Introduction

One often-noted consequence of the general adoption of the copy theory of movement since its reintroduction in Chomsky (1993) has been the collapse of the typology of empty categories in terms of the values of the features [±anaphoric, ±pronominal] (see, inter alia, Hornstein (1999: 77–78), Manzini & Roussou (2000) for discussion). The non-pronominal empty categories of government-binding theory and related work, i.e. NP-trace and wh-trace, are now generally thought to be copies; their silence is the result of a PF-deletion process affecting non-heads of chains (see in particular Nunes 1995; 2004). The status of the pronominal empty categories is less clear, however. There has been a considerable discussion of the status of the pronominal anaphor PRO, naturally connected to the question of the nature of the various types of ‘control’ dependency (Boeckx & Hornstein 2003; 2004; Culicover & Jackendoff 2001; Davies & Dubinsky 2004; Hornstein 1999; 2003; Landau 2000; 2003; 2004; Manzini & Roussou 2000; Martin 1996; 2001; O'Neil 1997). The question of the status of the ‘pure pronominal’ empty category pro is also uncertain; many authors (including Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998; Barbosa 1995; 2009; Manzini & Savoia 2005; Nash & Rouveret 1997; Ordóñez 1997; Platzack 2004; Pollock 1997) have proposed that the pronominal property of the head bearing subject agreement features, observed to characterise consistent null-subject languages since Rizzi (1982), may be enough to derive the Null Subject Parameter and that, as a corollary, the idea that the canonical subject position is occupied by pro is not required, which in turn implies that the Extended Projection Principle either does not need to be satisfied or can be satisfied by something other than a DP occupying the relevant specifier position in these languages.

This book represents some of the work carried out in the period 2002–2007 by the group working on the project ‘Null Subjects and the Structure of Parametric Theory’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Great Britain (Grant No. APN14458). The group consisted of Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Chris Johns, Ian Roberts, Michelle Sheehan and David Willis. The central goal of that project was to investigate and, if possible, refine the notion of parameter of Universal Grammar (UG), as it has been understood in generative theory since roughly 1980, by looking carefully at the phenomena associated with one of the best-known and most widely discussed examples of a parameter: the Null Subject Parameter (NSP). This volume brings together a number of articles focusing on the nature of null subjects in a range of languages; Biberauer (2008b) is a sister volume arising from the same project, which focuses more on parameter theory than on null subjects, while Holmberg (2009) focuses on partial null-subject languages.

In this Introduction, we would like to set the chapters in context. Accordingly, we first discuss the phenomena from English and various Romance languages which originally motivated the postulation of the NSP. Next, we summarise the main kinds of null-subject system that have been identified in the comparative-syntax literature. We complete Section 1 by summarising the two principal approaches to the analysis of null subjects, whose classical exponents are Rizzi (1986a) and Borer (1986).

Introduction

The goal of this chapter is to provide a more complete basis for T's attraction properties by exploiting a neglected property of T, its Tense features. In Section 2, we will argue on cross-linguistic grounds that the properties triggering V-to-T movement and licensing null subjects should be kept distinct. In other words, we reject the idea, first proposed by Roberts (1985), that ‘strong’ agreement of some kind is always responsible for both. Instead, in Section 3, we suggest distinguishing T's tense (i.e. ‘verbal’ or V-related) properties from its agreement/ϕ (i.e. ‘nominal’ or D-related) properties and propose a correlation between richness of tense inflection and V-to-T movement on the one hand and, following numerous researchers since Rizzi (1982), between richness of agreement inflection and the availability of null subjects on the other (see Roberts (Chapter 1) and Holmberg (Chapter 2) for recent proposals in this respect). We then construct a new typology on the basis of this proposal. In Section 4, we first show how Modern English fits into this typology; in this connection, the auxiliary system is crucial, and we make some novel proposals in this regard (Section 4.1). Section 4.2 deals with relevant aspects of the historical development of this system, focusing on the development of systematic V-to-T movement from the loss of V2, and showing how this was a rather short-lived option, as predicted by the typology of Section 3.