A Corpus Study of Zero Pronouns in Hindi: An Account Based on Centering Transition Preferences

This paper presents a corpus-based investigation of the use of zero pronouns in Hindi. After establishing that the antecedents of these null arguments cannot be recovered syntactically (Rizzi, 1982; Jaeggli & Safir, 1989), I propose an account in terms of "Centering Theory" (Grosz et al., 1995). Given the Hindi-specific centering constraints proposed in Prasad & Strube (2000), I argue that the discourse constraint to license the felicitous use of Hindi zero pronouns should be formulated as a combination of preferences for sequences of transitions and a “zero pronoun rule”, adapted from Rule 1 of Centering Theory. More generally, the proposed account will explain (a) why null elements are most frequently the subject, (b) why object drop in Hindi occurs only when the subject is also dropped.