Prosody, priming and particular constructions: The patterning of English first-person singular subject expression in conversation.

Highlights: [•] Unexpressed (“null”) 1sg subjects occur systematically in English conversation. [•] There are two loci of variation: absolute initial prosodic position and and-coordinated verbs. [•] The oft-reported cross-linguistic subject continuity constraint has no independent effect. [•] Priming is strong, such that a previous coreferential unexpressed subject favors unexpression. [•] Particular and-coordinating constructions with go and say shape local patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]