Pro-sentence
Template:Short description A pro-sentence is a sentence where the subject pronoun has been dropped and therefore the sentence has a null subject.[1]
Overview
Languages differ within this parameter, some languages such as Italian and Spanish have constant pro-drop, Finnish and Hebrew for example are partial pro-drop languages and Japanese and Tamil fall into the category of discourse or radical pro-drop languages.[2] There are also languages such as English, German and Swedish that only allow pro-drop within very strict stylistic conditions.[3] A pro-sentence is a kind of pro-form and is therefore anaphoric.
In English, yes, no and okay are common pro-sentences. In response to the question "Does Mars have two moons?", the sentence "Yes" can be understood to abbreviate "Mars does have two moons."
Pro-sentences are sometimes seen as grammatical interjections, since they are capable of very limited syntactical relations. But they can also be classified as a distinct part of speech, given that (other) interjections have meanings of their own and are often described as expressions of feelings or emotions.
Yes and no
Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". In some languages, the equivalents to yes and no may substitute not only a whole sentence, but also a part of it, either the subject and the verb, or the verb and a complement, and can also constitute a subordinate clause.
The Portuguese word sim (yes) gives a good example:
- Q: Script error: No such module "Lang". Template:Gloss
- A: Script error: No such module "Lang". Template:Gloss (literally, that yes)
- Script error: No such module "Lang".
- Template:Gloss (literally, John yes).
In some languages, such as English, yes rebuts a negative question, whereas no affirms it. However, in Japanese, the equivalents of no (Script error: No such module "lang".) rebut a negative question, whereas the equivalents of yes (Script error: No such module "lang".) affirm it.
- Q: Script error: No such module "Lang". Script error: No such module "lang". Template:Gloss
- A: Script error: No such module "Lang". Script error: No such module "lang". Template:Gloss, literally Template:Gloss
Some languages have a specific word that rebuts a negative question. German has Script error: No such module "Lang"., French has Script error: No such module "Lang"., Norwegian has Script error: No such module "Lang"., Danish has Script error: No such module "Lang"., Swedish has Script error: No such module "Lang"., and Hungarian has Script error: No such module "Lang".. The English words "yes" and "no" were originally only used to respond to negative questions, while "yea" and "nay" were the proper responses to affirmative questions; this distinction was lost at some time in Early Modern EnglishScript error: No such module "Unsubst"..
- Q: Script error: No such module "Lang". Template:Gloss
- A: Script error: No such module "Lang". Template:Gloss
In philosophy
The prosentential theory of truth developed by Dorothy Grover,[4] Nuel Belnap, and Joseph Camp, and defended more recently by Robert Brandom, holds that sentences like "p" is true and It is true that p should not be understood as ascribing properties to the sentence "p", but as a pro-sentence whose content is the same as that of "p." Brandom calls " . . .is true" a pro-sentence-forming operator.[5]
See also
References
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- ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
- ↑ Hannukainen, E-A. 2017. Third person referential null subjects in Finnish and Hebrew. Undergraduate thesis, Newcastle University.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Grover, Belnap, Camp. "The Prosentential Theory of Truth", Philosophical Review 1970.
- ↑ Brandom, Making it Explicit, 1994.
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
- Holmberg, A. 2001. 'The syntax of yes and no in Finnish.' Studia Linguistica 55: 141- 174.