Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite intricate. The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is part of the larger topic of zero or null anaphora. The connection between pro-drop languages and null anaphora relates to the fact that a dropped pronoun has referential properties, and so is crucially not a null dummy pronoun.

Pro-drop is a problem when translating to a non-pro-drop language such as English, which requires the pronoun to be added, especially noticeable in machine translation. It can also contribute to transfer errors in language learning.

An areal feature of some European languages is that pronoun dropping is not, or seldom, possible (see Standard Average European); this is the case for English, French, German, and Emilian dialect, among others. In contrast, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Slavic languages, Finno-Ugric languages, Italian, Spanish exhibit frequent pro-drop features. Some languages, such as Hindi, Greek, and European Portuguese, exhibit pro-drop in any argument.