BMN ANGD A2 Linguistic Theory
1 The Concept of Nothing and the Sound of Silence
The concept of a null morpheme, a morpheme which is assumed to be present in a word, occupying exactly the same position as all other related but non-null morphemes do, dates back almost as far as the study of language itself. For example, it can be found in Pãnini’s grammar of Sanskrit some 5 to 4 hundred years BCE.
The main use of a null morpheme is to regularise a pattern. For example, consider Hungarian verbal agreement morphology. In the definite paradigm (where there is a definite object) there is a distinct morpheme for each of the six number and person combinations:
(1) 1 st
2 nd
3 rd
Sing.
Plu.
Vm jVk
Vd itek/játok i/ja ik/ják
However in the indefinite paradigm (where there is either an indefinite object or no object) there is a gap where the relevant form is the same as the base form of the verb:
(2) 1 st
2 nd
3 rd
Sing.
Plu.
Vk
Vnk sz tVk
- nVk
Instead of claiming that Hungarian has only 7 verb forms for expressing subject agreement out of the 8 logically possible ones given the system, we claim that there are indeed 8 verbal forms, but that one is indicated by a null morpheme, meaning that the morpheme makes no contribution to the phonetic form of the word, which is then pronounced in a way identical to the base. In this way we maintain a regular morphological system with no unexplained gaps.
There are other instances of commonly assumed emptiness. Take ellipsis for example, where parts of a sentence are omitted:
(3) he wanted to go shopping, but I certainly didn’t
The second clause is incomplete, appearing to lack a verb phrase. A common view of this phenomena is that as it is obvious what the missing verb phrase means (i.e. want to go shopping ), it is unnecessary to actually pronounce it. In other words, the unpronounced part of the sentence exists at some level of analysis of this sentence, albeit only at the semantic level, but this part of the sentence is left unrealised at the phonological level.
Note that these two notions of linguistic absence are rather different. Null morphemes are assumed to be present at some syntactic and perhaps semantic level, but merely absent phonologically. Elliptical elements however are assumed to be present only at the semantic level and so perhaps are more absent in some sense. This may or may not be true, but it shows that linguistic absence is not such a straightforward notion and obviously only extremely careful study can further advance our understanding of it.
In this lecture I will be exploring developments, started in the 1970s but reaching their pinnacle during the Government and Binding period of the 1980s, which suggest not only a

Mark Newson complex system of absence at different levels, but different kinds of things which are absent at the same levels. The claim that there are different kinds of nothing is then one argument for its existence in linguistic systems, as if nothing didn’t exist, how could one nothing differ from another?
2 Equi-NP deletion and the development of Control Theory
One common way to account for the absence of linguistic material found in the 1960s was to assume that some underlying material undergoes a deletion process and hence is only absent at the surface. This is an obvious treatment of ellipsis, though other kinds of deletion were also proposed.
One aspect concerning a lot of deletion processes concerned the conditions under which things can be deleted. We mentioned in a previous lecture the idea that ellipsis is limited to the case where elided material must match material somewhere else in the sentence which is not elided. Thus, considering (3) again:
(3) he wanted to go shopping, but I certainly didn’t the deleted VP must have been want to go shopping . If it were any other VP, deletion could not have happened:
(4) a b he wanted to go shopping, but I certainly didn’t want to go shopping
* he wanted to go shopping, but I certainly didn’t eat a hamburger
Thus there seems to be a restriction, commonly called the Recoverability Condition, which says that only material that can be recovered from overt material can undergo deletion.
A very similar treatment was given to the following data:
(5) a b a man [who I know] a man [ I know]
(6) a b they asked [who I know]
* the asked [ I know]
The observation is that a relative clause may or may not begin with a wh-relative pronoun, but an interrogative clause must begin with a wh-interrogative pronoun. The wh-elements involved in relative and interrogative clauses have much in common and it seems that the same process, ‘Wh-movement’ is relevant to both as the wh-phrase is moved from some clause internal position to the COMP position. We might propose to handle the relative clause data under the assumption that the wh-element undergoes a deletion after it has moved. But then, we must answer the question of why this cannot happen in the interrogative.
