UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1997)
Null subjects without
pro
M. RITA MANZINI & LEONARDO M. SAVOIA
We argue that the notion of pro meets both empirical and theoretical difficulties
within the
minimalist framework of Chomsky (1995). We present an alternative theory which gives up
pronominal empty categories, as well as DP-movement, in favor of an operation of feature
movement which relates thematic to inflectional positions. The proposed analysis is
compatible
with a particularly simple formulation of the null subject parameter, which reinterprets strong
and
weak features as overtly realized and non-overtly realized features respectively, while
accounting
for subject clitic varieties, such as Northern Italian dialects, as well as classical null subject
ones,
such as standard Italian.
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