Impersonal Verb - Evidence For Universal Grammar

Evidence For Universal Grammar

Impersonal verbs can be considered null subject data. It involves a general concern in generative grammar: determining the nature and distribution of phonetically null but syntactically present entities (Empty Categories). Since, by definition, these entities are absent from the speech signal, it is of interest that language learners still can come to have information about them. As this phenomenon could not have resulted from sufficient prior experience, it suggests the role of Universal Grammar.

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