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An empty category is a syntactic phenomenon in which a part of speech is “left out” of the phonological content of a sentence while still retaining its syntactic and grammatical properties. Essentially, an empty category is a blank space in a sentence which holds syntactic value while not being pronounced. Empty categories can also be referred to as covert nouns. They are present in most of the worlds languages.Different languages allow for different categories to be empty, like Spanish, which allows for the omittance of some pronouns before conjugated verbs. See the sections below for more information on the modelling of empty categories, the categories which are commonly empty, applications of empty categories and examples from other languages.

Modeling Empty Categories:

An empty category is defined as an element with nominal distribution which does not have any phonological content and is therefore unpronounced though retaining its grammatical and semantic properties. There are 4 types of empty categories:

{TABLE}

[+a] refers to the anaphoric feature, meaning that the particular element must be bound within its governing category. [+p] refers to pronominal feature gives the element sufficient referential autonomy to be free within its governing category.

NP-trace and WH-trace are the result of movement operations, while the pro and PRO must be base generated.

Null determiners are used mainly when Theta grids are involved when there is only an option for a DP as a phrase category in the sentence and no option for an NP. Proper nouns, plural nouns, and pronouns cannot have a determiner attached to them, and many regular nouns do not need a determiner, though they still may be part of a DP phrase. In this case, we need to include a null category to stand as the D of the phrase as its head.

Null determiners:

Ø[+PROPER]

Ø[,+PRONOUN]

Ø[+PLURAL]

Null complementizers are used in English mainly in yes/no questions which involve subject-auxiliary inversion. The null stands in the place where the auxiliary (will, did, etc.) would have to be transferred to in order to ask a question. In linguistics, question sentences cannot be drawn in tree form: the sentence has to be rearranged so that there is the same meaning involved, but the formation is in a statement (the answer to the would-be question being asked).

Null Complementizers:

Ø[-Q, +FINITE]

Ø[-Q, -FINITE]

Some example sentences of null complementizers:

a. I wonder which dish that they picked.

b. They didn't know which model that we had discussed.

WH-movement complementizers:

a.[ Which friends ]i did they say { that, ø } they saw ti ?

b. [ Which way ]i did they say { that, ø } they would fix the leaky faucet ti ?

Problems in early-childhood acquisition of empty categories:

§ What is the inventory of ECs for his/her language? (Binding Principles)

§ What are the syntactic conditions under which ECs can appear?

§ What are the constraints on ECs? Empty categories are a common occurrence in everyday speech. There are four combinations based on the anaphoric and pronominal features given to an empty category, and four basic types of empty category. Wh-trace (or Wh-movement) can be used in either a direct or indirect question form, such as “Who asked Pete to close the door?” or indirectly, “I wonder who asked Pete to close the door.” As you see, speakers of all languages, especially English, use Wh-trace in order to pose a question, and find out new information. NP-traces are anaphors, which occur frequently in fluent speech. A sentence such as “Bill accidentally cut himself,” gives an example of an anaphor. Pronouns, or little-Pro are also of frequent use in the English language. It is obvious that empty categories are relevant to our languages, and all, however, there is the question of acquisition. How do children acquire empty categories? Taking into consideration the Wh-trace, or movement, when children ask for a certain object, their guardians usually respond in “motherese”. An example of motherese is in response to a child’s request for a certain object, “You want what?” instead of “What do you want?”. How do children know what position an empty category lies in?

In English, there is no overt VP but only auxiliaries (Aux) in Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) sentences. English speakers have to find a suitable overt correlate (VP) for the reduced VP in the surrounding discourse. However Japanese does not involve auxiliaries in VP as in English,but it includes a verb with a null object instead.

Example: In English： 1a. Holly Golightly won’t [eat rutabagas]. b. I don’t think Fred will____ , either.

2a. John-wa [zibun-no tegami-o] sute-ta. John-TOP self-of letter-ACC discard-PERF ‘John1 threw out self1’s letters.’ b. Mary-mo  sute-ta. Mary-also discard-PERF ‘Mary2 also threw out self2’s letters.’ ‘Mary2 also threw out John1’s letters.’

