Search

Summary

This chapter discusses how constituents come to be dropped in abbreviated registers of English. It begins (Module 7.1) by examining Subject Drop in colloquial English sentences like ‘<I> can’t find it’, discussing whether they involve Truncation of the periphery above SUBJP. Module 7.2 then goes on to look at Auxiliary+Subject Drop in sentences like ‘<Are you> doing anything tonight?’ and considers whether this results from Weak Syllable Drop in the phonology. Next Module 7.3 considers Article Drop in newspaper headlines, and whether this results from syntactic Truncation, or Article Drop. Module 7.4 goes on to look at omission of Be in newspaper headlines (and its correlation with Article Drop), asking if this involves Truncation, or a tense/agreement deficit. Subsequently Module 7.5 examines Object Drop in product labels (like ‘Don’t stir <it>’), arguing against Topic Drop and in favour of pro-drop. The chapter concludes with a summary (Module 7.6), Bibliography (Module 7.7), and Workbook (Module 7.8), with some Workbook exercise examples designed for self-study, and others for assignments/seminar discussion.

Campos (1986) argues that object drop in Spanish exhibits island effects. This claim has remained unchallenged up to today and is largely assumed in the literature. In this paper, I show that this characterization is not empirically correct: given a proper discourse context, null objects can easily appear within a syntactic island in Spanish. This observation constitutes a non-trivial problem for object drop analyses based on movement.

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

2 results

7 - Abbreviated registers

Summary

Object drop in Spanish is not island-sensitive

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

2 results

7 - Abbreviated registers

Summary

Object drop in Spanish is not island-sensitive