Null Subjects in English
Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship
Dr Susanne Wagner (Centre for Language and Linguistic Studies)
While they do occur in spoken English, null subjects are not generally permissible: *Ø Love you. Formalists and functionalists have focused on different aspects of the subject matter: a Null Subject (or: pro-drop) Parameter (formalists) and its implications for language acquisition, and the optionality of null subjects in typical pro-drop languages (functionalists) and the factors determining the presence/absence of overt pronouns. A number of factors (different objectives, methodologies and basic background assumptions) largely prevent comparisons of studies. By focusing on null subjects occurring in corpora of colloquial native varieties of English, this project attempts to provide such comparisons (by employing identical coding strategies; ensuring that token frequencies are high enough to enable detailed statistical analyses; incorporating different sub-disciplines of morphosyntax, discourse theory and sociolinguistics). Inter-comparability between the formal and the functional line of investigation will be aimed at by incorporating ideas from both theories.