On expletive subject pronoun drop in Colloquial French.

This paper sets out to contribute to the debate on the morpho-syntactic status of phonologically weak or clitic subject pronouns in Colloquial French by discussing finite impersonal constructions in which the expletive subject pronoun is non-expressed. The paper provides arguments against an approach in terms of inflectional affixes, showing that the non-expression of this pronoun is in fact syntactically restricted. On the basis of the further finding that the non-expression of the expletive represents the continuation of a grammatical trait of older stages of the language in which the non-expression of subject pronouns was generally possible, a tentative proposal is put forward which crucially draws on information structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]