Empty categories
Empty categories
Contents
Empty subjects
Subjects elided under conjunction
*con*: subjects elided under conjunction
Expletives
Expletives (*exp*): Note that (NP-SBJ *exp*) is not used in the Icelandic corpus for the experiencers of known quirky-case-verbs; see the documentation on Quirky Case. [EFS: athuga hvað maður gerir við (þó pro/exp hásumar væri) en (það rigndi í gær) er bara með venjulegt NP-SBJ]. Note that in early (Old Icelandic) texts, it may be difficult to distinguish between *exp* and *pro* in cases where there is an empty subject and it has a roughly impersonal (i.e. "maður") interpretation. In searches where you want to include all such sentences or all impersonals in early texts, it is wise to include both *exp* and *pro* in your searches.
Arbitrary PRO
*arb*: arbitrary PRO in the IP-INF complements of inherent ECM verbs.
pro subject
*pro*: other empty subjects. Note that in early (Old Icelandic) texts, it may be difficult to distinguish between *exp* and *pro* in cases where there is an empty subject and it has a roughly impersonal (i.e. "maður") interpretation. In searches where you want to include all such sentences or all impersonals in early texts, it is wise to include both *exp* and *pro* in your searches.
Topicalization or stylistic fronting of quantifiers (or other elements, e.g. D, N, P): indicated with *ICH* traces according to Penn Guidelines.
Empty objects of verbs: not indicated in annotation.
Empty objects of prepositions: in this case we follow the guidelines of the York Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). See also Particles under Head Types.
Empty oblique subject
A case extension is added to empty subjects if and only if the empty element is non-nominative. This can most frequently occur in cases of conjunction reduction, like *con*-D (empty dative subject), but also in other cases where the subject has been omitted, like *pro*-D.
( (IP-MAT (CONJ og-og) (NP-SBJ *con*-D) (VBDI þótti-þykja) (NP-SBJ (N-N skömm-skömm)) (IP-INF (TO að-að) (VB skilja-skilja) (PP (P við-við) (NP (PRO-A hann-hann)))) (. .-.)))
Parasitic Gaps
Parasitic gaps are marked with the same trace (same index) as the real gap on which they are parasitic, as in the example below:
(CP-QUE-SPE (IP-SUB-SPE (BEPI Er-vera)
(NP-SBJ (PRO-N það-það))
(NEG ekki-ekki)
(NP-PRD (D-N sá-sá)
(CP-REL-SPE (WNP-2 0)
(C sem-sem)
(IP-SUB-SPE (NP-OB1 *T*-2)
(NP-SBJ (PRO-N þeir-hann))
(VBDI sóktu-sækja)
(PP (P til-til)
(IP-INF-PRP-SPE (NP-OB1 *T*-2)
(TO að-að)
(VB lífláta-lífláta)
(CODE {COM:parasitic_gap}))))))))
(. ?-?))
(ID 1540.NTJOHN.REL-BIB,200.545))
We frequently also put a comment in the token indicating that the gap is parasitic.
