of Irish to act like the Japanese cases of control. This would follow if the analytic forms are analyzed as in McCloskey (1986), who argues that "an analytic form of the verh has an AGR feature, but is unspecified for the value of that feature" (p. 252). Though we do not wish to commit ourselves to this specific proposal here, it seems reasonable and derives the desired - results in this instance. To summarize, we are treating apparent control relations into tensed sentences with null subjects as a special case of the local identification of pro by agreement in languages that permit a lower agreement to inherit these features from a higher clause, as in Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese, but not in Irish, Spanish, or the Germanic languages. While the absente of agreement features in a language might be diagnostic for the availability of

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the non-local strategy, it remains obscure why this relation should be present in a language like Hebrew, but not in Spanish, where both of these languages have strong agreement paradigms. Perhaps appeal to Borer's notion of 'anaphoricity' of tense is appropriate at this point, although we leave the issue open for further research.

One property that has not been effectively reduced tu general principles is the fact that get. We will passive verbs require the be auxiliary in most contexts, or else the helping verb ignore this (significant) detail in our presentation, as it does not follow from other approaches either. . lt is not immediately apparent in German that the surface Nominative NP in a passivized 3 Gennan sentence has actually moved to subject position, given underlying NP-NP-V order, bot it is argued in Safir (1985h) that such movement must take place. Also, the morphological rule of passive in German may apply to some intransitive verbs. which is not possible in English. This slight differente in the application of the morphological rule is actually further evidence for eunfining the uperation of dethematization to the texicon, where such exceptional hehavior is expected. Some accounts of preposition-stranding trcat it as determined by a specific parameter with no other effects, e.g., by making P a bounding node for subjacency or claiming that P is not a proper governor. Such proposals may be too descriptive if the SIIITIC parameter does not also derive a number of other effects. Extraction from verb object position, however, is always assumed to be possible if Wh-movement is possible at all. Raposo (1986) analyzes an interesting exception to this last generalization, however. Keenan (1987) proposcs what he calls the PRINCIPLE OF LANGUAGE INTERUEPENDENCE which states "The correctness of a grammar for one language cannot be a evaluated independently of those of other langttages." This is not correet, given that other sorts of evidence (psycholinguistie, acquisitional, aphasiological, etc.), may be brought tu bear determining the correctness of a grammar independently of cross-linguistic evidence. " Chomsky (1981; p. 6) reiterates that "a great deal can be learncd about UG fron' the study of a single language, if such study achieves sufficient depth to put forth rules or principles that have explanatory fette but are underdetermined by evidence available to the language learner. Then it is reasonahle to attributc to UG those aspects of these rules or principles that are uniformly attained but underdetermined by evidence." He adds that erosslinguistic study of closely related languages is an opportunity to "identify and clarify parameters of UG that permit a range of variation in the proposed principles". Informal definitions of government and governing category are stated below. For updated discussion of there notions and further references, see Chomsky (1986b).
5

4.4. Summar) , Two concerns have been at the heart of our proposals. First, we have attempted to show that the dass of languages that permit null subjects, or within languages, exactly those paradigms that permit null subjects, are those paradigms that are morphologically uniform. This is an extremely strong claim about morphologically complex languages, such as the Semitic ones, in that it is generally expected that null expletive subjects will be licensed. Moreover, the uniformity property enables us to give a unified account of null subjects across Japanese, Chinese and Irish as well as across the Romance, Germanic, and Semitic languages. In addition we have attempted to show that the notion 'rich agreement' is by itself of limited utility in predicting the dass of NSLs, unless it is incorporated into a theory of local identification of pro that involves government by a Case assigner containing strong agreement. Finally we have attempted to show, following work by Borer, in particular, that cases of non-local identification can essentially be reduced to the case of local identification if an inheritance process is permitted in the languages where the apparent control of pro is found.

5.0. CONCLUSION

Guvernment: A governs B if the first maximal projection dominating A is also the first maximal projection dominating B and A is a lexical category. Governing Categcny A is the governing category for 13 if A is the first maximal projection dominating the governor of 13 which als() has a subject accessible to 13.
8

Our goal in this essay has been to give, at once, an effective overview of the null subject issues, a guide to research into these matters, and a proposal that we hope, right or wrong, will spawn new research into these questions. Indeed we hope that this whole volume will serve this purpose.

