Talk:Pro-drop language

message: Hi. 這件蛋糕很美味。 I have never heard of the classifier 件 used for 蛋糕. 塊（块） or possibly the generic 個（个） would sound much better. I'm going to change it. Hope no one objects. (Erebos12345 (talk) 07:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Chinese Example

message: I'd like to add this change:
Among major languages, Japanese and Korean are considered pro-drop languages. Japanese and Korean feature pronoun deletion not only for subjects, but for practically all grammatical contexts.
I'd also like to add Korean examples. Any objections?
211.47.122.89 (talk) 12:12, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding Korean

message: I've just removed the Japanese kanji/kana added to the romaji transliteration. This is only an example (not of phonetics, least of all of writing) and Japanese script here is not needed. There was a long discussion about this in the main Japanese language article, no less. The kanji/kana were also incorrect. The topic marker wa is written with the hiragana for ha, and there are common kanji for ki ni itta; however, oishii and dare I've seen more commonly spelt fully in hiragana, おいしい and だれ. Oishii in particular is one of those odd ad hoc combinations that have nothing to do with the historical readings of the kanji in question...
:このケーキは美味しい。　誰が作ったの？
:知らない。　気に入った？
--Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 14:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, good move. Incidentally, something about t(s)ukutta jarred slightly with my (prematurely fossilized) L2 Japanese, so I asked a native. She told me that it's OK, but rather hints at an assembly of a prefabricated cake, e.g. adding icing to something bought in a store. So I changed it to yaita. (Somebody may now object that this is better translated as "baked"; I think either "baked" or "made" is fine.) -- Hoary 08:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Another question about the Japanese--I only have a small amount of formal training (and a lot of anime), but shouldn't the question end in a "ka"? I'm hesitant to change it based on a single semester's worth of grammar lessons, but I've never heard of "no" as a question particle. -- 69.122.154.184 03:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm no Japanese buff myself, but Japanese particles#no says that no can serve as a question marker. Indeed, that article mentions not just ka and no but also kai and ne as question markers (though the four are not all interchangeable, so I recommend seeing that article for details). Ruakh 04:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Haven't heard of kai (this is two years of Japanese, not much). An informal question can end with no particle (only intonation), or with no to show some personal interest; ne is more like a tag question. These are gender-neutral I think, but no without interrogative intonation is typical female speech. 私の二円。--Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Kai corresponds less to ka than to desuka, I believe. -- Hoary 13:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

text: "Ka" can be used to emphasize that fact that a question is being asked, but it isn't strictly necessary.  In informal speech, the difference between a statement and a question is often only intonation. (「腹が減ってる？」and「腹が減ってる。」 being "Are you hungry?" and "I'm hungry." respectively.)  Even in formal speech, when an interrogative pronoun is used, "ka" can be omitted. (「何方です？」） Regarding the use of hiragana as opposed to writing in kanji, there are stylistic concerns, but readability is of primary importance.  A sentence written entirely in hiragana is difficult to parse, but overusing kanji is also unnatural.  美味しい is an example of ateji, but it's use is far from uncommon.　　67.22.241.88 (talk) 17:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japanese script 

message: The language survey mentions that French is an exception amongst Romance languages for not having pro-drop. This is oversimplifying, as the subjects "je", "tu", "il" etc. are now pretty much universally accepted to be affixes or clitics rather than independent (pronoun) words. Although there is a little room for argument depending on your theory of clitics/your analysis of French, there's not much reason to think that the "je" in "je mange" is any different from the "o" in Italian "mangio": both mark first person, neither is an independent pronoun. Extra evidence for this comes from the fact that (i) these clitics never appear anywhere except attached to a verb, (ii) they cannot be coordinated (*il et elle mange) and (iii) you _can_ put a genuine pronoun in subject position for stress (if only in limited situations; e.g. "lui rejette cette idée" = "HE rejects this idea"), just like in other Romance languages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.42.67 (talk • contribs) .
:Heh, I've actually heard the exact opposite viewpoint presented, that "Lui rejette cette idée" is one of the few cases where French unambiguously exhibits pro-drop (in that the ordinary subject, il, is dropped). See e.g. Pro-Drop and Subject (Non-)Recoverability: The Case of Nez Perce, which even uses the exact same sample sentence. At any rate, yes, there is some oversimplification there; feel free to rephrase it, but be sure not to cause the opposite problem of an overcomplex or overly informative lead section. Ruakh 03:58, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro

