English Linguistics 31: 173-202; Prefinal version<Review Article>

RADICAL ARGUMENT DROP VIEWED THROUGH PARAMETRIC VARIATION

Tomohiro Fujii
Yokohama National University

Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory by Theresa Biberauer,
Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts and Michelle Sheehan, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2010, vi+368pp.

Abstract
The present article attempts to summarize the major achievements advanced in
Parametric Variation by Biberauer, Holmberg, Roberts and Sheehan on the one hand,
and to develop some central ideas proposed in the volume to account for a novel
generalization about radical argument drop, on the other.

The generalization is

proposed that every language that allows argument ellipsis allows pro.

As thegeneralization itself implies, it is argued that radical argument drop is not a uniform
phenomenon.

Rather it consists of pro and elided arguments.

Keywords: minimalism, Null Subject Parameter, parametric theory, ϕ-features, radical
argument drop1

1.

Introduction
The present article is a review of Biberauer, Holmberg, Roberts and Sheehan’s

Parametric Variation, prepared specifically for the ‘Review Article’ section of thisjournal.

The authors of the volume under review aim at developing and refining the

traditional generative theory of parameters (Chomsky (1981)) so as to answer a numberof questions and criticisms that have been raised against the classical theory.

Theychoose as a concrete case of parametric variation null subject or pro-drop phenomena,
which have been widely known for well studied syntactic differences between languages
like English and French and languages like Italian and Spanish relating to missing
subjects of finite clauses.

The volume contains one introduction chapter followed byeight body chapters on parameter theory and null subject parameters.

The main goal of

the present article is to give a concise description of the volume, as regular reviews do, on
the one hand, and to critically examine some of the central issues discussed in the book,on the other.

To do so, the latter half of the article is devoted to proposing and trying to

explain a less often discussed generalization about radical argument drop languages (e.g.
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Turkish, etc.).

In so doing, I will make full useof the technology that is proposed for null subject languages in the volume under review.
Although it is unavoidable that some of the review and discussion that follow willbe theoretical and technical, it may be useful to begin by asking the broad question: in the
study of human language, what virtues does parametric theory have? Here I would like tohighlight two at least potentially nice aspects of parametric theory, both of which are
discussed in Roberts and Holmberg’s Introduction to the volume in relation to Rizzi’s(1982, 1986) study of null subjects.

The first possible virtue concerns the so-called

clustering effects of parameters and the second the concept of the Poverty of the Stimulus(PoS).

2

Clustering effects make parameter-based descriptions of linguistic variation lookboth descriptively and explanatorily elegant.

Consider the data from Italian below.

These data suggest that (i) referential non-expletive subjects can be left unpronounced(1a), (ii) that free inversion, VS order, is possible (1b), (iii) that Comp-trace effects areapparently absent (1c), and (iv) subject-verb agreement inflection is ‘rich’ in thislanguage (1d).

Note that the forms shown in (1a-c) are ungrammatical in English, and,in contrast to the paradigm given in (1d), the English verb drink has only two forms inpresent tense: drink and drinks.
(1) a.

Vérra.
will.come.3Sg‘He will come.’b.

Éarrivato

Gianni.

isarrivedGianni‘Gianni has arrived.’
c.

Chi

hai

deto

[che hascrittoquestolibro]?

whohave.2Sg

saidthat has

written

this

book

‘Who did you say wrote this book?’d.

bevo ‘I drink’beviamo ‘We drink’

bevi ‘You (Sg) drink’

bevete ‘You (Pl) drink’

beve ‘He drinks’

bevono ‘They drink’

Note now that, since we are dealing with four, apparently independent properties, one
would expect to find 2×2×2×2 logically possible language types, two of them being the
Italian type and the English type. However, it looks, at least initially, like there is no‘mixed’ language with regard to these four properties.

The Rizzi-style classical Null

Subject Parameter explains why this is the way the world goes.

3

His influential proposal

(Rizzi (1982, 1986)) was that Spec,TP of the clause in (1a) is occupied by aphonologically null pronoun pro and it needs to be licensed by ‘rich’ verbal inflection.
The subject positions of (1a, b) and of the che clause in (1c) are all occupied by pro.
The fact that (1c) does not exhibit a Comp-trace effect is no longer surprising because
wh-extraction does not have to originate in Spec,TP but it may originate from the positionof the inverted subject.

The explanation successfully excludes a ‘mixed’ language

where, say, free inversion is allowed but Comp-trace effects are observed.

As Roberts

and Holmberg (Introduction: 21-22) mention, some doubt has been cast on the
cross-linguistic validity of the clustering effect with the null subject properties.
Nevertheless, they show that some core correlations arguably still survive fairly strict
typological scrutiny.
The second possible virtue of parametric theory is related to the ‘Poverty of the
Stimulus’ argument.

Here too, the null subject parameter provides a nice illustration.

Recall that English exhibits Comp-trace effects; cf. *Who did you say that wrote thisbook?

The relevant sentence type is ungrammatical and complex.

So it is reasonable

to assume that the Primary Linguistic Data are not rich enough to contain evidence thatthe relevant Comp-gap structure is not possible in the language.

Then how can thelearner of English (or the relevant dialects of English) come to know that the structure is
not allowed in the system that she is learning? Given that all the adult speakers of English
uniformly acquire the constraint in question, one may hypothesize an innate UG
constraint associated with the Comp-trace filter.

This way, one can avoid the possibilityof predicting that the Comp-trace constraint is not learned uniformly by English speakers.
However, this cannot be the whole story.

The superficially same structure is possible in

Italian and other languages, as can be seen in (1c).

So the question arises as to how thelearner of English comes to know that the gap after the complemetizer is a trace, not a4

pro (Hyams (1986)).

This type of question may arise when a grammatical property of aparticular language raises a PoS question and the property is at least superficially subject
to linguistic variation.

The Null Subject Parameter, put together with a UG constraint

barring the Comp-trace structure, provides us a way out: The possibility of pro is ruledout when the parameter is set to the English value based on the Primary Linguistic Data
that contain positive, easy-to-observe evidence for English not being a pro-language, asHyams (1986) argues.

The importance of this PoS feature of parametric accounts isstressed in Roberts and Holmberg (Introduction), who use it to defend parametric theory
against Newmeyer’s (2005) criticism of it.
Having seen two fundamental virtues of parametric theory by observing some
Italian and English data, let us note which language types are primarily examined in thevolume.

The coverage, of course, goes beyond the divide between non-null subject

languages (non-NSLs) like English and what are called consistent NSLs like Italian.
The following scale, adapted from Roberts and Holmberg, indicates a scale as to howliberal a language may be regarding subject or argument drop, from ‘strict’ to ‘liberal.’(2)

Non-NSLs (e.g. English) > Expletive NSLs (e.g. German) > Partial NSLs (e.g.
Finnish) > Consistent NSLs (e.g. Italian) > Radical argument drop languages(e.g. Japanese)

Non-NSLs allow no subject drop. Expletive NSLs like German drop expletive subjects
if they drop subjects at all, but do not drop thematic referential subjects like he.
Consistent NSLs like Italian come after expletive NSLs in the scale because they allow
themselves to drop referential subjects in addition to null expletives.
null subject language is called a partial null subject language.
between expletive and consistent NSLs.

Another type ofPartial NSLs come inThis type of language, in contrast to otherlanguage types, allows subject drop in a few, quite limited environments.

5

The scaleends with radical argument drop languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish andothers.

These languages even leave non-subject arguments unpronounced quite freely.

