[citation needed] Typically, null-subject languages express person, number, and/or gender agreement with the referent on the verb, rendering a subject noun phrase redundant.
These languages can sometimes drop pronouns in limited contexts: e.g, German for "please", Bitte, literally means "[I] beg", and in English "Not happy!"
Similarly, in some cases the additional inclusion of pronouns in English has equivalent force to their optional inclusion in Spanish or Italian: e.g, "I cook, I wash up and I do the shopping" is more emphatic than simply "I cook, wash up and do the shopping".
In the framework of government and binding theory of syntax, the term null subject refers to an empty category.
The empty category in question is thought to behave like an ordinary pronoun with respect to anaphoric reference and other grammatical behavior.
("Veni, vidi, vici")In Catalan/Valencian, as in Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, etc., the subject is also encoded in the verb conjugation.
If used in an inclined tone, it may be seen as an added emphasis; however, in colloquial speaking, usage of a pronoun is optional.
Below is an example in Mandarin: 妈妈:māma:mother:不búNot要yàowant忘wàngforget了lePERF丢diūthrow垃圾。lājirubbish.妈妈: 不 要 忘 了 丢 垃圾。māma: bú yào wàng le diū lājimother: Not want forget PERF throw rubbish.Mother: "Do not (you) forget to take out the rubbish.
If used in an inclined tone, it may be seen as an added emphasis; however, in colloquial speaking, usage of a pronoun is optional.
The conjugation has encoded them, Hebrew is considered a partially null-subject language, as demonstrated by the following example: azorhelpl'acherim,others,ya'azruwill-helpl'khayouazor l'acherim, ya'azru l'khahelp others, will-help youYou help others, they will help you.Subjects can usually be omitted only when the verb is conjugated for grammatical person, as in the third-person plural in the example above.
In Hebrew one can also construct null-subject sentences as in the Latin and Turkish language examples: "We/you/they are going to the beach" can be expressed as "holkhim la-yam" (הולכים לים), lit.
As in Spanish and Turkish, though, Hebrew conjugates verbs in accordance with specific pronouns, so "we went to the beach" is technically just as much a null-subject construction as in the other languages, but in fact the conjugation does indicate the subject pronoun: "Halakhnu la-yam" (הלכנו לים), lit.
The word "halakhnu" means "we went", just as the Spanish and Turkish examples indicate the relevant pronoun as the subject in their conjugation.
'tum-neyou:ERGnādyā-konadya:DATkhānāfood:DIRdi-yāgive:PRF:MASC:SGtum-ne nādyā-ko khānā di-yāyou:ERG nadya:DAT food:DIR give:PRF:MASC:SG'Did you give food to Nadya?
(He/She) calls his/her parents.The conjugations of the root verbs (faccio for fare; chiama for chiamare) already imply the subject of the sentences.
In Japanese, for example, it is possible to start a sentence with a topic marked by the particle は(read as wa, written as ha) and in subsequent sentences leave the topic unstated, as it is understood to remain the same, until another one is either explicitly or implicitly introduced.
今日KyōTodayはwaTOPゲームgēmugameのnoGEN発売日hatsubaibirelease dateなんだna n daisけど、kedo,but,買おうかkaō kawhether to buyどうかdō kaor not迷っている。mayotte iru.confused.今日 は ゲーム の 発売日 なんだ けど、 買おうか どうか 迷っている。Kyō wa gēmu no hatsubaibi {na n da} kedo, {kaō ka} {dō ka} {mayotte iru}.Today TOP game GEN {release date} is but, {whether to buy} {or not} confused.
If the above line were part of a conversation about considering purchasing the game, it could be further shortened to: 発売日HatsubaibiRelease dayだけど、dakedo,but迷っている。mayotte iru.not sure.発売日 だけど、 迷っている。Hatsubaibi dakedo, {mayotte iru}.
("Veni, vidi, vici")With subjects: آئون آيس، مون ڏٺو، آئون، کٽيس Idiomatic translation: I came, I saw, I conquered.
In most Romance languages, however, "Rains" can be a sentence: Spanish "Llueve", Italian "Piove", Catalan "Plou", Portuguese "Chove", Romanian "Plouă", etc.
Uralic and Slavic languages also show this trait: Finnish "Sataa", Hungarian "Esik"; Polish "Pada".
For example, in Esperanto, "He made the cake" would translate as Li faris la kukon (never *Faris la kukon), but It rained yesterday would be Pluvis hieraŭ (not *Ĝi pluvis hieraŭ).
In some cases—particularly in English, less so in German, and occasionally in French—colloquial expressions allow for the omission of the subject in a manner similar to that of Spanish or Russian:[vague][citation needed] Even in such non-null-subject languages such as English, it is standard for clauses in the imperative mood to lack explicit subjects; for example: An explicit declaration of the pronoun in the imperative mood is typically reserved for emphasis: French and German offer less flexibility with respect to null subjects.
In French, it is neither grammatically correct nor possible to include the subject within the imperative form; the vous in the expression taisez-vous stems from the fact that se taire, "to be silent," is a reflexive verb and is thus the object with similar meaning to "yourself" in an English imperative.
[citation needed] In German, the pronoun (singular du or plural ihr) is normally omitted from the informal second-person imperative (Mach das, "Do it"), although it may be added in a colloquial manner for emphasis (Macht ihr das!, "You [guys] do it!").
to avoid confusion with the otherwise morphologically identical infinitive, whereas the addressee-nonspecific or "neutral" formal imperative omits the pronoun and moves the verb to final position (as in Bitte nicht stören, "Please do not disturb").
[4] Many international auxiliary languages, while not officially pro-drop, permit pronoun omission with some regularity.