Elide me bare: Null arguments in American Sign Language

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 397 - 446
• Main Author: Koulidobrova, Elena
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.05.2017; Springer Netherlands
• Subjects: Linguistics; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Philosophy of Language; Social Sciences; Ellipsis; Sign language; Null argument; Bare singular; Articles

In this paper, I argue that the traditional analysis of null arguments—subjects and objects—in American Sign Language needs to be re-evaluated. It is typically assumed that in the absence of agreement, the null argument is either a topic-bound variable or a silent pronoun (pro). I introduce novel da...