In English, VPE sentences are subject to a syntactic parallelism constraint (also called syntactic isomorphism), where pronouns refer to different individuals in the antecedent VP and in the elided VP.

1a) Joe’s idiosyncracies [bother his patrons] and Sally’s idiosyncracies do , too.    *‘Joe1’s idiosyncracies bother his3 patrons and Sally2’s idiosyncracies do [bother her2    patrons], too.’ There are “coreferential reading” of null object in Japanese but not in English. The meaning in sentence 1a) is: “John consoled himself and Bill consoled himself”. However it can only means either “Bill consoled John” or “Bill consoled Bill” in Japanese.

(1a) John consoled himself and Bill did __, too. (2a) John1-wa zibun(zisin)1-o nagusameta. John-TOP self-ACC consoled ‘John1 consoled himself1.’ (2b) Bill2-mo  nagusameta. Bill-ALSO consoled ‘Bill2 consoled too.’ A second difference between the Japanese and English empty categories is the concerns sentences with a distributive interpretation of quantified phrases. (1) a. John washed his (own) car. b. Everyone else did , too. (2) a. John-ga zibun-no kuruma-o aratta. John-NOM self-GEN car-ACC washed ‘John washed self’s car.’ b. John igai-no subete-no hito-mo (minna)  aratta. John except-GEN all-GEN person-also (all) washed ‘[Everyone other than John] also washed a car.’

In the example in English in 1b),this sentence means where Person A washed Car A, Person B washed Car B, and so on.In Japanese example in 2b),he sentence can strictly means “Everyone else washed John’s car”,or it can also means “Everyone else washed a car” and any car can serve as an empty object noun phrase (NP).

In Japanese,there is a “definite” behavouir among sentences ,which is an N head corefers to an NP antecedent (i.e.John’s car),’ And also the “indefinite” use(like English), like “car” in the example can refer to any car which can also interpret that “Persons A & B both washed Car A and Persons C & D both washed Car B.”Therefore,Japanese null arguments allows a wider range of interpretations than English Verb phrase ellipsis sentences.

“PRO Versus Null SE: Case, Tense, And Empty Categories In Tongan”.

‘O-clauses and ‘ke-clauses’ in Tongan are similar to ‘to-infinitives’ in English. They both cannot contain a regular a tense/aspect/mood marker (TAM) and may contain a coreferential null argument with a matrix argument. However, they are different from each other in some crucial respects. Clauses express the outcome of the event denoted by the matrix clause is called “Telic clauses”. The null subject of telic clauses in English must be the syntactic subject ,which means the subject of passive can be the antecedent. In Tongan, ‘o-clauses’ are similar to telic clauses in that the antecedent of the null argument is syntactically constrained (that is, nominative for telic clauses and absolutive for ‘o-clauses). Therefore the antecedent of the null argument in Tongan ‘o-clauses must be Absolutive. English: Absolutive (ABS) NP: _I bought a book to be given to John_ and _I chose a woman to be treated._

Tongan: 1b) Na_a kui fili _a e fefinej _o faito_o __*i/j ia*j/k.     pst 1sg choose abs ref woman comp treat 3sg     _I chose a woman to treat him/her._ Here, a pronoun “ia” instead of a gap, the empty category can only be coreferential with the Absolutive NP.‘O-clause’ is agentless transitive and that the object gap is a null SE, which is controlled by the matrix: ->Romance Null Subjects At The Sensory-Motor Interface The valuation of the Case feature of a subject DP in Romance Null Subject Languages can be delayed under certain conditions. However,English does not have such options. In the Romance Null Subject Languages, two things can happen after the DP raises to the embedded Specifiers and Tense.The Case feature of the DP “ti” can get valued or unvalued (is optional): Example in Romance 1 : (Ti) tes moito medo (_You_re very scared_) (with an overt subject.) Example in Romance 2: El toseu.(He coughed) That means that even the DP is not in the sentence in Romance,it is still grammatical, as long as the phonological features of the subject are not realized in the embedded Specifier and tense. àEnglish does not allow a null subject (e.g., Coughed means He coughed) because agreement does not provide the option for “ he” to remain with its Case feature unvalued after Match and Feature valuation.