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A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. [1]
Initial dropping is a sound change whereby the first consonants of words are dropped. Additionally, stress may shift from the first to the second syllable, and the first vowel may be shortened, reduced, or dropped, which can mean the loss of the entire first syllable of a word.
As verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective, the verb ...
Avalent verbs are verbs which have no valency, meaning that they have no logical arguments, such as subject or object. Languages known as pro-drop or null-subject languages do not require clauses to have an overt subject when the subject is easily inferred, meaning that a verb can appear alone. [2]
A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb . In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns , as in Classical Chinese and Guarani , or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean , Beja , and ...
While all pro-drop languages are null-subject languages, not all null-subject languages are pro-drop. In null-subject languages that have verb inflection in which the verb inflects for person, the grammatical person of the subject is reflected by the inflection of the verb and likewise for number and gender.
In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -(e)st is dropped (although it is generally retained in thou wert, the second-person singular past subjunctive of the verb to be). The subjunctive forms are used when a statement is doubtful or contrary to fact; as such, they frequently occur after if and the poetic and.
English is not a "pro-drop" (specifically, null-subject) language – that is, unlike some languages, English requires that the subject of a clause always be expressed explicitly, even if it can be deduced from the form of the verb and the context, and even if it has no meaningful referent, as in the sentence It is raining, where the subject it ...