Various properties and constructions from these five language groups are examined in thepresent study as well.
The present review is organized as follows: In Section 2, I review the Introduction
to the book by Roberts and Holmberg and the eight chapters following it.

In theirIntroduction, Roberts and Holmberg make intriguing and intense discussions of the new,minimalist considerations that they propose to refine the traditional theory.

They also

integrate and extend some core proposals that are made in the eight main chapters.

In

that sense, it seems fair to treat especially the latter part of the Introduction as “Chapter 9”of this volume.

For this reason, the book review conducted in Section 2 starts with Ch.

1 to Ch. 8 and comes back to the Introduction.

In Section 3 I discuss radical argument

drop languages in relation to the proposed Pro-drop parameter hierarchy.

I then develop

some of the technical proposals made in the volume to account for a new generalizationthat seems to hold for radical argument drop languages.

2.

Section 4 concludes the paper.

Overview of the Volume
As mentioned above, I review chapters 1-8 in turn and come back to theIntroduction at the end of this section.
null subjects.”

Ch. 1 is Ian Roberts’s “A deletion analysis ofThis chapter presents important ingredients for some theories andanalyses repeatedly referred to in the later chapters.

So I would like to review theRoberts chapter in greater detail than later chapters.

Roberts’s main question andanalytic building blocks can be listed below.
(3) i.

The fundamental question: Why should UG allow pro?;ii. The notion of defective goal in analysis of clitic incorporation;

6

iii. Null subjects as Ds; andiv. Müller’s pro-generalization and Saito’s analysis of Argument Ellipsis inconnection with the Pro-drop hierarchy.
(3i) asks why UG should allow pro of the Italian type, rather than keeping
unavailable that category that might complicate syntax.

Roberts’s answer is that nullsubjects are null for the same reason as traces are null.

To see how this answer istechnically possible, let us examine (3ii).

Roberts adopts Nunes’s (2004) theory ofchain linearization, and applies to Romance cliticization and referential pro.
Formation and the two conditions on Chain Reduction are the keys.

ChainFirst, suppose thatmovement creates chains, and chains are subject to an interface condition that excludes achain with more than one member of it being pronounced; e.g. *Who did you see who?.
Nunes proposes that this is an effect due to the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).
The output representations compatible with the LCA are: (i) who did you see who, and(ii) who did you see who.

The next question is, why is (ii) illegitimate? The theory

argues that generally the highest link of the chain is chosen to survive in a reduced chain.
(Nunes assumes that an economy condition dictates that a link with “least number ofunchecked features” survives; see Roberts (2010: 228 fn. 22) on this matter.)Given thetwo conditions imposed on Chain Reduction, who did you see who is predicted to be theonly one legitimate output representation obtained from the two-membered chain (who,who).
How does this theory of chain linearization bear on clitic incorporation andultimately the emptiness of pro? Roberts proposes that the operation Agree gives rise toan effect of chain formation in a certain environment.

He then introduces the notion of

defective goal.
(4)a.

A probe P and its goal G form a chain if G is a defective goal.

7b.

G is a defective goal if and only if G’s features count as a proper subset of P’s
as a result of Valuation (the operation copying the values of features of P or
G onto the matching unvalued features of the other.)

Assuming that Romance clitics are bundles of ϕ-features, Roberts analyzes cliticization(e.g. Jean la voit ‘Jean her-saw’ in French) as in (5).

The values of the ϕ-features of thecomplement clitic are copied onto the ϕ-features of the probe v.

This creates a proper

subset relation between the features of v and those of the clitic, which makes the goal
defective, giving rise to the chain (v, ϕ).

Deletion of ϕ takes place so that the LCA isrespected, and the valued ϕ-features on v are spelled out as la.

The effect of clitic

incorporation is now derived.
(5) a.

v<v, Person:___ , Number: ___>

ϕ<Person: a, Number: b>b.

v<v, Person: a , Number: b>

ϕ<Person: a, Number: b>(via Agree)c.

v<v, Person: a , Number: b>

ϕ<Person: a, Number: b>(via Chain Reduction)(Roberts also argues that no incorporation takes place when the probe has an EPP feature.
This assumption plays a role when he explains differences between clitics and pro.

Italso makes his theory of null subjects and Holmberg’s (Ch. 2 and Ch. 5) slightly differ.)
Now we are finally in a position to see how (4) accounts for the emptiness of nullsubject pro (3iii).

As alluded to in the paragraph above, the Roberts chapter also aims at

properly distinguishing pro from clitics.

Following Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), heargues that pro is a weak pronoun and clitics are not.1

To account for this pro/clitic

distinction as well as pro’s emptiness, Roberts suggests that pro, being a Dmin/max, cansatisfy the EPP of T while a clitic is a bare ϕ.

The derivation of a null subject sentencethen proceeds as follows (“u” stands for “unvalued”).
(6) a.
b.

[TP T<T, uD, uϕ> [vP D<D, ϕ[3SG]> v …]][TP T<T, D, ϕ[3SG]> [vP D<D, ϕ[3SG]> v …]] (via Agree and Chain Reduction)
8c.

[TP D<D, ϕ[3SG]> T<T, D, ϕ[3SG]> [vP t v …]]

Here D is a defective goal since its features are also members of the features of the probe
T.

Once Agree (T, Dmin/max) creates Chain (T, Dmin/max), Chain Reduction applies in amanner in accord with the LCA.

The lower link of this chain, i.e., Dmin/max, gets deleted.

Also technically crucial here is the assumption that T has a D-feature.

As is clear fromthe definition of defective goal in (4), Dmin/max would not be a defective goal if T lacked
the D-feature.

This means that the presence or absence of this D-feature in T determines

whether a language belongs to consistent NSLs or not, as was originally proposed in
Holmberg (2005).
Let us turn to (3iv).
mention some of them.

Roberts takes up quite a few typological issues.

Let meFirst, as just mentioned, he follows Holmberg’s idea that whena language lacks uD in T, the language cannot be a consistent NSL.

Second, Roberts is

also concerned with the generalization that null subjects of the Italian type are allowed
only in languages with rich agreement.

How can this generalization be captured?

Roberts argues that T carries a D-feature in a given language only if T’s ϕ-features are
specified, or not impoverished, in that language.

Roberts adopts Müller’s (2006)

analysis of richness of agreement, which I summarize only cursorily.
is syncretism. 2

The central notion

The idea is that if the finite T system undergoes syncretism in alanguage, then T does not have the ability to host null subjects in that language.

Müllershows, adopting Distributed Morphology, how his German impoverishment rules explain
instances of syncretism found in the language’s verbal inflection paradigms.

Roberts

relates this to the assumption that D being in T is a necessary condition for null subject
licensing, arguing that once syncretism applies to the T system, T loses the ability to havea D-feature.
A further typological issue Roberts discusses is how argument drop of the type9

observed in languages like Japanese fits with the picture so far.

In this type of

languages, not only subjects but also objects are allowed to be phonologically empty.
Roberts accepts Saito’s (2007) account of radical argument-drop.

Assuming that nullarguments in radical argument-drop languages are derived via Argument Ellipsis (AE),
Saito (2007) claims that if probes have ϕ-features, AE fails.

More specifically, Saito,

assuming that AE is covert merger of a copy of the antecedent NP into the elided site
(Oku (1998), Kim (1999)), proposes a mechanism that makes it impossible for a copy ofan antecedent NP to check the uϕ of the v or T associated with the elided argument.
This proposal allows Roberts to propose a Pro-drop hierarchy like (7), where one can
explain the differences among radical argument drop, consistent pro-drop andnon-pro-drop.3(7)

uϕ on probes?

