Null Subjects in Early Child English and the Theory of Economy of Projection

In this paper, we present new evidence showing that some of the empty subjects produced by young children acquiring English cannot be subsumed under the performance limitation analysis of Bloom (1990) or the Topic-drop analysis of Rizzi (1994). We argue contra Sano & Hyams (1994) that these missing subjects are instances of pro, not PRO, and demonstrate that the economy-based pro-drop theory of Speas (1994) handles our data in an elegant fashion. The analysis we propose links the acquisition of subjects to the acquisition of functional morphology, in accordance with the minimalist program developed since Chomsky (1989). One desirable consequence of the approach taken here is that no recourse to a pro-drop parameter is necessary

Notes on the Antisymmetry of Syntax

In what proved to be probably the most influential Principles-and-Parameters manuscript of the last year, Kayne (1993) has proposed 1) a Linear Correspondence Axiom which together with a particular definition of (asymmetric) c-command is supposed to allow only SVO and OVS as underlying word orders and 2) an abstract beginning node asymmetrically c-commanding all other nodes which is supposed to further exclude OVS so that one arrives at the conclusion that SVO constitutes the universal underlying word order. Below, I argue against this conclusion on both theoretical and empirical grounds. While the Linear Correspondence Axiom has desirable effects on clause structure (cf. section 3), neither it nor the assumption of an abstract beginning node has any effects on word order.1 In particular, Kayne\u27s system actually allows not only SVO and OVS, but also SOV and VOS (cf. section 4). Moreover, it will not do to simply stipulate SVO as the universal underlying word order since word order in German, a language traditionally analyzed as being underlyingly SOV, cannot be adequately treated in the universal SVO approach, especially when it is compared with word order in Yiddish, a closely related SVO language (cf. section 5). The next section introduces the theoretical machinery of Kayne (1993). It should be read even by those who are already familiar with Kayne\u27s paper, since the exposition of the linear ordering concept given in section 2 will help the reader to understand the central theoretical arguments in section 4

ENGLISH MAIN VERBS MOVE NEVER

The traditional view holds that English main verbs do not move to any of the inflectional heads AgrS, Tns or AgrO. Recently, it has been claimed that while English main verbs cannot move to the highest inflectional head (i.e. AgrS), they may move to an intermediate inflectional head such as AgrO or Tns (cf. section 2). In earlier work, I have argued that all verb movement to inflectional heads is triggered by the overt morphology of the latter (cf. Rohrbacher (1993)). This approach is not compatible with movement of English main verbs to AgrO or Tns since the language does not have overt object agreement and its overt tense morphology is not significantly \u27richer\u27 than that of the Mainland Scandinavian V in situ languages. The current paper presents new evidence from Quantifier Floating against (short) main verb movement in English. If English main verbs could move out of VP and leftwards to an intermediate inflectional head, they should be able to precede a floating subject quantifier in the specifier of VP. The resulting word order is however ungrammatical, a fact which strongly suggests that English main verbs stay in situ (cf. section 3). This conclusion is confirmed by the inability of adverbs that do not adjoin to the right of VP to surface after main verbs. The paper closes with a reëxamination of the arguments adduced in support of short verb main verb movement in English and finds that most if not all of them are less than convincing (cf. sections 4 and 5).