message: We Brazilians normally use the subject pronoun with the verb,
similar to Tuscan dialects of Italian:
:Eu sei (I know) [normal];  Sei [know] rare
:Eu gostaria (I would like to) [normal];  Gostaria [would like to] rare
:Ela viu você (She saw you) [normal];  Viu você [saw you] rare
Trabalhos recentes vêm apontando correlações entre esta mudança do paradigma e o uso cada vez menor de sujeitos nulos no PortuguêsBrasileiro. Destacamos o trabalho de Duarte (1993), que analisa peças de teatro populares dos séculos XIX e XX, mostrando que está ocorrendo uma mudança no PB, no sentido de não mais permitir o sujeito nulo
(from the Orbilat page)
Most dialects in Brazilian Portuguese exhibit evidence of an on-going loss of the properties of the null subject (NS) parameter, namely loss of the “avoid pronoun” principle and subject verb inversion (cf. Duarte 1995). Connected with this change, there is also the loss of movement of the clitics to the pre-auxiliary position, resulting in generalized proclisis to the main verb (cf. Cyrino, 1993), with the consequence that these dialects now allow clitics in sentence initial position. The changes are attributed to the loss of the second person tu, a fact that led to the impoverishment of its inflectional system. (from the Ohio State Univ. site)
(In Brazilian Portuguese PRODROP is obligatory only with impersonal verbs: Choveu It rained; Ofenderam vocês (You [all] were offended; with direct addressing is optional:
Viu? - Você viu?- Cê viu
CÊ functions as a clitic pronoun:  [vo]cê entendeu? - did you understand?;
and cannot be used as an object: abandonaram você [but never  abandonaram cê] = you were
abandoned])
further reading:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-44502001000100007
http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Portuguese-Brazilian/Studies/Subject_realization.htm
http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/NWAV/Abstracts/Papr191.pdf
[Three partial pro-drop languages]
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mtb23/NSP/Anders%20et%20al%2030%20June%20abstract.doc
The loss of the 'Avoid Pronoun Principle' in Brazilian Portuguese. M.E.L. Duarte (2000)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.131.103.29 (talk • contribs).
::Null subjects actually occur quite often in Brazilian Portuguese. For example, "O João disse que ia falar com o professor" (Eng. "João said he would talk to the teacher", Lit. "The João said that (null subject) would talk to the teacher") or "Você sabe se o João falou com o professor ? Não, não sei." (Eng. "Do you know if João talked to the teacher ? No, I don't.", Lit. "You know if the João talked to the teacher ? No, (null subject) not know."). BP only avoids null subjects in situations where ambiguity arises, which, because of the disappearance of  2nd person verb forms, are far mor common than in European Portuguese (hence, the false impression that BP is no longer a pro-drop language). 
::BTW, contrary to what the article implies, European Portuguese can also drop object pronouns just like BP, e.g. "Viste o João ? Sim, vi."  161.24.19.82 18:11, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Brazilian Portuguese is not pro drop

message: The article states that the pronoun could not be dropped from "come with" in British English, I think this should be reworded to reflect that this construction is a peculiarity of the U.S. mid-west and that most people outside that area are not familiar with it, as it is worded now it makes it sound like only the British don't use this. I've lived in the U.S my whole life, and only became aware of this phrase in the last year or so; I have yet to encounter it anywhere but in writing. I also think the statement at the end emphasizing that all of the examples are very informal should be strengthened. --HarryHenryGebel 07:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've fixed the "come with" explanation. I don't think that statement should be strengthened; we already specify "informal speech" in the text before the examples, and "very informal speech" in the text afterward, and IMHO this is already a bit of overkill. —RuakhTALK 16:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For me "come with" is a Jewish girl in Philadelphia (i.e. potentially Yiddish influence), then 10 years of "mitkommen". The midwest connection is new to me. 84.226.180.175 (talk) 12:40, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Come with 

message: I know pro-drop is a common term, but a category like pro-drop languages sounds as vague as non-click languages.  As far as I know, it is non-pro-drop that is unusual among world languages, and it is a recent innovation.  Do you know any non-European language that is non-pro-drop and uses dummy subjects as in it rains? - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:56, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You might be right, but you shouldn't add an unsourced sentence to the article and then ask for other people to verify it on the talk page! CapnPrep (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a few sources but they are written in Japanese.  - TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 17:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Non-English language sourcing is acceptable when there are no other alternatives. Other people can help finding a tranlation or equivalent. I mean it is better than nothing. --Lgriot (talk) 01:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any non-pro-drop language outside of West Europe? 

