A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Null subjects in main clauses are mainly licensed by discourse topic. On the other hand, subject omission in embedded clauses appears to be regulated by another mechanism in that it is often licensed by sentence-mate antecedents. This means that if in the same sentence there is a co-referent DP preceding the embedded null subject, this holds as antecedent and licenses subject omission in the embedded clause. The example below shows such case.

            president say venice_a go_a to_be_done

            ‘The president says that (he) will be going to Venice.’

The subject argument of the embedded verb go is not expressed. However, it can be interpreted as co-referential with the sentence-mate antecedent president, which is the subject of the main clause.

            In the example below the embedded null subject is co-referential with the object of the main clause.

            teacher child++ force go_out

            ‘The teacher forces the children to go out.’

The unexpressed subject of the embedded verb go_out refers back to the object of the main clause (child++). This sentence-mate antecedent thus licenses subject omission in the embedded clause.

            Crucially, in both examples, the embedded null arguments can be correctly interpreted without relying on the previous context since they co-refer with an antecedent within the same sentence.