ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates three analyses for the adult null subjects (ANS): the pro-drop analysis, the topic drop analysis, and the ante-cedentless empty category analysis. It provides the similarities in distribution between the early null subject and the adult ANS, the author examines the hypothesis that the ANS is an antecedentless empty category in Spec, IP. The chapter discusses the adult null subject in specialized registers of French and English. The author argues that the adult null subject in the specialized registers, ANS, cannot be an instantiation of the pronominal null subject pro attested in pro-drop languages: the distribution of the ANS differs markedly from that of pro. In the acquisition literature, the parallelism between the early null subject in non pro-drop languages and the adult null subject in specialized registers of the same languages has often been pointed out.
