The purpose of this project is to study linguistic variation and standardisation. The point of departure is one precise linguistic phenomenon: the referential properties of implicit subjects in two Romance languages, French and Italian. These two languages are closely related from a typological view point, but some important sociolinguistic and historical differences should be considered: for reasons of national unity and centralised government, the French area has undergone standardisation for a period of at least four hundred years, whereas Italian was not subject to standardisation in any comparable sense until the late 19th century. Therefore, the comparison between Italian and French could provide interesting information about the phenomenon of standardisation as such. Moreover, it could contribute to our understanding of the linguistic mechanisms behind the reference of implicit subjects. The research, which is partly corpus based and partly introspective, will seek an answer to some fundamental questions: Is there a difference in norm between the two languages? Is there a difference in language usage? Could there be systematic differences in grammatical judgements among informants? In addition, it should be asked whether Italian and French usage has changed over time and, if so, whether such a change coincides in time with the standardisation processes mentioned above.