message: If it could be of any utility, archaic and old (Galician-)Portuguese and Spanish presented a very different state of things from today. Sp. "voy" or Pt. "vou" come from "allá voy" or "lá vou" (lit. "I go there"), this kind of sentences very alive until very recently. That origin is not very different for instance of that of "j'y vais" or "hi vaig", where the "y"/"hi" come from Latin "hic" (here). In mediaeval times, Pt. also presented "vou i" (exactly the same as the rest of romance languages), I am not sure about Sp. but it cannot be very different from this. About partitive, also in the past (and dialectally today) can be traced: it is not unusual in Galicia today (but not common) to hear "como do pan", which is truly a partitive, also, "tenho quatro deles" (lit. I have four of them) or "tengo cuatro de esos" (of those) is a standard sentence, of course, you can drop it today if context does not need to clear it, but (at least in mediaeval times and in G-Pt.) was compulsory.212.51.52.7 (talk) 14:12, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples for Romance languages 

message: I don't quite get the colors on the map: yellow and pink are pro-drop?
I think we should have all the colors in the legend. --Lgriot (talk) 01:16, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yellow, pink and grey are pro-drop, except Russian (pink) and the Celtic languages (yellow). So the colors are partially wrong, and there is no legend to explain anything. This map is no use. I have complained on the talk page of the map too. --Curryfranke (talk) 15:06, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: External link 
--Pawyilee (talk) 10:45, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  South Asian languages 

message: Hi, I found plenty of relevant and interesting information in this entry. It would be great to add interlinear glosses for examples. 
For example, the Chinese 谁考的 gets a 'literal' translation as "Who bake" with no mention of the "de" 的 (nominalizer, complementizer/relativizer?) which is in fact an important component of this example. Of course interlinear glosses can't explain everything but they provide useful pointers.
(I'm not a specialist of the topic; I do a lot of interlinear glossing on languages I work on, but for Standard Mandarin Chinese, I have no experience and wouldn't want to butt in without knowing common practice.)
--AlexisMichaud (talk) 08:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interlinear glosses for examples? 

message: Was the second-person singular pronoun ′thou' dropped more often, especially when used with ′-st′ form of second-person singular verbs? I remembered this being done often in the novel 'Kim' by Rudyard Kipling, but when I actually looked it up, I could find only one instance:
″Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for some other things. Dost know it?″
So is this an isolated exception or was this form more common historically? SundaLives 14:19, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  In English 

message: Proponents of the term "pro-drop" take the view that pronouns which in other languages would have those referents can be omitted, or be phonologically null.
This unclear and convoluted sentence makes it sound like a disagreement among factions of linguists over whether certain pronouns are allowed to be dropped in certain languages.
But in reality, I suspect all parties agree on which exemplary sentences are correct, but only disagree on the deeper structures that are to be inferred or the descriptive language to use.
If they disagree about anything. The sentence suggests that there is a controversy about the term, when probably there is none. In any case it is not explained. 84.227.228.178 (talk) 12:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange way of putting it 

message: Please explain: "including French, (standard)", When non-standard French could be pro-drop, I don't get it, and I cannot find any examples.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk) 13:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  French as pro-drop 

message: We will be providing structural edits and adding new content to this page focused on Full Pro-Drop. This is part of a course-based activity of a 3rd year syntax course, and we anticipate having completed our edits by the end of December. We would appreciate any and all constructive comments and suggestions about how to improve the overall quality of this article. S Senghera (talk) 08:47, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content Addition 

message: Under the Portuguese section, it says "While European Portuguese (EP) is a full pro-drop language, Brazilian Portuguese (BP) exhibits partial pro-drop. The two are compared below, respectively:", but as far as I can tell, the subsequent example ("Examples of omitted subject:") doesn't seem to demonstrate the full vs. partial pro-drop contrast, as both sentences seem to match 1-to-1 in terms of pro-drop.  Could we add or replace it with a better example? SirLurksalot (talk) 10:51, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portuguese European vs. Brazilian contrast example