One difference between relative clauses and interrogatives is that the former modify nominals and the connection between the modified nominal and the wh-element appears to be central to this process. Thus we might say that the wh-element and the modified nominal are coreferential:
(7) a man
1
[who
1
I know]
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Interrogatives, in contrast, have no such antecedent. We might therefore say that the relative wh-element is recoverable from the nominal that it modifies and hence is deleteable, whereas the interrogative wh-element cannot be deleted as it is not recoverable from any other element in the sentence.
All this has been by way of introduction to the following phenomena:
(8) a b
John wants [Bill to win]
Bill wants [ to win]
In (8) we have two instances of non-finite clausal complements of the verb want . However, while the first has an overt subject, the second seems to lack a subject. Yet, it is also clear that there is a definite subject interpreted in the second case: no one else other that Bill is going to do the winning! We might therefore suppose that the underlying form of this sentence is:
(9) Bill wants [Bill to win]
But this sentence could only surface if we interpret the two Bills differently: it could only mean that one Bill wants another Bill to win. When the two Bills refer to the same individual, the sentence is ungrammatical.
Rosenbaum (1967) proposed that we handle this data with a deletion transformation which would delete the second instance of a pair of equivalent noun phrases, where equivalent NPs are NPs with the same form and reference:
(10) Equi NP Deletion
SD: … NP
1
… NP
1
…
SC: … NP
1
… Ø …
The analysis must be more complex than this, however, as it is clear that we cannot just apply this transformation to all structures involving equi-NPs:
(11) a b c
* John thinks John is smart
* John believes John to be smart
* John likes John
Interestingly, the grammatical versions of these sentences would involve replacing the second
NP with a pronoun of one kind or another:
(12) a b c
John thinks he is smart
John believes himself to be smart
John likes himself
This might indicate that there are a number of interacting transformations and that only in certain contexts can Equi-NP deletion apply. For example, it only applies to the subject of the non-finite complement of certain verbs.
This analysis survived well into the 1970s, though it became increasingly difficult to maintain under the pressure to restrict the power of transformations. Moreover, phenomena such as the
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Mark Newson following seem to suggest that similar effects are found in cases where there is no preceding overt NP to license the deletion:
(13) a b
– to be or – not to be …
– to continue in the light of the evidence would be an injustice
Note that it is the subject of the infinitive that is missing in these cases, the same context as
Equi-NP deletion is restricted to. Therefore, if there is a non-Equi-NP deletion analysis for these structures, this might also be able to deal with the others without using a deletion process.
An alternative analysis was put forward by Chomsky and Lasnik (1977) in which the subject of the infinitival clause was not deleted, but occupied by a phonologically null element, assumed to be present at D-structure. There are two issues to be solved for this proposal. The first concerns how the null element gets its interpretation, an aspect of the grammar that
Chomsky and Lasnik termed ‘control’. The second has to do with the rather limited distribution of this element, as it seems only to appear in the subject position of non-finite clauses.
To address the first issue, Chomsky and Lasnik considered the null element to be a kind of pronoun, termed PRO, which took its reference from an antecedent. This accounts for why in the standard cases of Equi-NP deletion, there is an identical NP which licenses the deletion.
In terms of control, this overt NP is an obligatory antecedent which provided the empty element PRO with its interpretation. Data such as (13) indicate that PRO does not always require an antecedent, but in the standard ‘Equi’ cases the antecedent seems to be obligatory:
(14) a b
* John
1
wants [PRO
2
to leave]
[PRO to get his consent] is essential
Thus it was proposed that there were two different sorts of control: obligatory control, where there must be a controller (the antecedent) and non-control, where there is no controller.
Obligatory control generally occurs when the non-finite clause is the complement of certain verbs and non-control occurs in other non-finite clauses.
Obligatory control comes in two types: one where the controller is in subject position and the other where it is in object position:
(15) a b
John
1
promised Bill [PRO
John persuaded Bill
1
[PRO
1
1
to leave]
to leave]
It appears that this is determined by the verb taking the non-finite clause complement and some verbs are subject control verbs (e.g. promise ) and others are object control verbs (e.g. persuade ).
The reference of non-controlled PRO is rather more general, having an interpretation similar to the pronoun one . Thus the following have a similar meaning:
(16) a b
PRO to leave would be rude for one to leave would be rude
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The term ‘arbitrary reference’ was coined to refer to this interpretation as the referent seems to be some arbitrary person – the sentences in (16) mean that for any arbitrarily pick out individual to leave would be considered rude.
What I have presented here is a very superficial account of control phenomena, which turns out to be far more complex. For our purpose however what is important is the proposal of a phonologically null pronoun.
