Null Subjects in English: Persistence effects

Null Subjects in English

Variable rules, variable language?

Habilitationsschrift

zur Erlangung der Venia Legendifür das Fach

Englische Sprachwissenschaft

eingereicht an der Philosophischen Fakultätder

Technischen Universität Chemnitz

vorgelegt von

Susanne Wagner

Geboren am 18.09.1975in Bochum

Chemnitz, März 2012

9The role of persistence effects

(51) a. Ø got to say, Ø don’t recall any of it being mentioned at all when I was growingup, we were not a superstitious family at all. (PC017)

b. Ø Ø after hearin’ people talkin’ about ghosts down on (gap ‘place name’) Roadand stu; but Ø Ø? never seen ’em miself. (PC019)

c. Ø Used to skate on (gap ‘name’) Pond or down on (gap ‘name’) gully, Ø stilldo. (PC006)

(52) a. No, I finished school, I graduated grade 11 in 1980 and eh let’s see, what didI do after that, ehm, I think I babysat for a couple o’ years. And then I end upworking, going to work wit’ eh (gap ‘company name’) and worked with themfor 15 years. (PC023)

b. Well I got a few drenchings down on the cove I can guarantee. I played downthere a lot. I don’t know how my mother never went insane. (PC002)

The examples in (51) and (52) illustrate two diametrically opposed facts of language use:On the one hand, put very simplistically, language users are lazy creatures – they onlyprovide the bare-bones structures to enable understanding, leaving the hearer to infer themissing subject referent(s), as well as some auxiliaries, in the examples in (51). On theother hand, from an economic point of view, the examples in (52) facilitate processingby reusing the subject pronoun I time and again, rather than switching from overt to nullsubjects (and possibly back again), or disposing of any overt form altogether.

Although competition between principles of economy vs. clarity has been discussed inlinguistics for a long time, it is of particular importance in certain subfields, chiefly amongthem grammaticalization (cf. e.g. Haspelmath 1999 or Brinton and Traugott 2005). Ifthese two competing facts are taken together, it is not surprising that they are reflectedin competing linguistic principles: On the one hand, language users have been shown toreuse once-activated linguistic structures in consecutive discourse, as demonstrated in theexamples above. It is irrelevant in this context whether the activation is based on speakers’own use, i.e. their output, or the result of processing another speaker’s input. ‘Structure’in this context refers to all levels of language and includes phonological, morphological,syntactic, lexical, semantic or even discourse-pragmatic items. If speakers followed thisprinciple, repetition would be maximised – once activated, the same items recur in everypossible slot.

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9. The role of persistence e;ects

On the other hand, Phaedrus was not the first author to note that variatio delectat124, aprinciple that has found its way into linguistic research under the label horror aequi, ‘the fearof the same’ (cf. e.g. Rohdenburg 2003; Vosberg 2003). It is not surprising that persistencee;ects – more of the same – dominate speech, while horror aequi seems to be stronger inwritten registers (cf. e.g. Szmrecsanyi 2006: 202; Gries 2005). As a kind of middle groundbetween the two competing motivations, the scenario one is most likely to encounter is acluster of identical items: one form will be repeated a number of times before a switch toanother occurs, which is then again likely to be repeated several times.

The following sections will discuss previous research on persistence conducted with bothexperimental and corpus-based tools. Moreover, potential pitfalls and problems of persis-tence phenomena involving a null variant will be addressed, before focusing on persistenceas a factor in subject pronoun realisation.

The terminology in this chapter needs some elaboration: The label for the phenomenonin question varies for a number of reasons, mostly because it is investigated from very dif-ferent perspectives (e.g. psycholinguistics, syntax, sociolinguistics). Commonly used termsare ‘clustering e;ects’, ‘persistence phenomena’ and ‘priming’ (for a discussion, cf. e.g.Szmrecsanyi 2005). I will use the term ‘persistence’ when talking about clustering e;ectsin the (non-)realisation of subjects, since it is the most neutral term. When summarisingother researcher’s studies, their terminology will be maintained to avoid misunderstandings.There are, however, no or only minute di;erences in the definitions when any of these termsis applied to null subjects.

