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 Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

and

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

have constant

pro-drop A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where 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 i ...

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

for example are partial pro-drop languages and

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

fall into the category of discourse or radical pro-drop languages. There are also languages such as English, German and Swedish that only allow pro-drop within very strict stylistic conditions. A pro-sentence is a kind of

pro-form In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid rep ...

and is therefore anaphoric. In

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

, ''yes'', ''no'' and ''

okay ''OK'' (spelling variations include ''okay'', ''O.K.'', ''ok'' and ''Ok'') is an English word (originating in American English) denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference. ''OK'' is frequently ...

'' 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

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...

s, since they are capable of very limited

syntactical In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...

relations. But they can also be classified as a distinct

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

, given that (other) interjections have meanings of their own and are often described as expressions of

feeling Feelings are subjective self-contained phenomenal experiences. According to the ''APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensation ...

s or

emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definitio ...

Yes and no

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 A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

, or the verb and a

complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-clas ...

, and can also constitute a subordinate

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb wit ...

. The

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

word '' sim'' (''yes'') gives a good example: :Q: Ela está em casa? A: Acredito ''que sim''. — Q: Is she at home? A: I believe ''that she is'' (literally, ''that yes''). :Ela não saiu de casa, mas ''o John sim''. — She didn't leave home, but ''John did'' (literally, ''John yes''). In some languages, such as English, ''yes'' rebuts a negative question, whereas ''no'' affirms it. However, in

, the equivalents of ''no'' (''iie'', ''uun'', ''(i)ya'') rebut a negative question, whereas the equivalents of ''yes'' (''hai'', ''ee'', ''un'') affirm it. :Q: ''Wakarimasen deshita ka'' (''Did you not understand?'') :A: ''Hai, wakarimasen deshita'' (''No, I didn't'' — Literally ''That's right, I didn't understand'') Some languages have a specific word that rebuts a negative question.

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

has ''" doch"'';

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

has ''" si"'';

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

, Danish, and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

have '' jo'', Hungarian has ''" de"''. 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 English. :Q: ''Bist du nicht müde?'' (''Aren't you tired?'') :A: ''Doch. Ich gehe bald schlafen.'' (''Yes. I'm about to go to sleep.'')

In philosophy

The prosentential

theory of truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, ...

developed by

Dorothy Grover Dorothy Lucille Grover (9 September 1936 – 10 November 2017) was a New Zealand philosopher of logic who worked as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was known for prosententialism, a deflationary theory of truth in which ...

Nuel Belnap Nuel Dinsmore Belnap Jr. (; born 1930) is an American logician and philosopher who has made contributions to the philosophy of logic, temporal logic, and structural proof theory. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963 until his reti ...

, and

Joseph Camp Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...

, and defended more recently by

Robert Brandom Robert Boyce Brandom (born March 13, 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both sys ...

, 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.Brandom, ''Making it Explicit'', 1994.

References

* Holmberg, A. 2001. 'The syntax of yes and no in Finnish.' ''Studia Linguistica'' 55: 141- 174. {{Lexical categories, state=collapsed Parts of speech