this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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When I was studying Spanish in middle school, it was odd to me that a language could just, you know, drop subjects via conjugation. But I find myself increasingly dropping them, as they're understood.

A lot of communication these days is looking more imperative without necessarily being so.

Descriptivism is fun!

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[โ€“] jarfil@beehaw.org 3 points 10 hours ago

Hm?

Spanish has redundant subject referencing, meaning the conjugational reference works as a sort of pronoun. Same thing happens in all languages which include element-coordinated conjugation, be it with subjects, time, objects, locations, etc.

If you check Latin, stuff like "Romani ite domum" can easily drop the subject since "ite domum" already includes enough clues to deduce its meaning. Basque has even more clues in its conjugation, with a single word like "zenekizkitenelako" including references to time, subject, object, number, mood... or was it mode? Bah, I get lost with the terms. I understand that Hungarian has even more fun with its cases and conjugations.

If you like descriptivism, then you can have a field day with Basque, with people still not fully agreeing on how many dialects there are, and there being at least 50 described "varieties" over a relatively small geographic area. Was it Irish that had a similarly fun variability? Anyway, fun stuff ๐Ÿ˜