No
Yes → AE does not apply→ AE may apply.
uD in T?
(Japanese, KoreanChinese, etc.)
No
Yes→ T's ϕ may or may not → Defective goals possible and T’s
syncretize.
ϕ-features cannot syncretize.
(German, English, etc.) (Italian, Spanish, etc.)
Ch. 2 by Anders Holmberg, “Null Subject Parameters,” is an attempt to understand
yet another type of pro drop under the line of thinking entertained in (7).

This approach

explains how partial NSLs (e.g. Finnish, Marathi, Brazilian Portuguese and Icelandic)
can be distinguished from consistent NSLs.

The characteristics of partial NSLs areshown below.
(8) a.

Partial NSLs, unlike consistent NSLs, allow a null counterpart of the genericpronoun one as the subject of a finite TP (see (9) from Finnish); andb.

In partial NSLs, finite clauses generally disallow null referential subjects but
they do allow null subjects only when embedded.

10

(9)

Tässä

tuolissa

istuu

mukavasti

this-IN

chair-INsits

comfortably‘One can sit comfortably in this chair.’For the moment, let us focus on property (8a).

(I will return to (8b) right below andwhen reviewing Holmberg and Sheehan (Ch.3).)

Holmberg’s analysis of the differences

between consistent and partial NSLs is summarized as follows:(10) i.

How to derive referential pro in consistent NSLs: As is the case with Roberts(Ch. 1), T in consistent NSLs is assumed to have an unvalued D-feature.

For

Holmberg, however, referential null subjects are ϕPs, not Ds (cf. (3iii)).
Holmberg’s derivation of null subject sentences proceeds as follows.
introduced as the subject.

ϕP is

T and ϕP form a chain under Agree and Chain

Reduction applies.
ii. How to derive the definiteness of pro in consistent NSLs: The definitenessinterpretation of ‘consistent’ pro comes from a (sometimes null) aboutness topic.
The topic values uD in T “definite” and also checks the EPP of T: [TP (Null)
Topic T<D[def], [3Sg]> [vP ϕP<[3Sg]> … ]].
ϕ

Cf. Roberts’s derivation in (6).

iii. How to derive null generic subjects (see (9)) and exclude definite pro in partial
NSLs: Partial NSLs are assumed to lack D in T.

There is nothing wrong with

Agree taking place in: [TP T< [__]> [vP ϕP<3Sg> …]].

The lack of D implies

ϕabsence of definiteness with null subjects, and hence only an indefinite(synonymous with “generic” here) meaning is obtained.
iv. How to exclude null generic subjects in consistent NSLs: Consistent NSLs do
not have null generic subjects (p. 93 and p. 124).
unvalued D in T.

Consistent NSLs have an

When no aboutness topic is introduced in a derivation((10ii)), uD is left unvalued, which causes the derivation to crash.

11

The onlyway to value uD “generic/indefinite” in consistent NSLs in this context is tohave it checked by an overt generic DP.
Thus it is concluded that partial NSLs fall under the ‘No’ value of the ‘uD in T’parameter together with German and English in (7) above.
The second half of Ch. 2 is devoted to developing the Pro-drop hierarchy byexamining some other parameters relevant to the languages contained in the parametertree in question.

Here I mention three issues that he deals with.

mentions Icelandic.

First, Holmberg

The language is a partial NSL because it allows null one but it

disallows controlled null subjects, unlike Finnish and other NSLs (see (8b)).

He

proposes what he calls a ‘brute force’ solution: the claim is that if a language lacks D in T,
it may or may not have a ‘PF EPP’ feature.

The PF EPP feature dictates that T (or C,

depending on the head the feature is located in) must have an overt specifier.

Thetheory predicts that in Icelandic null generic subject constructions, Spec,TP is filled byovert material (p. 115).

This ‘PF EPP in T’ parameter comes below the ‘No’ branch ofthe ‘uD in T’ parameter.
A second issue is also raised by a property of Icelandic.

Unlike Mainland

Scandinavian languages, Icelandic allows oblique subject and stylistic fronting
constructions.

So a configuration like “Me-Dat were given money.PL” presented in

English vocabulary is possible.

Holmberg takes this property of Icelandic to suggestthat the language allows EPP satisfaction independently from ϕ-checking.
language’s EPP is ϕ-dependent or not is parameterized.

So whether a

It should be noted that theϕ-dependence of T’s EPP is an orthogonal parameter with respect to ‘uD in T’ or ‘PF
EPP in T’ in the sense that it is not in any implication relation with these parameters.
Thus, the EPP in consistent NSLs may or may not be ϕ-dependent, and the same is true
with Finnish type partial NSLs and Icelandic type partial NSLs.

12

Finally, Holmberg discusses the richness of agreement in light of partial NSLs.
As noted in (3iv), Roberts (Ch. 1) relates rich agreement to ‘D in T’ in such a way that if
a language has D in T, then that language’s inflection paradigms do not allow syncretism.
Holmberg points out that while French, German, Icelandic, Marathi and Brazilian
Portuguese have some amount of syncretism, Finnish has no syncretism at all.

Thatshows that the implication relation between the two properties cannot be bidirectional, as
formulated by Roberts.
Let me turn to Ch. 3, Anders Holmberg and Michelle Sheehan’s “Control into finite
clauses in partial null-subject languages.” As noted in (8b), in partial NS languages,
finite clauses may have referential null subjects only when embedded.
is closely examined by Holmberg and Sheehan.

The construction

Partial NSLs that allow embedded nullsubjects exhibit restrictions on how these null subjects can be interpreted.

The

interpretive restrictions are somewhat similar to those found with O(bligatorily)C(ontrolled) PRO.

OC PRO requires a unique, nearby and c-commanding antecedent.

Such a restriction is not found with pronouns; e.g. John1 thinks Bill2 decided PRO2/*1 toleave vs. John1 thinks Bill2 decided that he1/2 should leave.

The following Finnish

example (their (24b)) shows how Finnish referential null subjects are OC PRO-like; ADE
is an abbreviation for adessive case.

The most deeply embedded subject, when it is null,cannot take the highest subject as its antecedent across the intervening next higher subject.
(The second highest subject ‘children’ cannot antecede this lowest subject due to featuremismatch.
(11)

The predicate associated with pro is specified as 3Sg.)

Jari sanoo [ettälapsetuskovat[että* (hän)kavi

Jari sayschildrenbelievethathevisited-3Sg

thattohtorilla]].
doctor-ADE

13‘Jari says that the children believe that he went to see a doctor.’
The embedded null subject, nevertheless, should not be identified with OC PRO, as
Holmberg and Sheehan show.

The following Finnish example (their (26b)) illustrates

one remarkable difference between embedded null subjects of this type and OC PRO.
In the Finnish construction, the actual antecedent can be more than one clause away fromthe null subject.

This is generally not possible with OC PRO: *John thought it was

expected [to shave himself].
(12)

Marja

sanoo

että onvarmaaettä (hän) saa

ensi vuoona

Marja

says

that iscertainthat shenext year

gets

ylennyksen.
promotion‘Marja says that it’s certain that she will get a promotion next year.’
The grammaticality of (12) makes one wonder what condition explains the effect foundin (11). Holmberg and Sheehan convincingly show that what matters is not a locality
restriction but a restriction of the minimality kind and propose mechanisms that explain
how ϕPs are licensed in this designated position and why they have to be bound in themanner they are.

The chapter also lays out data concerning types of matrix predicatesfound with this null subject construction and data concerning cases where the null subject
is embedded within islands.
Ch. 4, Theresa Biberauer’s “Semi null-subject languages, expletives and expletive
pro reconsidered,” is the only chapter in the volume that focuses on expletive NSLs (see(2)).

