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

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics Vol. 63; no. Mar; pp. 19 - 34
• Main Authors: Torres Cacoullos, Rena, Travis, Catherine E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.03.2014
• Subjects: Constructions; Conversation; Coordination; Corpus Linguistics; English; Priming; Prosody; Structural priming; Subject expression; Syntactic Structures; Variation; Subject expression; English; Prosody; Structural priming; Constructions; Variation

•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 pr...