diff --git a/spacy/pipeline/tagger.pyx b/spacy/pipeline/tagger.pyx
index c94cb6b58..f831caefe 100644
--- a/spacy/pipeline/tagger.pyx
+++ b/spacy/pipeline/tagger.pyx
@@ -289,7 +289,14 @@ class Tagger(Pipe):
             err = Errors.E1006.format(name="Tagger")
             raise ValueError(err)
         self.set_output(len(self.labels))
-        self.model.initialize(X=doc_sample)
+        if doc_sample:
+            label_sample = [
+                self.model.ops.alloc2f(len(doc), len(self.labels))
+                for doc in doc_sample
+            ]
+            self.model.initialize(X=doc_sample, Y=label_sample)
+        else:
+            self.model.initialize()
         if sgd is None:
             sgd = self.create_optimizer()
         return sgd