9.1 Previous research on persistence effects

9.1.1 Psycholinguistic research

A large number of studies focus on the reasons for clustering, which are found in the wayhumans are assumed to process language. It is in this area of research, often situated withinthe field of psycholinguistics, that the idea of ‘priming’ originated. In speaking, the use ofone form activates that form; it will be easier in subsequent discourse to reactivate a formthat has recently been activated than to activate an alternative (new) form. Also, lesse;ort will have to be made to reactivate a form that has been used more recently than toreactivate one used much earlier in the conversation.

Potter and Lombardi (1998) used an immediate recall task to investigate double objectconstructions in English. Verbs like give can be used with two alternative constructionscontaining their two necessary arguments, either an NP-NP construction (give me theball) or an NP-PP construction (give the ball to me). The authors presented subjectswith sentences that contained primes with either of the constructions, followed by a targetsentence that used the alternative structure and was semantically unrelated to the primes.After a distraction task involving numbers, subjects were asked to recall the target sentence.It was assumed that the structure of the primes would influence the output of the recalledtarget, which was indeed the case (cf. Potter and Lombardi 1998: 270f.).

The experiment served to prove that content and structure are apparently stored sep-arately in memory. Recall tasks are initiated from the meaning of a sentence, while itsstructure will be based on recently activated compatible patterns. Thus, if a double objectconstruction is the last structure that has been activated before recalling a sentence con-

124 Sed si libuerit aliquid interponere dictorum sensus ut delectet varietas ‘But if I am so free as to changesomething of what has been said, then because variety delights’; Aesop’s Fables II, Prologue, 9.

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9.1 Previous research on persistence e;ects

taining a verb compatible with such a structure, the double object pattern will probably bereused, even if a prepositional phrase was employed in the original sentence (cf. Potter andLombardi 1998: 267).

Fox Tree and Meijer (1999) obtained similar results in their study on double objectconstructions. In addition to an immediate recall task, they also compared structures thatdi;ered in the complexity of the investigated phrases.

In two experiments we observed that sentences with the same major constituent struc-ture shared syntactic routines. These syntactic routines are likely to be stored in ahierarchical structure and to be activated hierarchically. That is, major constituentsare activated first after which subroutines are called to build the structures with theseconstituents [...][S]yntactic priming occur[red] across conditions varying in complexity [and was] equallyfrequent across conditions. (Fox Tree and Meijer 1999: 89f.)

Priming has been shown to operate on all (basic) levels of language, be it phonological,morphological, lexical, syntactic or semantic (cf. e.g. Dell 1986; Zwitserlood 1996; Drews1996; Bornemann et al. 2006). Moreover, priming can a;ect both intra-speaker and inter-speaker production (cf. studies by Bock and associates as well as Branigan et al. quotedin Gries 2005: 368): speakers will not only repeat structures they used themselves, butalso structures from the surrounding discourse (i.e. other speakers’ output). Szmrecsanyi(2005: 117) extends the notion of persistence not only to variables, but also variants (in hiscase, literal uses of the verb go as a synonym of walk will have an e;ect on the likelihoodof a speaker’s use of be going to as a future marker).

Bernolet, Hartsuiker and Pickering (2009: 301f.) o;er a good overview of studies onstructural priming in general. Their own analysis, based on a number of experiments, showsthat a) priming works across (related) language pairs (Dutch and English) and that b) struc-tural persistence is very likely the result of more than a single force – in their case, mostlikely an interplay between constituent structure and information structure (312).

Summaries of further studies with an experimental design can be found in Gries (2005:365–380) and Chapter 2 of Szmrecsanyi (2006). Gries (2005: 368) as well as Bernolet,Hartsuiker and Pickering (2009: 301f., 312) remark upon contradictory results for most ofthe key areas in di;erent studies, chiefly among them the question of the duration of primingand its construction-specificity: Some studies found that priming lasts over relatively longstretches of discourse, while there was only a very brief e;ect in others. Moreover, it isunclear in how far di;erent constructions and any interference/competition between thema;ect priming positively or negatively.