It mainly concerns the claim that German, Icelandic, Dutch and Afrikaans havephonologically null expletives, which was made in Rizzi (1986).

The question that

Biberauer correctly asks is how much evidence we might have for the expletive pro that
may be assumed in the analysis of an example like (13) (=German; Biberauer’s (10a))?

14

(13) … daß pro dem
thatthe.Dat

Mann

das

Buch

geschenktwurde.

manthe.Nom bookpresented

became‘… that the book was given to the man (as a present).’
Biberauer conducts an in-depth examination of data pertaining to overt expletive
and impersonal/subject-less constructions and concludes that these data can be reanalyzed
without positing a null expletive. She maintains that in these languages, Spec,TP can be
filled by non-expletive phrases like vP and can sometimes even fail to be projected.
This conclusion is based on various observations about Germanic expletive systems.
Some of the central observations are shown below:(14) i.

Overt expletives are classified into two groups in terms of theirsemantic/thematic function: true expletives and argumental expletives.

The

former appear in existential/presentational and impersonal passive constructions
and the latter in weather-predicate and extraposition constructions.

Icelandic

weather-it, though, exhibits ‘true expletive’ behavior.
ii. Overt argumental expletives, unlike overt true expletives, are introduced
vP-internally.

They are visible even when the V2 requirement is met byanother phrase, as in “Today rained it” in German.

(Examples here arepresented in English vocabulary throughout.)
iii. True expletives are present in matrix Spec,CP in Icelandic and German, which isdue to the V2 requirement.

Schematically: [CP Expl [C finite verb] … ].

iv. A number of German and Icelandic (often nominative-in-situ) constructions thatlack an overt expletive can be analyzed as its Spec,TP being filled by vP; a
German impersonal passive is analyzed as follows: “… that [TP [vP [VP to the man
a book presented] [v became]] T tvP].”v.

Optionality of overt true expletives is attested in Dutch and Afrikaans

15impersonals, as in “… that (there) danced was.”vi. Dutch and Afrikaans, however, do not always behave the same.

The

optionality mentioned above is limited to impersonals in Afrikaans.

daar isobligatory in existentials/presentationals while Dutch er is optional in the latter
constructions as well.
vii. Another difference between Dutch er anddaar lies in their ability to affect theinterpretation of the co-occurring indefinites in the configuration: “there has
someone an apple eaten.”daar always forces an indefinite to be interpreted“weakly,” like English there, in such a configuration. Dutch er, by contrast, iscompatible with the specific reading of the indefinite associate.
viii. It is sometimes hard to determine whether er is used as an expletive or a locative
adverbial in Dutch.

This uncertainty does not arise in , another difference

between the two languages.
On the theoretical side, Biberauer attempts to derive a wide range of observations
including those listed above from the ways in which T’s feature specifications vary fromgrammar to grammar.

The approach taken here is to hypothesize that pied-piping

options of movement and their non-pied-piping counterparts interact: (i) whether T
probes Spec,vP or v; (ii) whether the probed Spec,vP (=DP) moves to Spec,TP or theentire vP moves to Spec,TP by pied-piping; (iii) whether, if v is probed by T, the v
undergoes head-movement or the entire vP moves to Spec,TP by pied-piping; (iv)whether an element can move to Spec,TP without being the target or containing the target
of probing; and (v) whether the ‘fill Spec,TP’ requirement is optional or not: see also
Richards and Biberauer (2005).

These parameters are useful to capture sometimes

subtle but real similarities and differences among those Germanic and Romance
languages.

16Ch. 5, Anders Holmberg’s “The null generic subject pronoun in Finnish: a case ofincorporation in T,” provides a detailed description and analysis of the null genericsubject in Finnish.

The phenomenon is already discussed in (9) above.

The main goalof this chapter is to diagnose the derivations of null generic pronoun sentences withvarious tests.

Consider (15).

(The generic interpretation available here is inclusive, as

Holmberg notes: The speaker utters the sentence based on his or her own experience; cf.
They/People can sit comfortably.)(15)*(Tässä)istuu

mukavasti.

here

stis

comfortably‘One can sit comfortably here.’
As can be recognized from this example, null generic subjects cannot satisfy the EPP.
The generic construction requires a locative element or an overt expletive in subject
position and if none of these is present, the sentence becomes ungrammatical.

This

situation might lead one to conclude that null generic subjects are not present in syntactic
structure (and thereby the EPP must be satisfied by some other element) and that the 3Sg
form of the predicate of the construction is due to default agreement.

Holmberg,

however, shows that it is not the case: the null generic subject is not only able to license
anaphora and control PRO, but also is able to trigger agreement on the predicate andreceive structural and inherent cases.

Holmberg demonstrates that the null genericsubject co-occurs with an accusative object in simple nominative-accusative transitive
clauses and appears with a nominative object in quirky or expletive subject constructions
like “1Sg-Gen should buy car-Nom” and “there bought-Pass car-Nom” (annotated in
English vocabulary).

If the null generic subject were not syntactically projected, one

would have to say something special about why case assignment to and agreement withthe subject apparently work in a regular manner in these cases.

17

The remaining question is why null generic subjects cannot satisfy the EPP in
Finnish.

Holmberg holds that the null generic pronoun is incorporated to T, andincorporation, being a species of head movement, cannot satisfy the EPP as it is a ‘Fill
the Spec’ requirement; see also (5) and the comment below it.
Ch. 6 is Michelle Sheehan’s “‘Free’ inversion in Romance and the Null Subject
Parameter.” Sheehan examines various VS orders in Spanish, Italian and European
Portuguese, taking into consideration information structure.

The importance ofcontrolling for this variable can be recognized by looking at the following Spanish
example (adapted from her (43) and (44)).
(16) a.

Quién te regaló la botella de vino?

‘Who gave you the bottle of wine?’b.

Qué pasó?

‘What happened?’c.

Meregaló

labotella de vinoMaría.

Cl-me

gave

the

bottle of wine

Maria

‘Maria gave me the bottle of wine.’
VOS, unlike SVO, is a marked word order in Spanish, because, as Sheehan shows, (16c)
is fine when uttered as an answer to (16a) (narrow focus context) while it is not whenuttered as an answer to (16b) (wide focus context).

The empirically rich discussion that

Sheehan presents in this chapter includes those listed below:(17) i.

In Italian and European Portuguese (EP) intransitive sentences, both VS orderand SV order are possible in wide focus contexts, but the VS order is possible
only if it can be analyzed as in: [TP (Null) locative [T V] S tV tLoc].
that these (null) non-subjects can satisfy the EPP.

It is argued

In Spanish, Spec,TP can be

filled with any XP, not limited to locatives selected by predicates.

Thus,

Spanish generates VS sentences that Italian and EP do not.
ii. In Italian, the VOS pattern is infelicitous in wide focus contexts and possible in18

narrow subject focus contexts (e.g. (16a)), whereas the VSO pattern is
ungrammatical.

The former pattern in Italian is analyzed as involving

VP-fronting as in: [[VP VO] S tVP].
iii. In Spanish, the XVSO pattern is possible in wide focus contexts while thepattern becomes ungrammatical if the fronted X element is not present; e.g.
“*(Yesterday) won Juan the lottery” (= Sheehan’s (30), annotated in English
vocabulary here).

Facts like this are taken to show that non-argumental X

elements can satisfy the EPP in Spanish.

