Null Expletive Pronoun: A Minimalist Approach‎

Document Type : علمی - پژ‍وهشی

Author

• Mazdak Anoushe

University of Tehran

https://doi.org/10.22067/lj.v6i11.45297

Abstract

Traditional work on pro-drop languages identified a set of parametric values ‎associated with the availability of null subjects, including the presence of null ‎expletive subjects. In the same vein, but more within the framework of Minimalist ‎Program, I will discuss while referential subjects may optionally be overt or covert ‎in the Persian, expletives are obligatorily null. In this regard, a covert pronoun ‎expletive will be claimed to have merged in the surface subject position of all zero-‎place predicates and some unaccusative structures where the internal argument is a ‎PP or CP, satisfying the EPP feature - a requirement forcing some DP to appear in ‎the specifier of the clausal head. This analysis is empirically supported by a number ‎of facts arguing against the idea that pronoun in (this) can freely appear as an ‎expletive subject.‎

Keywords

• Expletive pronoun
• Pro-drop
• extended projection principle
• Zero-place predicate
• ‎Unaccusative predicate

References

حق‌بین، فریده و شهره فشندکی (1390). «زبان فارسی و ضمیر پوچ‌واژه‌ای». پژوهش‌های زبان و ادبیات تطبیقی. 2(1): 87-101.

درزی، علی و شجاع تفکر رضایی (1389). «پوچ‌واژه در زبان فارسی». پژوهش‌های زبان‌شناسی، 2(2): 57-73.

صحرایی، رضا و رقیه کاظمی‌نهاد (1385). «تأملی در ساخت مجهول فارسی امروز». مجلۀ دانشکدۀ ادبیات و علوم انسانی دانشگاه شهید باهنر کرمان. 20 (پیاپی 17): 77-97.

Adger, D. (2003). Core Syntax, a Minimalist Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Belletti, A. (1988). “The case of unaccusatives”. Linguistic Inquiry, 19: 1–34.

Boeckx, C. (2000). EPP eliminated. ms., University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Burzio, L.1986. Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist program. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Chomsky, N. (1977). Essays on Form and Interpretation. NY: North-Holland.

Cinque, G. (1999). Adverbs and Functional Heads, A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. NY: Oxford University Press.

Darzi, A. (2008). “On the vP Analysis of Persian Finite Control Constructions”. Linguistic Inquiry, 39(1): 103-116.

Darzi, A. (1996) Word order, NP movement, and opacity conditions in Persian, Ph.D dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Emonds, J. (2006). “Adjectival Passives: The Construction in the Iron Mask”. In M. Everaert and H. V. Riemsdijk (Eds.). The Blackwell Companion to Syntax (I:16-60). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Haegeman, L. (1995). The Syntax of Negation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haegeman, L. (1994). Introduction to Government & Binding Theory, Oxford: Blackwell.

Heycock, C. (2013). “The syntax of predication”. In: M.d. Dikken (Ed). The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax (322-352). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hornstein, N. (2000). “Existentials, A-chains, and reconstruction”. DELTA 16 special: 45–79.

Hornstein, N. and Nunes, J., Grohmann, k.k. (2005). Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Karimi, S. (2005). A Minimalist Approach to Scrambling: Evidence from Persian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Marantz, A. (1995). “A Reader’s Guide to a Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory”. In: Gert Webelhuth (ed.). The Principles and Parameters Approach to Syntactic Theory: A Synopsis. Oxford: Blackwell.

Moro, A. (2006). “Existential Sentences and Expletive There”. In M. Everaert and H. V. Riemsdijk (Eds.). The Blackwell Companion to Syntax (II: 210-236). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Radford, A. (2009). Analysing English Sentences, a Minimalist Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rizzi, L. (1986). “Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro”. Linguistic Inquiry, 17: 501- 557.

Sanchez, L. (2010). The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Svenonius, P. (2002). Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Taleghani, A.H. (2008). Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.