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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.

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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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