It is proposed that discourse-related

features like Foc in the CP domain are inherited to T with the EPP feature in
Spanish, not in the other two languages.
iv. As for the Spanish V(O)S pattern, Sheehan proposes that it is derived via lower
copy pronunciation followed by subject movement to Spec,TP for prosodic
reasons.

The derivation of the pattern also involves scrambling of O.

the derivation proceeds as in: [TP S [T v-V] [vP O [vP S v V O].

Thus

This way, thelower copy subject successfully receives focal stress.
v.

In EP transitives, the post verbal subject construction requires an element being
topicalized in narrow focus contexts.

Sheehan proposes that (i) in EP, Top° in

the CP domain triggers verb movement, (ii) its Spec must be filled (due to its
EPP property), and (iii) the relevant feature is never passed onto TP domain.
One standard view of NSLs has been that V’s ϕ-features can satisfy the EPP by moving
to T in null subject clauses (Alexiadou and Anagnostopolou (1998)).

The proposed

analysis of inversions argues that the standard view is not necessarily warranted.
In Ch. 7, “Subjects, Tense and verb-movement”, Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts
investigate the parametric relationship between rich agreement and V-to-T movement.
The major claim here is that V-to-T movement takes place in a language with rich tense

19

inflection.

For example, English finite verbs only distinguish between present and past,and verbs do not move to T.

By contrast, French finite verbs have more tenseparadigms, such as subjunctive, future, conditional and imperfect forms.
movement to T.

They undergo

In addition to this basic difference between Romance and Continental

Germanic, there are two empirical domains that the authors try to cover.

First, theyexamine the diachronic change of the English auxiliary/verbal morphology system.

Thehistory of English that they take to be a fact is roughly as follows: Old English was a V2
language and lacked V-to-T.

Then subject-initial V2 was reanalyzed as V-to-T, due towhich the language lost V2 and became a V-to-T language.

After that, modal

auxiliaries and do, which were main verbs before, became functional elements such as T
(note that the language only had aspectual auxiliaries like have and be before this stage).
At this point of development, English is the same as French in that it had V-to-T but it isdifferent from French in that it has do.

Interestingly, the distribution of do at that time

was not governed by do-support as in Modern English; Or if there were, it not belongs toyou (1600, a Shakespeare example that they cite from Battistella and Lobeck’s paper).
The Modern English ‘do-support’ system with null finite T did not emerge until theseventeenth century, after contracted negative auxiliaries like don’t were developed.
(Their proposal that Modern English negative auxiliaries are analyzed as lexical items
plays a crucial role here.)

The historical change described above is nicely

accommodated by the format of auxiliary systems that Biberauer and Roberts propose.
In addition to the history of English, this chapter also deals with Icelandic and V-initial
languages including Celtic.

Their analysis is developed in terms of whether C’s

ϕ-features and EPP are inherited onto T.
Ch. 8 is Roberts’s “Varieties of French and the Null Subject Parameter.” Roberts
extends the deletion theory of null subjects proposed in Roberts (Ch. 1) to varieties of20

French.

Confirming that French is different from Italian in that it is a non-NSL at the

TP level, he argues that the language is a consistent NSL at the CP level.
means to say French is a CP-level null subject language.

Here is what it

Roberts points out that in

subject-clitic inversion exemplified by (18), the enclitic, il in this example, cannot be theresult of incorporation in the theory he adopts, since incorporated elements must be
left-adjoined in the theory.
(18)

A-t-ilvu

Marie

has-3Sg

seen

Mary

‘Has he seen Mary?’
For this reason, Roberts reanalyzes this enclitic to be an inflectional ending of aninterrogative C in the variety of French that allows the construction, proposing that C
does not pass its ϕ-features onto T and attracts finite verbs in this environment.

This

proposal is shown to account for otherwise unexpected facts of this construction; e.g.,there is no 1Sg form in the majority of verbs.

If je is a pronoun rather than an

inflectional ending, the marginality of sentences like arrive-je? ‘understand-I’ would
hardly be expected.

Thus, (18) is analyzed as involving the C with an inflectional

ending licensing an unpronounced subject.

In the terms presented in (4), theinterrogative C probes the subject as a defective goal.

Note that this interrogative

conjugation is, as is expected, regarded as ‘rich’ in terms of Müller’s pro-generalization,
the criterion of richness of agreement that Roberts (Ch. 1) adopts.

Roberts also extends

the idea of C-licensed null subjects to other dialects and sociolects of French to show thata NSL can be a null subject language at the TP-level, the CP-level, or both TP- andCP-level.
Having reviewed Ch. 1 through Ch. 8, this section ends with a brief review of“Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory” by Roberts and Holmberg.

21

The

Introduction chapter introduces the basics of pro-drop phenomena first and then discusses
some criticisms of or alternatives to the classical Null Subject Parameter and the theoryof variation in the Principles & Parameters framework.

Roberts and Holmberg deal

with questions like the following: whether the correlations that Rizzi originally put
forward are not invalidated when the cross-linguistic database is expanded; whether theGreenbergian approach is not superior to the Chomskian approach to linguistic
universals; whether linguistic variation cannot be deduced from efficiency principles thatgovern sentence processing; whether language-particular differences should not be
captured by different language-particular rules without invoking parameters; and so on.
They show that the basic insight of the classical theory can be defended against these
criticisms.
In the last part of the Introduction, however, Roberts and Holmberg point out thatparametric theory is faced with a real problem: it suffers from a tension between
description and explanation.

They remark that “parameters are very powerful formal

devices that makes possible, for the first time ever, the precise, theory-internal
descriptions of cross-linguistic relations” but “if over-exploited, and especially in theabsence of any general restrictions on their form and functioning, these devices become
mere facilitators of taxonomies” (p. 32).

Roberts and Holmberg maintain that theminimalist theory of parameters overcomes this problem and makes it possible to achieveinteresting consequences.
Their main claim is that parameters, which are expressed in terms of formalfeatures possessed by functional heads (the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture (BCC)), form ahierarchy, an example of which is the Pro-drop hierarchy seen in (7).

They first argue

that the BCC, when implemented in this way, helps to restrict the general form ofparameters in the following way: parameters can be stated in terms of formal features

22

combined with formal properties of the system (e.g. “Agree,” “Have an EPP feature” andso on), using the ‘Yes/No’ format.

Thus the Null Subject Parameter conforms to thisgeneral form, being stated as “Is an unvalued D-feature in finite T?”
It has been noted that the BCC is consonant with microparameters, like the Null
Subject Parameter, which are useful in accounting for syntactic differences observed
across closely related languages. In contrast, macroparameters like the Head Parameter(‘head-initial’ or ‘head-final’) are sometimes considered quite hard to reduce to the typeof parameter setting that only affects a certain formal feature of a certain functional head.
Interestingly, however, Roberts and Holmberg develop the BCC to accommodate
macroparameters.

They propose looking at macroparameters as sets of assembled

microparameters.

The Head Parameter, for example, is reanalyzed as a collection ofparameters which asks “Does {v, T, C, P, … etc.} have an EPP-feature that attracts its
complement to its specifier?,” and the Polysynthesis Parameter as a collection of
microparameters concerning agreement/clitics like the Null Subject Parameter, whichasks “Is an unvalued D-feature in {C, T, v, … etc.}?”4 Note that, according to Roberts
and Holmberg, there is one important non-language-specific consideration that makes
possible all this microparameterization of macroparameters.
consideration.

That is a markedness

Roberts and Holmberg maintain that if learners assign a value to a headH, then they will assign the same value to comparable heads.