Turning now to the distribution of PRO, this turns out to be somewhat puzzling. As PRO is an NP, like all other pronouns, one would expect it to have the same distribution as other
NPs. However, it can never appear in object or finite subject positions:
(17) a b c
* John likes PRO
* John spoke to PRO
* John thinks [PRO is smart]
Note that these are all positions associated with Case - (17a) and (b) are accusative Case positions and (17c) is the nominative Case position. Thus it seems that PRO is an NP that cannot appear in Case positions. However, there are non-Case positions that PRO can also not appear in:
(18) a b
* John took a picture PRO
* John is fond PRO
Recall that nouns and adjectives do not assign Case to their complement positions and hence overt NPs cannot appear there without the insertion of the preposition of :
(19) a b
John took a picture *(of) Mary
* John is fond *(of) Mary
Thus what determines the distribution of PRO is more general than the notion of Case. In
(1981) Chomsky proposed that underlying this, and many other syntactic phenomena, is the notion of Government. Essentially government is an effect imposed by certain elements on positions they are related to. The set of governors, those things which govern, includes the lexical heads (nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions) as well as the finite inflections and the positions that a governor governs are essentially its complement and specifier positions, as defined by X-bar theory:
(20) XP spec X'
X comp
We can state that a Case assigning head, i.e. verbs, prepositions and finite inflections, assign
Case to those positions they govern, and PRO can only appear in positions which are ungoverned. Thus, as Case positions are a subset of governed positions, PRO can never appear in a Case position:
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Mark Newson
(21)
Ungoverned positions governed positions
Case positions
Chomsky termed the condition that PRO can occupy only ungoverned positions the PRO theorem, as he proposed it could be derived from more basic properties of PRO itself. To see this, we must consider the properties of other pronouns. Recall from last week, we stated that some pronouns, the anaphors such as reflexives, must have an antecedent:
(22) a b
John likes himself
* himself left
However, it is apparently not enough just to have an antecedent, but the antecedent must be close to the anaphor and in a certain structural configuration with it:
(23) a b
* John said Mary likes himself
John’s mother likes himself
In (23a) John is the subject of a higher clause and is thus too far from the anaphor to act as its antecedent, and in (23b) John is not the subject of the clause, but part of the subject and this does not seem to be the correct configuration for it to be able to act as an antecedent for the anaphor. In work dating back to (1980) Chomsky proposed that we can account for these observations if we assume that anaphors are subject to a grammatical principle that ensures that they enter into a relationship with an antecedent, called binding, within a certain domain defined with respect to the element which governs it, called the governing category. The principle was stated by Chomsky (1981) as ‘principle A’ of the Binding Theory:
(24) Principle A an anaphor must be bound within its governing category
Principle B of the Binding theory dealt with the referential properties of personal pronouns, which Chomsky called pronominals, and which appear to behave almost the opposite of anaphors:
(25) a b c d
John likes himself/him himself/he left
John said Mary likes himself/him
John’s mother likes himself/him
As we can see whatever the anaphor can refer to, the pronominal cannot and what the pronominal can refer to the anaphor cannot. To account for this opposite behaviour, Chomsky
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About Nothing stated the principle governing pronominals as the opposite of that governing anaphors, defining a notion ‘free’ to mean ‘not bound’:
(26) Principle B a pronominal must be free within its governing category
Given that PRO is a pronoun, it is reasonable to ask which principle of the Binding theory it conforms to. A controlled PRO always has an antecedent and in this way it is like an anaphor.
But not all PROs are controlled and the non-controlled ones do not have antecedents, which is like a pronominal. Thus, PRO seems to behave like an anaphor sometimes and a pronominal others. But given that Principles A and B of the Binding theory are defined in opposition to each other, it would seem contradictory for something to be both an anaphor and a pronominal. But Chomsky argues that this contradictory nature of a pronominal anaphor is what accounts for the distribution of PRO. If something conformed to both
Principle A and Principle B of the Binding theory it would have to be bound and free (i.e. not bound) within its governing category. This is only a contradiction however if the element has a governing category. Thus PRO can be a pronominal anaphor, conforming to both Principle
A and B of the binding theory, as long as it never has a governing category. The way for something not to have a governing category is for it not to have a governor and hence a pronominal anaphor must always appear in an ungoverned position and in this way the PRO theorem is accounted for.
