Subject ellipsis in embedded clauses in English

This paper examines subject omission in English finite clauses. Contrary to what is claimed in Haegeman (1997), it is shown that embedded subject omission is attested in diary-style registers. These data pose a problem for the theory of empty categories in the Principles and Parameters framework. The main body of the paper describes the contexts in which subjects of embedded finite clauses are omitted. No syntactic constraints have been identified. Based on the observation that the omission of embedded subjects coincides with pronoun omission of reflexives, we tentatively suggest that in specific registers pronoun ellipsis is licensed by a specifier–head relation with a head carrying agreement features.