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Different registers, different grammars? Subject expression in English conversation and narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Catherine E. Travis  and
Amy M. Lindstrom
Catherine E. Travis
Affiliation:
Australian National University and ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Amy M. Lindstrom
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico
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Abstract

As a so-called non-null subject language, it has been proposed that in English, unexpressed subjects occur only in registers that have specific grammatical properties. We test this hypothesis through a comparison of the conditioning of subject expression for third-person singular human specific subjects in English conversation and narrative. Despite a stark difference in the rates of nonexpression (4% in conversation vs. 22% in narratives), there is no evidence of different grammars across the registers—in both, outside of coreferential clauses conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, unexpressed subjects only occur in prosodic initial position in main clause declaratives. Within the variable context, in both registers, expression is sensitive to accessibility, priming, and temporal sequentiality. A register effect is, however, evident in the contextual distribution, with a larger proportion of the narrative tokens occurring in contexts propitious to unexpressed subjects, and it is this that accounts for the higher rate of nonexpression in this register.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 103 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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