Of course, PRO may have an antecedent, in cases of obligatory control. But what can act as its antecedent is not determined by the Binding principles, but by the principles of Control.
Control theory is then another module to add to the grammar, along with Case theory and
Binding theory.
3 Raising
On several occasions we have noted a kind of movement which seems to be like passivisation, but which does not involve a passive verb. Contrast the following:
(27) a b
John
John
1
1
was believed [ t
seemed [ t
1
1
to be rich]
to be rich]
The movement involved in (27b) is often called raising as it involves the movement of a subject into a higher subject position. However, if we compare a case of raising to a case of obligatory control we see another similarity:
(28) a b
John
John
1
1
seems [ t
1
to be rich]
wants [ PRO
1
to be rich]
Given this similarity, might it not be wise to consider that both structures are formed by the same processes, either a movement or the use of a phonologically null pronoun?
That the two phenomena are distinct can be shown in a number of ways. First note that in cases of raising, there is usually an alternative in which the movement does not take place:
(29) it seems [John is rich]
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Mark Newson
Here the complement clause is finite and its subject position is therefore a nominative Case position. Hence the movement of the subject does not have to take place. The raising verb seem is not associated with a subject of its own and hence its subject position is filled by a meaningless element, here it . The same cannot happen with cases of control:
(30) it wants [John to be rich]
(30) is grammatical, but not with the same interpretation as (28b). In the grammatical interpretation, John is not semantically connected to the verb want at all and the it in the subject position is not a meaningless one. Indeed the two subjects in (30) are completely independent of each other and so this is neither like a case of raising or control.
The difference between raising an control can be seen by examining the properties of the raising and control verbs. A raising verb, such as seem , is not associated with a semantic subject of its own and hence at D-structure its subject position is vacant:
(31) D-structure:
– seems [John to be rich]
Note that this empty subject position has an entirely different status from the other empty subject positions we have been discussing: this really is filled by nothing – nothing at any level of analysis (syntactic, semantic or phonological). Let us call this a radically empty position. Under the assumption that transformations do not change structures, it seems reasonable to assume that movement can only take place to a radically empty position as if there were anything in the position an element moved to, it would need to be deleted to allow the movement. Hence the D-structure in (31) has all the necessary conditions for movement to take place. Now consider the D-structure of a case of control:
(32) D-structure: John wants [PRO to be rich]
Here the subject of the control verb is filled by the element it is semantically related to. The subject of the non-finite clause is not radically empty, but filled by PRO, a phonologically null pronoun. Hence no movement could take place in this structure. Clearly no movement has to take place as all the elements are in the positions they need to be in without movement.
4 The typology of Empty Categories
Having established that there is a difference between control and raising, let us consider the empty elements involved in both. PRO, as we have seen, is an element present at D-structure.
A trace, however, is an empty element which is created by a movement and hence only appears at S-structure. We saw last week that traces left behind by an NP moving to subject position have the status of an anaphor, i.e. they conform to Principle A of the binding theory
(obviously they always have an antecedent – the moved element – and the antecedent is always close by, presumably within the governing category of the trace). Hence NP traces differ from PRO in this respect too: there can never be a ‘non-controlled’ NP trace. If we also consider wh-traces, we can see that all these empty categories have very different properties:
(33)
PRO
NP trace
Wh trace
Principle A Principle B Present at D-structure
+
+
-
+
-
-
+
-
-
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What is interesting about this is that this system attribute different properties to different kinds of empty category – in other words, it claims that there are different kinds of elements which are absent at some level of the linguistic system. All these empty categories clearly have a part to play in the semantic interpretation of the sentences they are part of. They also all have syntactic properties and so are part of the syntactic system too. Their absence is only phonological. The point to be made therefore is that elements which demonstrate linguistic absence are not only differentiated in terms of where they are absent from, but also in terms of the properties they have at the levels at which they have a presence. This fact alone is a strong argument for the supposition of such elements. It also demonstrates that the concept of nothing in linguistic complex, rich and diverse.
References
Chomsky, Noam 1980 ‘On Binding’,
Linguistic Inquiry 11, 1-46.
Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding , Foris, Dordrecht, Holland.
Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik 1977 ‘Filters and Control’ Linguistic Inquiry 8, 425-
504.
Rosenbaum, Peter S. 1967, The grammar of English predicate complement constructions .
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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