Too weak to be pronounced

Abstract

In Gradient Harmonic Grammar (Smolensky & Goldrick 2016), syntactic strength is considered an inherent property of linguistic items. In this paper, I propose that syntactic strength plays a crucial role in pro-drop and in other phenomena that have often been related to a vague concept of “strength”. I suggest that pro-drop results from failed lexicalization of weak pronouns in the presence of a strong T. Subject clitics of non-pro-drop languages instead stem from the strengthening of weak pronouns in the context of a weak T. This strength-based approach to pronouns can be also extended to the independent phenomenon of mismatches between strong forms and weak semantics of pronouns, which is problematic for standard accounts à la Cardinaletti & Starke 1999 and it is not accounted for by any other theory of pro-drop. In general, such an approach is a mere extension of what has been tacitly presupposed while talking about strength for pro-drop (Rizzi 1986a; Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1998), and for other phenomena (see Cardinaletti & Starke 1999 for pronouns; Chomsky 2013, 2015; Cecchetto & Donati 2022 for labeling).

Keywords

• syntactic strength
• pro-drop
• subject clitics
• PF-LF mismatches
• Gradient Harmonic Grammar