Pro-drop language
Pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where pronouns can be elided (deleted) when considered unnecessary or redundant by the speaker.
In everyday speech there are often instances when it is obvious who or what is being referred to, or it can be guessed from context. In a pro-drop language, the pronouns that would normally take the place of those referents can be elided once the context has been established. Among major languages, the prototype of pro-drop languages is probably Japanese (featuring pronoun elision not only for subjects, as is often implied, but for practically all grammatical contexts), but Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian are also pro-drop.
In some cases (impersonal constructions), a proposition has no referent at all. Pro-drop languages deal naturally with these, where non-pro-drop languages such as English sometimes have to fill in the syntactic gap by inserting a dummy pronoun.
- English: It is snowing.
- French: Il pluie. ("It rains").