For other contrasts between NP-trace and PRO cf. Chomsky (1981; 55-74) Jaeggli (1982) actually diffeientiates between 'Caseless PRO' and 'PRO with Nominative Case, which correspond, without complication, to PRO and pro, respectively.
u)

See also Brody (1984; p. 363) for a different sorg of account hased on the definition of

N 01 . ES We would like to thank our Jong-suffering eontributors for sticking with us, and Martin Scrivener, our editor at Kluwer, for his thnely assistance. Wc would also like to thank Noam Chomsky, Hajime Hop, and Carme Picallo, among many Hiers, for helpful discussions. Suggestions made tu us by Nina Hyams were crucial to our lormulations in seetion 4. Safir would like to thank the Rutgers Research Council for funds during 1984-85 and 1987-88 to support his research. Another source of evidence that might he available tu the child is termed by Chomsky (1981; p. 9) indirect negative evidence. This means that a child might be sensitive to the absente of certain kinds of constructions, and adjust his or her grammar accordingly. See Lasnik (to appear) for a discussion of the implications of such a possibility.

variable and his treatment of when PRO is referential. The PCOB of Safir (1984) was proposed to account for WCO without excluding these PRO Gate cases, among other reasons. Parallelism Constraint on Operator Binding (PC013) If one local -hindre of 0 is la lexicall and la prononimall, then all local bindees of 0 must be la lexicall and la pronominall. In the theory of NSLs proposed in Safir (1985a), pro is considered to be lexicar. though null, bccause it has the status of a clitic. 17 For some recent views on the relationship between missing arguments, agreement inflection, and clitic pronouns, and the distinctions between the latter two, see Roberge (1987), Saxon (1986), Everett (1987) and references cited there.

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'' None of the papers in this collection address the issue of how SP'l' would apply to the issues of language change, but roughly the same issues arise: a hypothesized parametcr makes predictions about which properties will cluster together historically in the process of language change. In an extremely interesting and pertinent study, Platzack (1987), examines the NSP with respect to the contrast hetween the mainland and insular Scandinavian languages both from synchronic and diachronic perspeetives. 11 This account of the acquisition of the null subject property can be reanalyzed in a manner consistent with the proposal we will make in seetion 4, as is discussed in Jaeggli and Hyams (1987). Teelandie and Faroese, two Scandinavian languages, present a similar distribution of null subjects. Icelandic paradigm is given later in the text. 10 In the analysis of these paradigms a certain amount of morphophonological sophistication may be required. In French, the third person Singular and plural forms may very well end in /t/ as is apparent from subject clitic inversion contexts (e.g., Parle-t-il 7, literally, 'Spoke-he'). A general process of truncation probably deletes this /t/ in most contexts. Nonetheless, the first and second person singular forms appear to have the same form as stems. More complicated questions arise with respect to suppletion (what counts as a root?) which are relevant, but which we have not yet studied. We exclude consideration of imperatives in our consideration as to whether a language is morphologically uniform or not, since many languages that drop null expletives have imperative forms that correspond to stems. This appears to he true for Danish, which does not permit any null elements, for some second person Singular imperative forms in German, which peunils expletives to be null, and also for imperatives in Turkish, which allows thematic null subjects and has an otherwise uniformly affixed paradigm. This suggests that we may have to weaken our claim for the mainland Scandinavian languages generally, which are uniformly affixed ()nee the imperative is set aside, yet they do not allow null expletives. If such a weakening is necessary, then we would have to restate (42) as (42'). (42')
The Null Subjeci Parurneter
15

" Unfortunately we do not have any answcr to the natural question that arises; we have no explanation to offer as to why (42) should he a property of natural languages. In cxamples like (47), it is also not possihle to have a null expletive as the suhject of thc 21 perception verb complement, but even overt expletives in English are not very good as perception verb complement subjects. saw it appear that John was guilty ii. saw it he obvious that John was guilty

