Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wlg5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T14:22:00.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Left-edge deletion in English and subject omission in diaries1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2012

ANDREW WEIR
ANDREW WEIR*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, South College, University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA 01003, USAaweir@linguist.umass.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses deletion in spoken and written English. It notes that subjects are frequently dropped both in informal spoken English (Napoli 1982; Zwicky & Pullum 1983b) and in certain registers of written English such as diaries (Haegeman 1990, 1997, 2007; Haegeman & Ihsane 1999, 2001). The article argues in favour of Napoli's phonological analysis of left-edge deletion in spoken English, and provides a formalisation of Napoli's account in the framework of Selkirk's (1995, 2001, 2011) optimality-theoretic analysis of syntax–phonology mapping. A comparison is drawn with the case of subject drop in the diary register. Due to the difference in surface distribution of the phenomenon between the spoken and written cases, the analysis cannot transfer directly. However, I suggest that, combined with arguments made by Haegeman (2002) for a sentence-medial position for modifiers in written English, the phonological analysis can account for a large subset of the diary drop cases.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 105 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Akmajian, Adrian, Demers, Richard A., Farmer, Ann K. & Harnish, Robert M.. 1995. Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication, 4th edn.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bader, Markus. 1998. Prosodic influences on reading syntactically ambiguous sentences. In Fodor, Janet D. & Ferreira, Fernanda (eds.), Reanalysis in sentence processing (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics 21), 1–46. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Martin, Roger, Michaels, David & Uriagereka, Juan (eds.), Step by step: Essays in Minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, 89–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Kenstowicz, Michael (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Freidin, Robert, Otero, Carlos P. & Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Elfner, Emily. 2011. The interaction of linearization and prosody: Evidence from pronoun postposing in Irish. In Carnie, Andrew (ed.), Formal approaches to Celtic linguistics, 11–40. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Gerken, LouAnn. 1991. The metrical basis for children's subjectless sentences. Journal of Memory and Language 30 (4), 431–51.Google Scholar
Gerken, LouAnn. 1994. Young children's representation of prosodic phonology: Evidence from English-speakers’ weak syllable productions. Journal of Memory and Language 33 (1), 19–38.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1987a. Complement ellipsis in English: Or how to cook without objects. In Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie (ed.), Studies in honour of René Derolez, 248–61, Ghent: Seminarie voor Engelse en Oud-Germaanse Taalkunde R.U.G.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1987b. Register variation in English: some theoretical implications. Journal of English Linguistics 20, 230–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1990. Understood subjects in English diaries: on the relevance of theoretical syntax for the study of register variation. Multilingua 9 (1), 157–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1997. Register variation, truncation, and subject omission in English and in French. English Language and Linguistics 1 (2), 233–70.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2002. Sentence-medial NP-adjuncts in English. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 25, 79–108.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2007. Subject omission in present-day written English: On the theoretical relevance of peripheral data. Rivista di grammatica generativa 32, 91–124.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane & Ihsane, Tabea. 1999. Subject ellipsis in embedded clauses in English. English Language and Linguistics 3 (1), 117–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane & Ihsane, Tabea. 2001. Adult null subjects in the non-pro-drop languages: Two diary dialects. Language Acquisition 9 (4), 329–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun & Schwartz, Bonnie (eds.). 1994. Language acquisition studies in generative grammar (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 8). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horsey, Richard. 1998. Null arguments in English registers: A Minimalist account. BA thesis, La Trobe University.Google Scholar
Hyams, Nina M. 1986. Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Hyams, Nina M. 1994. V2, null arguments and COMP projections. In Hoekstra & Schwartz (eds.), 21–55.Google Scholar
Hyams, Nina M. 2011. Missing subjects in early child language. In de Villiers, Jill & Roeper, Thomas (eds.), Handbook of generative approaches to language acquisition, 13–52. Dordrecht: Springer. Draft accessed from www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hyams/papers/2009%20Hyams.doc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mårdh, Ingrid. 1980. Headlinese: On the grammar of English front page headlines. Malmö: C. W. K. Gleerup.Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands and the theory of ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Napoli, Donna Jo. 1982. Initial material deletion in English. Glossa 16 (1), 85–111.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan & Smolensky, Paul. 1993/2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Technical Report, Rutgers University and University of Colorado at Boulder, 1993. Revised version published by Blackwell, 2004. [ROA 537.]Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1994. Early null subjects and root null subjects. In Hoekstra & Schwartz (eds.), 151–76.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Haegeman, Liliane (ed.), Elements of grammar: Handbook in generative syntax, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi & Shlonsky, Ur. 2007. Strategies of subject extraction. In Gärtner, Hans-Martin & Sauerland, Uli (eds.), Interfaces + recursion = language? Chomsky's minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics, 115–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Roeper, Tom & Rohrbacher, Bernhard. 1994. Null subjects in early child English and the theory of Economy of Projection. University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-94–16.Google Scholar
Schmerling, Susan F. 1973. Subjectless sentences and the notion of surface structure. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 9, 577–86.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1978. On prosodic structure and its relation to syntactic structure. In Fretheim, Thorstein (ed.), Nordic prosody 2, 128–49. Trondheim: TAPIR.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1995. The prosodic structure of function words. In Beckman, Jill, Dickey, Laura Walsh & Urbanczyk, Suzanne (eds.), Papers in Optimality Theory. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2001. The syntax-phonology interface. In Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, Paul B. (eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences, 15407–12. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2002. Contrastive focus vs. presentational focus: Prosodic evidence from Right Node Raising in English. In Speech prosody 2002: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on speech prosody, 643–6. Aix-en-Provence.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2006. Bengali intonation revisited: An optimality theoretic analysis in which FOCUS stress prominence drives FOCUS phrasing. In Lee, Chung-Min, Gordon, Matthew & Buering, Daniel (eds.), Topic and focus: A cross-linguistic perspective, 217–46. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2011. The syntax–phonology interface. In Goldsmith, John A., Riggle, Jason & Yu, Alan C. L. (eds.), The handbook of phonological theory, 2nd edn, 435–84. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Straumann, Heinrich. 1935. Newspaper headlines: A study in linguistic method. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.Google Scholar
Thrasher, Randolph H. 1974. Shouldn't ignore these strings: A study of conversational deletion. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Thrasher, Randolph H. 1977. One way to say more by saying less: A study of so-called subjectless sentences. Kwansei Gakuin University Monograph Series vol. 11. Tokyo: Eihosha.Google Scholar
Weir, Andrew. 2009. Article drop in English headlinese. MA thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. & Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 1983a. Cliticization vs inflection: English n't. Language 59 (3), 502–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. & Pullum, Geoffrey K.. 1983b. Deleting named morphemes. Lingua 59, 155–75.Google Scholar