prodrop

English

Examples
  • In the Spanish clause ¿estás frío? ("are you cold?"), there is no pronoun for "you" expressed, because the verb's inflection conveys the grammatical person (second person, singular, familiar, you [sg]). An overliteral understanding of the Spanish clause would be "are cold?".
  • In the English sentence Makes no difference, the dummy subject it can be dropped, informally, because its meaning is obvious even without it.

Alternative forms

Etymology

pro(noun) +‎ drop, with clipping.

Adjective

prodrop (not comparable)

  1. (linguistics, of a language or of some utterances within one) In which certain classes of pronoun may be omitted when they can be inferred.

Derived terms

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