Processing of Wh-Dependencies in a Null Subject Language: Referential and Non-Referential Whs.
Marica De Vincenzi · Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 1989
The work presented here is part of a research project on Italian parsing, the goal of which is to provide a cross-linguistic test of sentence processing models.The comparison of English and Italian is particularly interesting, because the two languages differ in the setting of a syntactic parameter.Some natural languages allow phonetically null subjects in tensed clauses, while others do not.The two types are instantiated by Italian and English (see (1».Other properties systematically correlate with the null subject property (Perlmutter, 1971;Taraldsen, 1978;Rizzi, 1982):-Null Subject languages generally have a free process of subject inversion as in (2), while non-Null Subject languages do not; -Non-Null Subject languages often show CaMP-trace effects as in (3), while Null Subject languages do not.In the examples, "pro" indicates the lexically null pro (nominal) subjects.English glosses are given below 91