Null subjects are permitted only in languages with morphologically uniform in flectional paradigms. 'Uhus (42') still makes the strong claim that null expletives will Im exeluded in morphologically non-uniform languages, but some morphologically uniform languages will not have null expletives.
1 s Of course languages that have null expletives differ as to which expletives can be null. Travis (1984, p. 218) has suggested that there is in fact a (crosslinguistic) implicational hierarchy as to which expletives can be null (sec also Safir (19856)), but there is no reason to beneve that the theory of identification should play a rote in determining this hierarchy. 19 A reviewer points out that some speakers of Dutch can drop expletive subjects even though the first person singular of the present tense paradigm in Dutch corresponds to a stem, as in the rase of thc verb meaning 'to work', werken:

werk werkt werken

Ips 2ps, 3ps (2ps is werk when moved to COMP) IPP, 3 PP, 3PP

Onc weakening of the hypothesis, assuming there is no arguments for a phonologically null affix as in 3ps in French, is to say that up to one stem identical form, excluding imperatives, is permitted. This would still exclude French and English, as desired, but we would have to do a rauch wider study to see if this sort of reformulation would not sause problems elsewhere.

A similar restriction hotds for faire-infinitive constructions, cf. Kayne (1975; p.255). McCloskey's recent (1983) analysis of Irish and particularly Sproat's (1985) analysis of 22 VSO orders generally treat Irish as an underlying SVO language that undergoes verbfronting. Yet Irish perinits fall thematic subjects to drop when agreement is strong. We do not intend to say that V-fronting only occurs in languages in which INFL and AGR are in separate nodes, though we have not analyzed the Irish rase from this perspective. For a theory that assumes a dose relation hetween null thematic subjects and verb second, sec Adams (1987) analysis of Old French. 23 Bennis and Haegeman (1984) also show that the presence of a person Feature is essential for (what we have heen calling) Identification. If the relevant complementizer is only inflected for number, a possibility in West Flemish, null subjects are not allowed. Cf.:* dal-pIl pro komt 'that he/she comes1; * danI(+plj pro Kommen 'that they come.' A reasonable assumption, then, is that the person Feature is essential for this mode of identification. See also Bayer (1984) for discussion of inflected complementizers and null subject phenomcna in Bavarian. 24 One obvious question that arises concerns the nature of sentcnces in which a verb is fronted to COMP. Here delicate questions arise as to whether the inflected verb can govern and identify the suhject, i.e., should we expect that verb-fronting should license null thematic subjects when AGR is sufficiently rieh. This will fiepend on what is assumed ahout the strueture of COMP in these cases, and whether die inflected verb, if adjoined to COMP counts as a governor. Obviously, for the Germanic languages we have discussed, we will want to prevent identification of the null subject in this tontest, but if Adams (1987) is right, identification in this configuration can in fact occur, and did so in the history of the Romance languages. We will not atteinpt to examine this issue further fiere. 25 In Rizzi's (1986) account of referential null objects in Italian it is assumed that the null object is pro. We eould not trcat such null objects as pro, because the agreement paradigm, the object clitics in these instances, is not present to facilitate identification. We will rely instead on Authier's (this volume) account of implicit null objects as being unselective variables. We will not examine this issue further. 21 Recent work by Hajime Hoji (personal eommunication) suggests that, contrary to Hasegawa's analysis of Japanese, which we have followed, it may be that empty categories which behave as pronouns rather than variables can appear in object position in Japanesc. If this is so, we may have to add a third strategy of identification to the two mentioned in the text. In our account, following Borer, an empty pronoun is dependent on a governing AGR with the appropriate (perhaps inherited) features, and so we do not expect object pro unless it is licensed by a clitic (as assumed for French). Unless we assume that Japanese has invisible object clitics (an otherwise totally unmotivated proposal that was nonetheless suggested in Safir (1985a; pp. 466-467)), we must allow for the identification of object pro in some other way. Notice that the two means of identification discussed so far may be seen as identification by an operator um identification by an NP. Perhaps a more symmetrical system would would be one that allows for identification by an argument as well, along the lines of Huang (1984). Suppose, contrary to what we say in the text, that languages without

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OSVALDO JAEGGLI AND KENNETH J. SAFIR

PARAME'FRIC THEORY

43

agreetnent at all, like Chinese and Japanese, follow this third strategy. If this is so, then the first availahle C-comm anding NP will be the identifier in Chinese, which as Huang notes, would permit subject pro to be identified by an NP that binds it from a higher clause, but which would exclude pro in object position by Principle B of the Binding theory. Now suppose further that Chinese and Japanese contrast in that in Japanese, any C-commanding NP can provide identification. lt will then follow that pro can be identified by any NP except the subject of the clause that pro is in, as, according to Hoji (personal communication), appears to be the case.