Tying this convention to

the EPP-based analysis of ordering of heads and their complements, the theory
successfully captures the macroparametric effect of the Head Parameter: in this theory,strictly head-final languages like Japanese and strictly head-initial languages like Welsh
are regarded as relatively unmarked while ‘mixed’ languages like German and Chinese
relatively marked.

Importantly, principles like the markedness convention do not haveto be UG primitives, as Roberts and Holmberg argue in connection with the ‘third factor’23

in the sense of Chomsky (2005), and can be general computational principles governing
the way in which input data are processed; see also Boeckx (2011) and Gallego (2011)
for discussion of the status of parameters within minimalism.

This way, Roberts andHolmberg successfully show us how it is possible to apply minimalist thinking tocomparative syntax and the theory thereof.

3.

Another Consequence of the ‘uϕ on the Probes’ Parameter3.1. The ‘uϕ on the Probes’ Parameter and Radical Argument Drop
Having reviewed the chapters of the volume, I would like to discuss one
consequence of the highest ‘uϕ on the probes’ parameter of the Pro-drop parameter
hierarchy.
(19)

A version of the Pro-drop hierarchy is given below.
uϕ on all probes?

No
Radical argument dropYes
uD in T?

No
Partial and non-pro-drop

YesConsistent pro-drop

As proposed in Roberts and Holmberg (Introduction), Roberts (Ch. 1), and Holmberg (Ch.
2, Ch. 5), the highest parameter of the hierarchy is concerned with how to distinguishbetween radical argument drop languages and the other types of languages (see the partof the review of Ch. 1 given in the paragraph surrounding (7)).

In this section, I propose

a generalization that seems to hold within the radical argument drop languages andprovide an account for it.

The key observation is that there seem to be two kinds of nullargument in radical argument drop languages: one is the kind of null argument that
undergoes Argument Ellipsis (AE) while the other is the kind of argument whose
interpretive behavior looks similar to that of the traditional pro in consistent NSLs.

I

then hypothesize, based on the small sample of radical argument drop languages and24therefore very tentatively, that if a language allows AE, it allows pro as well.

I finally

consider how this tentative hypothesis can be made to follow from the type of theory
proposed in this volume.
Before proceeding, it is worth noting that the discussion that follows will leave
open one of the most crucial questions concerning the empirical basis of the highest
parameter in (19).

Namely, is it the case that radical argument drop always implies lackof agreement? Holmberg (Ch. 2: 122-123) correctly addresses this question and points
out that it apparently does not, e.g. in Tamil, citing Jayaseelan (1999).

Furthermore, asreported in Simpson et al. (2013), although Bangla and Hindi are radical argument drop
languages, they seem to allow subject and object drop irrespectively of whether
arguments agree with verbs.

Thus, Holmberg (Ch. 2) considers the possibility that(un)availabilty of articles is the key to the parametric cut, and aptly points out that thiscannot be a sufficient condition for radical argument drop: Finnish, as he notes, lacks
articles but disallows radical argument drop.

Apparently the true nature of the highest

parameter needs to be investigated further.5

I nevertheless continue to assume that thehighest parameter is a parameter concerning ϕ-features for at least two reasons.

First,the ‘uϕ on the probes’ parameter seems to derive the parametric cut moststraightforwardly.

Second, another potential factor that might be responsible for thehighest parameter appears to be related to ϕ: the availability of bare nouns implies radical
argument drop (see Tomioka (1998, 2003), Simpson et al. (2013)).

When this factor ismore fully considered, the issue may look again like a matter of ϕ, i.e. the presence orabsence of obligatory number morphology on nouns (Bošković (2012)); see footnote 10
as well.

For these reasons, I assume that it is too hasty to drop the anti-agreement

characterization of radical argument drop.6

25

3.2. Radical Argument Drop and Argument Ellipsis
What are diagnostic properties that distinguish radical argument drop from pro dropin consistent NSLs? I consider two here.
(20) a.
b.

Objects as well as subjects may be left unpronounced.
When certain conditions are met, unpronounced arguments may behave as if
they were full noun phrases, not just definite pronouns.

Let me examine these two one by one.

(20a) is already noted above.

Argument drop

in radical argument drop languages is different from that in consistent NSLs in that theformer allow object drop as well as subject drop (Huang (1984)).

In the Japaneseexamples below, (21a) and (21b), a null object and a null subject, respectively, refer backto Yoko, which appears in the previous sentences.
(21) a.

Yookoi-wa doko

desuka?

Hiroshi-ga ___i zutto

Yoko-Top

is.Q

Hiroshi-Nom

wherematteimasu.

long time is.waiting‘Do you know where Yoko is? Hiroshi has been waiting for her a long time.’b.

Yookoi-wa doko desuka? ___i Hiroshi-ozutto

Yoko-Top

long time is.having.wait

where is.Q

Hiroshi-Acc

mataseteimasu.

‘Do you know where Yoko is? She has had Hiroshi wait for a long time.’(20b) also distinguishes radical argument drop from consistent pro drop, as recent
studies show (see below for references).7

Recall that thematic null subjects in consistent

NSLs are always understood on a par with definite pronouns.

‘Radically dropped’

arguments, in contrast, allow various non-pronominal interpretations.

Let us call the

relevant interpretations non-referential interpretations for the sake of exposition.8
us quickly consider Japanese data.

Let

In (22), the b-sentence, which contains a nullargument, allows a sloppy identity interpretation of the same sort that the a-sentence
containing ‘self’s daughter’ has.

The c-sentence, involving the overt NP ‘her,’ only has

26

a strict identity interpretation.
(22)

Hiroshi-wa

jibun-no musume-orippani sodateta.

Yooko-wa

Hiroshi-Top self-Gen daughter-Acc

well

Yoko-Top{a. jibun-no musume-o, b. ___, c.

kanojo-o}rippaniher-Accwell

self-Gen daughter-Acc

raisedsodate-rare-nakat-ta.
raise-can-not-Past‘Hiroshi raised self’s daughter well.

Yoko couldn’t raise {a. self daughter, b.

___, c. her} well.
Moreover, (23) shows that a null argument can be understood as an indefinite nounphrase.

It is not necessary for the same three detectives to visit Hiroshi and Yoko inorder for (23a, b) to be true, respectively; cf. (23c), where the same detectives must visit
Yoko.
(23)

3-nin-no keiji-ga

Hiroshi-no ie-ni

kita.

3-Cl-Gen detective-Nom

Hiroshi’s house-to

came

{a.

3-nin-no keiji-ga,

b. __,

c. Sono 3-nin-no keiji-ga}

3-Cl-Gen detective-Nom
Yooko-no ie-ni-mokita.

Yoko’s house-to-also

camethat 3 detective-Nom‘Three detectives came to Hiroshi’s house.

{a. Three detectives, b. __, c. The

three detectives} came to Yoko’s house, too.’
As has sometimes been noted (Oku (1998), Tomioka (1998, 2003), Takahashi (2008b),
Simpson et al. (2013)), these non-referential interpretations are impossible or not readily
available with regular overt pronouns like those in English or null subjects in consistent
NSLs. Furthermore, as Holmberg (Ch. 2: 106) notes, even in partial NSLs, where null27

subjects could behave like generic one, null subjects do not allow for the interpretationthat a noun phrase like someone has.9

Then it would seem that what is happening in theexamples above is not pronoun drop but something else.

(That is why I have beenreferring to the language type under discussion as radical argument drop, rather thanradical pro drop.)

It has been standard practice to assume the process called Argument

Ellipsis (AE) to capture the property as noted in (20b) (Oku (1998), Kim (1999), Saito(2007), Neeleman and Szendrői (2007: 684), Takahashi (2008a, b, 2012, 2013), Takita(2011)).
Given the current situation described so far, we may ask: Does the radical pronoun
drop phenomenon exist independently of the radical argument drop phenomenon inradical argument drop languages? I turn to this question in the next section.

