Linguistics 471: Grammar Engineering

Preparation for Lab 5

• Determine whether your language allows subjects to be omitted systematically, and whether the referent is required to be definite. For example, can you say ate lunch to mean "They ate lunch"? In a language with this kind of pro-drop, there probably would be subject pronouns, but one might use them only for "emphasis", usually just leaving the subject out all together.
• Determine whether your language allows objects (of verbs) to be omitted systematically. If this is the case, you would expect to find object pronouns generally only used for "emphasis", and otherwise no NP at all where English would use an object pronoun. For example, you would expect to be able to say They saw (or just saw) to mean "They saw it", when the referent of "it" is understood in context.
• Determine whether your language allows indefinite null instantiation of objects, perhaps in addition to definite null instantiation of objects. In this case, you would expect to be able to say Kim ate to mean "Kim ate something", as in English.
• Determine whether your language allows indefinite null instantiation of subjects. This would be something like danced to mean "Someone danced" or "People danced" or "There was dancing".
• (We won't be addressing this in the lab, but it might also be interesting to know what happens to PP arguments that are unexpressed. Does the whole PP go missing? Just the NP stranding the P?)