ABSTRACT
Another area that reveals important differences in discourse style is the use of overt NPs. In an experimentally controlled comparison of various languages in which argumental NPs are optional from a strictly syntactic point of view (‘pro-drop’), Bickel (2003, 2005) found signicant differences among different speech communities in the use of overt NPs in discourse. NP use was assessed in this research by the Referential Density (henceforth RD) measurement, dened as the ratio of overt NPs to all possible argument slots (also cf. Noonan, 2003). In one of the languages studied, Belhare (Sino-Tibetan, Nepal), on average, only approximately 40% of all available argument positions are overtly realized. This contrasts with discourse habits in high-RD languages, such as Maithili (IndoEuropean, Nepal and India), in which approximately 60% of argument positions are lled, creating a style that seems overly explicit to speakers of low-RD languages.