Thequestion will be answered positively.

3.3. AE → Radical Pronoun Drop?
Below I argue that radical argument drop languages allow pro as well as arguments
elided by AE.

Moreover, I propose a generalization dubbed the AE/pro Generalization.

Here by pro I mean a null argument that is interpreted pronominally or that cannot have
non-referential interpretations.
(24)

AE/pro Generalization: If a language allows AE, then it allows pro.
As demonstrated in (22) and (23), Japanese allows null subjects and objects to have

non-referential interpretations.

As recent studies show (see below for prominent

references), however, some radical argument drop languages are not so liberal as
Japanese.
(25) a.

The following examples are from Malayalam (Simpson et al. (2013)).

madhavanmaash epozhum

raNTu

kuTTikaL-e

pukkartt-um.

madhavanteacher often

twochild-ACC

praise-UM

28

‘Professor Madhavan often praises two students.’
b.

ravi

mash-um

epozhumravi

teacher-UM

often

__

pukkartt-um.
praise-UM‘Professor Ravi also often praises (two students).’(26) a.

muunu

pujari-maaranilin-e

kanu-waanvann-u.

three

priest-P

anil-ACC

see-INF

come-PST‘Three priests came to see Anil.’b.

raviy-ekaanaan-um

vann-uravi-ACC

see-UM

come-PST‘(They) came to see Ravi, too.’
As noted in Takahashi (2013) and Simpson et al. (2013), Malayalam null objects may
support a non-referential interpretation but null subjects do not or at least do not as easily
as null objects do.

(26b) lacks the interpretation: “three priests came to see Ravi, too.”This fact suggests that the pronominal null argument pro exists independently of elided
arguments in the grammar of Malayalam.

In fact, Bangla, Hindi (Simpson et al. (2013)),

Turkish (Şener and Takahashi (2010)) and possibly Chinese (see the references given in
footnote 8) are reported to allow pro in addition to null arguments generated via AE.
Then, do Japanese and Korean, where AE is wide spread, have pronoun drop? I willconsider three phenomena in Japanese, and argue that it allows pro.

First, Japanese nullarguments may have a bound variable use and an e-type pronoun use (Kurafuji (1999),
Tomioka (2003)).
(27)

san-nin-no keiji-ga [ {a. __,3-Cl-Gen detective-Nomb.

jibun-wa,

c. san-nin-no keiji-ga}

self-Top

three detective-Nom

Hiroshi-no ie-ni

iku bekida]-toomotteiru.

Hiroshi-Gen house-to

go should-C

think

29

‘There are three detectives1 who think that {a. they1, b. they1, c. threedetectives*1} should visit Hiroshi’s house.’(28)

Darekakita-ra,someone came-if

kono kagi-o {a. __,this key-Acc

b. sono hito-ni,

c. dareka-ni}that person-Dat

someone-Dat

watashite kudasai.
give please‘If someonei comes, please give this key to {a. the person who comesi, b. theperson who comesi, c. someone*i}.’(27a) is a case in which a null argument behaves as a bound variable, while (28a)(modeled on one of Tomioka’s (2003) examples) is a case in which a null argument isunderstood as a definite description “the person who comes.” The crucial point here isthat the a-sentence cannot be understood in the same way as the c-sentence is.

If AE isthe only way to derive null arguments in Japanese, then it is not immediately clear why(27a) and (28a) cannot be understood on a par with (27c) and (28c), respectively.
comparable quantificational interpretation of a null subject is fine in (23).

A(It is perhaps

possible to construct the same type of argument based on the availability of a deictic useof null arguments; see also Saito (2007), who asks whether such a deictic use can beaccommodated by AE.)
Second, it has sometimes been argued that some kind of parallelism is required for
AE, as expected if it is an instance of ellipsis since VP-ellipsis is subject to such aparallelism condition.

If AE obeys a parallelism condition, and if we find a nullargument where the relevant parallelism condition is not met, then that null argument
should be an instance of a null pronoun.
can be found in the literature.

Several empirical arguments along these lines

The reader is referred to Otani and Whitman (1991),

Neeleman and Szendrői (2007), Takahashi (2008b, 2012), among others; see also Hoji30

(1998), Tomioka (1998) for critical discussion of these arguments.
A third potential argument for pro being available in Japanese has to do with theinterpretive mechanism that Holmberg (Ch. 2) adopts for consistent null subjects (see(10ii) above).

I first review the data from Italian given in (29) (Holmberg (Ch. 2: p.96),

based on Grimshaw and Samek-Lodovici’s (1998) observation).

In (29ci), the nullsubject ∅ is fine when the sentence follows (29b), but not when it follows sentence (29a).
Roughly put, ∅ in (29c) can refer back to Gianni in the subject position in (29b) but it
cannot when the same name appears in a non-subject position, as in (29c).

Holmberg

maintains that the aboutness topic for (29c) is shared by (29b) but not by (29c).
Strikingly, when overt pronouns replace ∅ as in (29cii, iii), the effect immediately goesaway.
(29) a.

Questa mattina, la mostra
this morningè stata visitata di Gianni.

the exhibition was visited by

Gianni‘This morning, the exhibition was visited by Gianni.’b.

Questa mattina, Gianni ha visitato

la mostra.

this morning

the exhibition

Gianni visited‘This morning, Gianni visited the exhbition.’c.

Pìu tardi {i. ∅, ii. egli, iii. lui} ha visitato

l’università.

later

the university

hehevisited‘Later {i. ∅, ii. he (more literary), iii. he (more colloquial)} visited theuniversity.’
The very similar behavior of null subjects with respect to overt subjects is attested inJapanese.

The following data are modeled on examples by Kameyama (1985).

(30) A: Rosa-wa

dare-omatteiru-nodesuka.

‘Who is Rosa waiting for?’Rosa-Top who-Acc waiting-noda.Polite.Q

31

B: Rosa-wa

Mari-omatteiru-nodesu.

‘Rosa is waiting for Mari.’

Rosa-Top who-Acc waiting-noda.Polite(31) A: Dare-ga

Rosa-omatteiru-nodesuka. ‘Who is waiting for Rosa?’

who-Nom Rosa-Acc waiting-noda.Polite.Q
B: Mari-ga

Rosa-omatteiru-nodesu.

‘Mari is waiting for Rosa.’

Mari-Nom Rosa-Acc waiting-noda.Polite(32) B: {a. ∅, b. Mari-wa} Rosa-ni

yuushoku-ni shootaisareta-nodesu.

Mari-Top Rosa-Dat dinner-Dat

was.invited-noda.Polite‘{a. ∅ , b. Mari} is invited to dinner by Rosa.’(32a) contains a null subject, which is intended to refer back to Mari.

The sentence is anatural continuation of B’s utterance in (31), but it clearly becomes odd when it is taken
as a continuation of (30B).

Interestingly enough, the oddness disappears if the subjectof (32) is actually pronounced as in (32b).

The set of Japanese data under consideration

is at least similar to its Italian counterpart in that (i) the null subject naturally refers to thesubject NP in the preceding sentence, but not to a non-subject, and (ii) the difficulty of
establishing the referential dependency with a null subject goes away when an overt
subject is used.

This parallel between ‘consistent’ and ‘radical’ null subjects arguably

constitutes initial support for the claim that the same pro can be used in consistent NSLs
and radical argument drop languages, though further comparative investigations are
required.
To recap, we have seen three phenomena that might support the existence of two
types of null arguments in radical argument drop languages: the one obtained through AE
and the one comparable to pro in consistent NSLs.