-: 1986, 'Arbitrary Plural Pronominals'. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 43-76. Jaeggli, 0. and N. Hyams: 1987, 'Morphological Uniformity and the Setting of the Null Subject Parameter'. ms., USC and UCLA. Kayne, R.: 1975, Erench Syntax: The Transformattonal Cycle, MIT Press, Cambridge. Keenan, E.: 1987, Universal Grarnmar: 15 Essays, Croom Helm, New York. Koopman, H.: 1984, The Syntax of Verbs, Foris, Dorerecht. Koopman, H. and D. Sportiche: 1982, 'Variables and the Bijection Principle', The Linguistic Review 2, 139 - 161. Lasnik, H.: (to appear) 'On Certain Substitutes for Negative Data, ms. University of Connecticut. Lasnik, H. and T. Stowell: 1987, 'Weakest Crossover', ms., U. of Connecticut and UCLA. Li, A.: 1985, Abstract Case in Chinese, unpuhlished Ph.D. disscrtation, USC. Manzini, M.-R.: 1983, 'On Control and Control Theory', Linguistic Inquiry 14, 421-446. McCarthy. J.: 1979, Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology, unpuhlished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. McCloskey, 1: 1983, 'A VP in VSO Language?' in G. Gazdar. E. Klein and G. Pullum, eds., Order, Concord and Constituency, Foris, Dordrecht. - : 1984, 'Raising, Subeategorization and Selection in Modern Irish', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1, 441 - 486. - : 1986, 'Inflection and Conjunction in Modern hish', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 245 - 281. McCloskey, J. and K. HaIe: 1984, 'On the Syntax of Person - Number Inneefirm in Modern Irish', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1, 442 - 487. Montalbetti, M.: 1984, After Binding, unpuhlished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Nash, D.: 1980, Topics in Warlpiri Grammar; unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Perlmutter, D.: 1971, Deep and Surface Constraints in Syntax, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Platzack, C.: 1987, 'The Scandinavian Languages and the Null Subject Parameter', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5,3, 377 - 402. Postal, P.: 1970, Cross Over Phenomena, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Raposo, E.: 1986, 'Some Effects of Syntactic Affixation in European Portuguese', paper presented at the First Symposium on Romanen Languages and Linguistics, Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht. Reinhart, '1'.: 1983a, 'Corereference and Bound Anaphora: A Restatement of the Anaphora Questions', Linguistics and Philosophy 6.1, 47 - 88. : 1983b, Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation, Croom Helm, London. Rizzi, L.: 1982, Issues in Italian Syntax, Foris, Dordreeht. : 1986, 'Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of pro', Linguistic Impfe 17, 501 557. Roherge, Y.: 1986, The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments, unpuhlished Ph.D.
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REFERENCES Adams, M.: 1987, `From Old French to the Theory of Pro Drop',Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5, 1 - 32. Bayer, J.: 1984, 'COMP in Bavarian Syntax, The Linguistic Review 3, 209-274. Bennis, H. and L. Haegeman: 1984, 'On the Status of Agreement and Relative Clauses in West Flemish', in W. de Geest and Y. Putseys, eds., Sentential Complementation, Foris, Dordreeht. Borer, H.: 1986,1-subjects, Linguistic Inquiry 17, 375-416. Brody, M.: 1984, 'On Contextual Definitions and the Rote of Chains', Linguistic Inquiry 15, 355-380. Burzio, L.: 1981, Intransitive Verbs and Italian Auxiliaries, unpuhlished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Chao, W.: 1980, 'PRO-drop Languages and Nonobligatory Control'. University of Massachusetts Oceasonal Papers in Linguistin. 7, 46 - 74. Chomsky, N.: 1965, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, Cambridge. -: 1973, 'Conditions on Transformation', in 5. Anderson and P. Kiparsky, eds., A Festschrift for Morris Halle, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. : 1975a, Reflections on Language, Pantheon. New York. 1975b, 'Conclitions on Ruins of Grammar', Linguistic Analysis 2, 303-351. -. 1977, Wh - movemene, in Culicover, Wasow and Akmajianeds., 'On Formal Syntax, Academie Press, New York. - . 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordreeht. 1982Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding, MIT Press, Cambridge. - . 1986a, Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use, Prange:1- , New York. 1986b, Barriers, Mn- Press, Cambridge. Everett, D.: 1987, `Piraha Clitie Doubling', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5, 245-277. Farmer, A.: 1980, On the Interaction of Morphology and Syntax, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Haik, 1.: 1984, indirect Binding', Languistic Inquiry 15, 185-223. Hasegawa, N.: 1985, the so-called 'Zero pronouns' in Japanese'. 'On The Linguistic Review, 4, 289-243. Heim, 1.: 1982, The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases, Ph.D. dissertation, GLSA, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst. Higginbotham, J.: 1980, 'Pronouns and bound Variables'. Linguistic' Inquiry 11, 679-708. Huang, C. - T. J.: 1982, Logical Relations in Chinese and die Theory of Grammar, unpuhlished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. 1984, 'On the Distribution and Reference of Empty Pronouns', Linguistic Inquiry 15, 531-574. Jaeggli, 0.: 1982, Topics in Romance Syntax, Foris, Dordreeht.
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dissertation, U. of British Columhia. Safir, K.: 1984, 'Multiple Variable Binding', Linguistic Inquiry 14, 603-638. -: 1985a, Syntactic Chains, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. : 19856, Missing Subjetts in German, in J. Toman, cd., Linguistic Tlieory and the Grammar of German, Foris, Dordrecht. -: 1986, 'Relative Clauses in a Theory of Binding and Levels, Linguistic Inquiry 17, 663-690. Saxon, L.: 1986, The Syntax of Pronouns in Dogrib (Athapaskan): Some Theoretical Consequences, U.C. San Diego. Seils, P.: 1984, Syntax and Sernantics of Resumptive Pronouns, Ph.D. dissertation, GLSA, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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J.-MARC P. AUTHIER

