Silent arguments without pro: The case of Basque

Maia Duguine

Basque is traditionally described as a three-way pro-drop language, aparadigmatic instance of the positive setting of the pro-drop parameter. Thisarticle investigates the phenomenon of silent arguments in Basque and proposesa novel account of this phonological emptiness. It is argued that Basque silentarguments are best analyzed as elided DPs. This account avoids the shortcomingsof the pro-drop analysis with respect to the licensing and interpretation effectsof silent arguments, and its interaction with information structure allows astraightforward explanation of the distribution of overt and silent arguments.

Published online: 17 September 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.13dug

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Cited by 8 other publications

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2020. In Silently Structured Silent Argument [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 259],

García Mayo, María del Pilar & Roumyana Slabakova

2015. Object drop in L3 acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism 19:5 ► pp. 483 ff.

Herbeck, Peter

2018. In Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface [Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 99], ► pp. 171 ff.

Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso & Lorena Sainzmaza-Lecanda

2018. Bilingualism effects in Basque Subject Pronoun Expression. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8:5 ► pp. 523 ff.

Rothman, Jason, Jorge González Alonso & Eloi Puig-Mayenco

2019. In Third Language Acquisition and Linguistic Transfer,

SATO, YOSUKE

2014. Argument ellipsis in Colloquial Singapore English and the Anti-Agreement Hypothesis. Journal of Linguistics 50:2 ► pp. 365 ff.

SATO, YOSUKE

2019. Comparative syntax of argument ellipsis in languages without agreement: A case study with Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Linguistics 55:3 ► pp. 643 ff.

Slabakova, Roumyana & María del Pilar García Mayo

2017. In L3 Syntactic Transfer [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 5], ► pp. 63 ff.

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