Thus, although we only consider thedata from a small number of languages, the AE/pro Generalization would seem to holdfor these all radical argument drop languages.

32

If the generalization is correct at all, what

kind of explanation is possible? I turn to this question in the next section.

My

explanation appeals to the chain reduction analysis of pro and the ‘uϕ on probes’
parameter.

3.4. Explaining the AE/pro Generalization
There are three components of the explanation that I am proposing.

First, recall

that under the Pro-drop hierarchy mentioned in (19), AE is possible only in a languagethat lacks ϕ-features on probes.

Extending the hypothesis further, let us assume that inthese languages, ϕ-features on nominals (or goals) are not morphosyntactic features if
their lexical semantics is active.10

Next, I propose, as a second component of the

explanation of the generalization, that in the languages lacking ϕ-features, functional
heads like T and v may have a nominal feature (D, or N if it is desirable to assume that D
is unavailable in radical argument drop languages).

Given the tight connection between

richness of agreement and the ‘D in T’ parameter proposed in Roberts (Ch. 1) (see (3iv)),
I entertain the possibility that if ϕ-features are not available in a language, D-features canrather freely be assigned to probes in the language.

(In fact, as already mentioned infootnote 4, an assumption like this is made by Roberts and Holmberg (Introduction) inorder to instantiate a Kayne-style derivation of OV order of the Japanese type.)

Third, Iassume with Roberts (Ch. 1) that null pronouns are of the category D and with Holmberg(Ch. 2: 97) that Case-assigning features are encoded in probes as well as goals.

Giventhis set of assumptions, the structure of a simple transitive sentence in radical pro drop
languages looks something like (33).
(33)[TP T<T, uD, NOM> [vP D1<D, uCase> v<v, uD, ACC> [VP V D2<D, uCase>]]]Now note that the subject’s and the object’s features are a proper subset of T’s and v’s
features, respectively.

So Agree (T, D1) gives rise to Chain (T, D1) while Agree (v, D2)
33

Chain (v, D2).
null object.

Then Chain Reduction applies to each chain to derive a null subject and aThis way, we derive the AE/pro Generalization from the lack of ϕ-featureson probes and goals in radical argument drop languages, making recourse to the chain
reduction analysis of pro.
Summarizing, I have argued that radical argument drop consists of elided
arguments and pro.

Subsequently, I have put forward the AE/pro Generalization, whichsays that if a language allows AE, it allows pro, too.

Finally, I provide one possible

account of the generalization, developing some central ideas proposed in the volume.

4.

Conclusion
In the present paper I have reviewed Parametric Variation by Biberauer, Holmberg,

Roberts, and Sheehan, and attempted to explain the AE/pro Generalization using a certain
set of proposals developed there.

The attempt made above hopefully will help to further

demonstrate that the achievements presented in the volume have such high generality thatthey will quickly allow researchers to look at their own data from a fresh perspective, andthat will hopefully confirm that the implications of the Null Subject Parameter indeed go
beyond Romance and Germanic syntax.

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Faculty of Environment and Information Sciences
Yokohama National University
Tokiwadai, Hodogaya, Yokohama
Kanagawa 240-8501
e-mail: fujii@ynu.ac.jp39FOOTNOTES*I am very grateful to anonymous referees, who gave me insightful and helpfulcomments on an earlier version of the paper, as well as Shin’ya Iwasaki, a member of the
ELSJ Secretariat, who helped me to find stylistic and editorial errors on the manuscript.
I also would like to thank Anders Holmberg for his valuable written comments on an
earlier version. All errors are my own.
1

Here it suffices to note that personal pronouns are classified into three classes in thefollowing way (Cardinaletti and Starke (1999)): (i) strong pronouns, which behave on apar with full DPs, (ii) clitics, which are morphosyntactically deficient (e.g., they cannot
be modified by a particle like even), and (iii) weak pronouns, which are also deficient but
are not so restricted in distribution as clitics (e.g., weak pronouns do not have to be
adjacent to a verb but clitics do).
2

Syncretism is the use of a single form for different combinations of feature values.

Take the present tense forms of the verb kick.

The 1Sg and 2Pl are represented by kick.

In fact, five forms including 2Sg, 1Pl and 3Pl in total syncretize.

Note also that nosyncretism is found in the Italian paradigm in (1d).
3This treatment of languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean in context of the Null

Subject Parameter is already found in Rizzi (1986: 545-46).

Rizzi, attributing the ideain question in part to Mamoru Saito, remarks that “Universal Grammar offers the optionof using ϕ-features, and some grammatical systems take it, whereas others do not.

If

this is correct, it is natural to assume that [the conditions on the distribution of referentialpro] operate only in grammars that take the option of using ϕ-features.”
4This take on the Head Parameter is based on a Kaynean analysis of complement-headorders, a simplified version of which is given in (i); see Kayne (1994, 2003), Koopman(2005).
40

(i)[CP [TP [vP VP v[+EPP] tVP] T[+EPP] tvP ] C[+EPP] tTP ]As for the driving force of complement movement of the relevant sort, Roberts andHolmberg (Introduction: p. 40) suggest, following Biberauer (2003), that movement of
VP is an instance of pied-piping that is driven by the +EPP nominal feature on v
attracting the object (see their diagram cited in (ii) below).
(ii)[vP [VP (V) O] v-V (VP)]

5

See Neeleman and Szendrői (2007) for yet anther perspective; see also Otaki (2012).

6

I cannot afford to discuss an often mentioned dispute about Japanese and Koreanhonorific ‘agreement’ here.

See Adger and Harbour (2008), Corbett (2012: Ch. 5) foroverviews of the dispute and relevant references.
7

When examining null object structures, we have to make sure, on top of how these

diagnostic tests go, that a given null object-like structure is not the result ofverb-stranding VP ellipsis.
VP-ellipsis.

In languages like Hebrew, a raised V is stranded underAccording to Goldberg (2005), such verb-standing ellipsis is not possible

when the verb in the antecedent clause and the verb in the target clause are different.
Null object-like structures are still possible under such verb mismatches in Japanese, as
shown in (i).
(i)

Hence, there exist null object structures in Japanese.

Yooko-wa dareka-ohihanshita-ga,

Hiroshi-wa (dareka-o) hometa.

Yoko-Top someone-Acc criticized-though Hiroshi-Top s.o.-Acc

praised‘While Yoko criticized someone, Hiroshi praised someone.’8

For different views about relevant data, see Otani and Whitman (1991), Hoji (1998),

Oku (1998), Tomioka (1998, 2003), Kurafuji (1999), Saito (2007), Takahashi (2008a, b,
2012, 2013), Takita (2011), among many others.

It has been reported that

non-referential interpretations are available in Korean (Kim (1999), Tomioka (2003)),
Malayalam (Takahashi (2013), Simpson et al. (2013)), Hindi and Bangla (Simpson et al.
41

(2013)), Turkish (Şener and Takahashi (2010)) and Chinese (Cheng (2012), Tomioka(2003); see also Huang (1991), Takahashi (2008a), Simpson et al. (2013)).
9

See Phimsawat (2011), who examines in great detail impersonal/generic constructionsin Thai, a radical argument drop language, and compares them with the counterparts inother languages.
10

How can we diagnose whether ϕ-features on nominals are morphosyntactic or not?

It is worth pointing out that all the radical argument drop languages mentioned in the text
lack obligatory number morphology on NPs (Bošković (2012)).

42