Sportiche, D.: 1983, Stromoral Invariance and Symmetry, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Sport, R.: 1985, `Welch Syntax and SOV structure', Nahaal Language and Linguistie Theory 3, 173-216. Stowell, T.: 1981, Ortgins of Phrase Structure, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Suner, M.: 1983, "pro,,,', fingofstk. Inquiry 14, 188-191. Travis, L.: 1984, Parameters and Effects of Word Order Variation, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT..

ARBITRARY NULL OBJECTS AND UNSELECTIVE BINDING*

0. 1NTRODUCTION

Within the Government-Binding framework of generative grammar, the notion of `arbitrary Interpretation' has remained almost exclusively tied to control theory. Control theory is concerned with the circumstances under which PRO may or musst be bound or free. An assumption commonly held in the many versions of control theory that have been proposed is that whenever PRO fails to he controlled (i.e., is free), it is assigned the default value arb, an index reserved for elements which may remain unbound yet lack independent specific reference.: Consider in this respect the following French sentences which both contain an instance of arbitrary PRO: (1) a. [PRO,b chasser Earl est la mode cette annee.

To hunt with a bow is fashionable this year.

b. La peau de ce sanglier esttien trop epaisse pour

The skin of this boar is way wo thick

1PRO,,i, la decouper au canift

to carve it with a packet keife.

Since thcre is no potential controller for either of the PROB in (1), the lauer are assigned the index arb. In this paper we consider constructions in French which contain null elements in object position with similar arbitrary reference. Since, however, these null elements can never he controlled or assigned indices other than arb, the characterization of the notion `arbitrary as a default value assumed for control theory cannot be invoked to account for their Interpretation. Further, we shw that : the notion `arbitrary' fails to capture the quantificational force of zero objects. We therefore propose a treatment of null ohjects which involves unselective binding of a variable in the sense of Lewis (1975), from which both the quantificational flavor of null ohjects and the restricted context (i.e., generic sentences) in which they occur follow naturally.. This paper is organized as follows. In section 1 we discuss the quantificational force and the referential restrictions tied to Spanish arbitrary null subjects and French arbitrary zero ohjects. In section 2 we suggest that French zero objects appear to be -bound in that they trigger both weak crossover violations and PRO gate phenomena, and interact with existential qUantifiers to yield scope ambiguities. These facts Iead us to propose 45