Exploration of Balochi as a Pro-Drop Language

Abstract

This paper presents data from Balochi language which demonstrates that subject or object can be elided in the Phonetic Form (PF) which can be inferred, identified and recovered through rich  morphological inflections (Participation of verbal agreement) in the Logical Form (LF).The contribution of this paper is to provide an exploration of null argument structures at subject, object and subject and object both together positions and extends it to the systems of null subjects traditionally discussed in the literature. The analysis is based on the objective of the study to explore Balochi as a pro-drop language. Null argument such as null subject and zero object of Balochi is explored and analyzed under three (03) theoretical frameworks , Chomsky‟s Principles and Parameters theory (PPT) (Chomsky,1981a) and Extended Projection Principle (EPP) (Haegeman,1994). The Recoverability Condition of Haegeman (1994) is applied to infer, identify and recover (i.e. Logical Form (LF) & Phonetic Form (PF).Through unstructured interviews, data were collected for said research paper from two native speakers of Balochi language. Thus, the findings of the concerned research paper show that the unusual sentential constructions such as verbs with null/zero/omitted subjects, objects and both the subjects and objects together in the oral or spoken Balochi.