The extended projection principle (EPP) is a
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
hypothesis about
subjects. It was proposed by
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
as an addendum to the
projection principle
In linguistics, the projection principle is a stipulation proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of the phrase structure component of Generative grammar, generative-transformational grammar. The projection principle is used in the derivation of phrases ...
. The basic idea of the EPP is that clauses must contain a
noun phrase
A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...
or
determiner phrase
In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, Head (linguistics), headed, in this case, by the determin ...
in the subject position (i.e. in the
specifier of a
tense phrase or
inflectional phrase or in the specifier of a
verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntax, syntactic unit composed of a verb and its argument (linguistics), arguments except the subject (grammar), subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quic ...
in languages in which subjects don't
raise to TP/IP, e.g.
Welsh).
Details
Most verbs require meaningful subjects—for example, "kick" in "Tom kicked the ball" takes the subject "Tom". However, other verbs do not require (and in fact, do not permit) meaningful subjects—for example, one can say "it rains" but not "the sky rains". The EPP states that regardless of whether the main predicate assigns a meaningful
theta role to a subject, a subject must be present syntactically. As a result, verbs that do not assign external theta roles will appear with subjects that are either
dummy pronoun
A dummy pronoun, also known as an expletive pronoun, is a deictic pronoun that fulfills a syntactical requirement without providing a contextually explicit meaning of its referent. As such, it is an example of exophora.
A dummy pronoun is us ...
s (e.g. expletive "it," "there"), or ones which have been moved into subject position from a lower position (e.g., subject of an embedded clause after the verbs, like ''seem'', ''appear'' etc. ).
Examples proposed to be the result of expletive subject insertion in accordance with the EPP:
#It seemed that John would never calm down.
#It ( rains / snows / hails / etc. ) frequently in Quebec.
#There seems to be a problem with the radiator.
Notice that in all of these the overt subject has no ''referential'' reading.
In languages that allow
pro-drop
A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite ...
(such as Spanish or Italian), the empty category
''pro'' (not to be confused with Big
PRO
Pro is an abbreviation meaning "professional".
Pro, PRO or variants thereof might also refer to:
People
* Miguel Pro (1891–1927), Mexican priest
* Pro Hart (1928–2006), Australian painter
* Mlungisi Mdluli (born 1980), South African ret ...
) can fulfill the requirement of the EPP.
McCloskey (1996) proposed that there is one group of languages that lacks the EPP: the
VSO languages (like Irish), which appear not only to lack expletives, but also to lack
movement operations triggered by the EPP.
The Czech language, in addition to being a pro-drop language, has a number of sentential structures which lack subject at all:
* Prší. (It rains).
* Připozdívá se (It's getting late.)
* Došlo k výbuchu. (An explosion occurred.)
* Zželelo se jim ho. (They took pity on him.)
See also
*
Null-subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject.
In the principles and parameters framework, the null s ...
*
Pro-sentence
A pro-sentence is a sentence where the subject pronoun has been dropped and therefore the sentence has a null subject.
Overview
Languages differ within this parameter, some languages such as Italian and Spanish have constant pro-drop, Finnish a ...
References
{{Reflist
Grammar
Noam Chomsky