Pro-drop language

Pro -drop language (of English. Pro- drop language) or null subject language referred to in linguistics languages ​​in which pronouns in certain syntactic positions for the constitution of a grammatically correct sentence need not be explicitly implemented.

Example

In most Romance languages ​​- but, for example, French is the exception - can and will usually not realized a pronoun in subject position:

Spanish:       Lo veo       it seh - 1SG = ' I see it '       Italian:       Lo conosco       identify him - 1SG = ' I know him '       Latin:       me amat       I love - 3SG = ' He she or it loves me ' As it can be assumed due to the German translation, the current Germanic languages ​​are, however, no pro -drop languages: The subject position must usually be filled ( in this case I through ). Exceptions to this are in the vernacular, if you want to be brief: "Never mind ", "I'm out of town until the end of the week ", " Hello, come tomorrow morning at 8 clock at the airport ."

The Romance languages ​​can "allow" to be pro -drop languages ​​, because allow the inflectional morphology on the verb that is inflected for person and number required to draw conclusions about the subject. However, as also seen in the example of the Germans, there is no necessary correlation between the morphological type of language and behavior in relation to the realization of pronouns: In German inflected the verb for the same categories as the Spanish, but German is not per -drop language. Lately, one talks but often also of semi-pro -drop languages:

German:       that [ pro] laughed       ( without content subject is omitted)                Laughed, when it rains.       ( The omitted subject changed the word order. ) conceptual history

The term comes from the generative grammar. The so-called per -drop parameter or parameters of a subject is zero the principles proposed by the generative model parameters, and for the universal grammar parameter.