Does Italian Parlo1sg velocemente. ‘I speak quickly.’ have an “underlying” yo ‘I’ that has been deleted or is yo simply understood from the verb ending -o? If you believe the former, then you must also believe that the hearer (or reader) of the sentence somehow reinserts the yo in their mind to make sense of the sentence. If you believe the latter then you must also believe that verb endings can, in some languages, express what the subject is. The phenomenon of having a null pronoun subject is called ‘pronoun-drop‘ or simply ‘pro-drop’, but could just as easily be called ‘pro-understood.’ Which mIE languages indulge in pro-drop?
Why use them if you don’t need them?
**Languages that require subject pronouns, line up here: Germanic and French. Verb endings are identical or nearly so. Excepting English, the prominent Germanic languages are V2 (the verb must be the second item), making pro-drop even more problematic in those languages (but see the green box below).
English
What do you write?
I write stories.
French
Qu’est-ce que tu écris2sg ? [what+is that you write]
J‘écris1sg des histoires. [I+write some stories]
Swedish
Vad skriver2sg du? [what write you]
Jag skriver1sg berättelser. [I write stories]
**Languages that drop subject pronouns, but usually only in (speech): Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Iranian, Indo-Aryan. Verb endings mostly differ. We can’t hlep noticing the resemblance between the Irish verbal ending -im (1st sg) and that of Slovenian -em, and Kurmanji -im.
Irish
Cad a scríobhann2/3sg (tú)? [what at writes you]
Scríobhaim1sg scéalta. [write stories]
Slovenian
Kaj (ti) pišeš2sg? [what write]
(Jaz) pišem1sg zgodbe (I) write stories.
Kurmanji
(Tu) çi dinivîsî2sg? [you what write]
(Ez) çîrokan dinivîsim. [(I) stories write1sg]
Punjabi
(tū̃) kī likhdā hẽ2sgmasc? [you what write do]
(me) kahāṇīā̃ likhdā hā̃1sgmasc. [stories write]
Languages that drop subject pronouns in speech and writing, except for emphasis: Romance (except French) and the Isolates. In Armenian, the verb is fixed but the auxiliary differs for person and number. Armenian is unique among the mIE languages in having this auxiliary+participle structure to express simiple indicative sentences.
Italian
Cosa scrivi2sg? [what write]
Scrivo1sg storie. [write stories]
Greek
Ti grápseis2sg? [what write]
Gráfo1sg istoríes. [write stories]
Armenian
Inčʿ es2sg grum? [what are writing]
Patmutʿyunner em1sg grum. [stories am writing]
One reddit user wrote, ” When I write a text message or when I’m on Norwegian reddit, I’d estimate that I drop around 50/60% of the pronouns that can be dropped. I’ve read a study of topic-drop in German that found similar numbers. No one would find it weird if I wrote a 1000-word blog post with half of the sentences lacking a subject whereas in English it would immediately stand out and probably be harder to read than if I’d included the pronouns.”1
“Native English speaker from the UK here. In casual conversation it is very common to drop the word “I” when it is obvious that the speaker is the subject, simply because we can’t be bothered to say it. “You” is also occasionally dropped in questions, as are third-person pronouns when reporting something that someone else has said. I have spoken in this way all my life and so has everyone I know, regardless of how much time they spend online. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “East Asian influence”: the English usage of people from Japan and Korea has precisely zero relation to how people from my country speak. Indeed, I am learning Japanese at the moment and I can tell you right now that the Japanese borderline phobia of pronouns will never not seem strange to English speakers.”2
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/12f1a0t/pro_drop_in_germanic_languages/ ↩︎
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ENGLISH/comments/1g5ndur/is_english_becoming_a_pro_drop_language/ ↩︎
GRAMMAR
Auxiliary Also known as ‘helper verbs’, these verbs provide more information about passive or continuous meaning as in I am writing a story. The combination of am + participle (see below) indicates a continuous or habitual action. English auxiliaries are forms of the verbs ‘to be’, ‘to do’, and ‘to have’.
Indicative mood indicates that the speaker is making a statement believed to be factual (I write stories.) as opposed to imperative mood ‘Write something down!’ or conditional mood (I would write something if I could think of something.)
Participles are forms of verbs that express active or passive action as in: I am writing a story. (active), The story was written by me. (passive).
Pronoun drop is when a speaker and hearer are able to produce and understand grammatical sentences where the subject pronoun is absent (either dropped or just understood. Subject pronouns, which are marked for person and number and sometimes gender can be dropped in pro-drop languages because the ending of the verb also indicates number (and gender in the past tense) as in Italian Vado1sg al negozio. ‘I’m going/I go to the store.’ The verb ending -o implies first person singular: yo ‘I’.
It’s important to note that in the dialog
A – What are you doing?
B – Going to the store.
‘Going to the store.’ is not an example of pro-drop even though it’s clear who the subject is. This is because in addition to the pronoun ‘I’, the auxiliary ‘am’ is also omitted. Furthermore, the subject being dropped could easily be a noun or proper noun: What’s John doing? –Going to the store. Instead of pronoun-drop, this is known as “ellipsis” where the subject of a sentence can be reconstructed by context, not by a verbal ending.
What do you think?