9.1.2 Corpus-based research

Neither priming nor persistence were (yet) being used as labels when Sanko; and Labergeventured “to characterize the e;ect of syntagmatic proximity of two occurrences of avariable on the two tokens realized” (Sanko; and Laberge 1978: 119). Their study looksat the distribution of di;erent types of personal pronouns in Montreal French, with variousfigures clearly establishing that “variables in sequence are highly constrained not to switch”(Sanko; and Laberge 1978: 122). Their methodology of displaying results in scattergramsshowing each speaker’s switch rates has become a favourite among researchers.

Gries (2005) picks up an experimental favourite, the dative alternation, and also studiesthe placement of particles in phrasal verb constructions, identifying clear persistence e;ects

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for both in the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). How-ever, he also identifies a partly competing process, namely the tendency for certain wordsto occur together, addressing the possibility that priming might be verb- and construction-specific (collexemes; cf. Gries 2005: 369, 377f.).

Szmrecsanyi (2005, 2006) discusses several grammatical phenomena displaying persis-tence e;ects in a number of British and American corpora: competing future markers (willvs. be going to), comparison strategies (synthetic -er, -est vs. analytic more, most) andgenitive constructions (synthetic ’s vs. analytic of ; cf. also Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi 2007;Szmrecsanyi and Hinrichs 2008). He notes that “only a handful of published corpus studieshave dealt quantitatively with persistence and related phenomena, and in most of these theauthors quite accidentally stumbled across the phenomenon as one factor among many”(Szmrecsanyi 2005: 115). The following paragraphs provide a brief overview of these stud-ies, which have generally been conducted in the field of sociolinguistics.

9.2 Persistence as a factor in sociolinguistic studies

Shana Poplack first observed clustering in her Ph.D. thesis (Poplack 1979). In her analysisof plural marking in Puerto Rican Spanish, she found that the presence or absence of aplural marker was among the most significant factors influencing the presence or absenceof the following marker. Standard Spanish marks plurality (redundantly) on all elementsmodifying a noun phrase, an agreement system that the Romance languages inheritedfrom Latin (see examples in (53)).

(53) las cosas bonitas Standard Spanishla(s) cosa(s) bonita(s) possibly deleted markers ()

(from Poplack 1980b: 61)

The variety of Spanish that Poplack analyses allows deletion of the plural marker in allpossible combinations. However, when running statistical tests on the data, the authornoticed that certain scenarios were more likely than others.

[The analysis] shows that [ø] or the absence of a marker on the segment preceding thetoken in question favors deletion on that token, whereas presence of an immediatelypreceding marker favors retention of a marker on the token in question.

(Poplack 1979: 88f; emphasis SW)

Poplack’s observation is particularly interesting from a functional point of view. This typeof syntactic priming clearly contradicts one interpretation of the principle of functionaleconomy, which should lead to the realisation of only enough functionally required markersas are necessary to avoid ambiguity or misinterpretation. But this is not the first (and willnot be the last) time that tendencies in actual language use seem contradictory:

The results point to an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, Puerto Rican speakersare tending towards elimination of redundancy [...] On the other hand, redundancy isfavored, or at best, not taken into account, in the data for the position group. Onemarker leads to more, and deletion of a marker leads to further deletions, resulting ina tendency towards concord on the string level. In other words, if a plural is going tobe realized, the tendency will be for it to be realized on the first element; if it is not,subsequent developments will not tend to rectify this in a functional way. What followsmight either be all markers or all zeroes, so that a case like øøs turns out to be virtuallynon-existent. (Poplack 1980b: 64f.; italics SW; similarly also Poplack 1980a: 378)

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9.2 Persistence as a factor in sociolinguistic studies

The deletion rate was as high as 94% when the third token in a string was preceded by twozero markers, and still 82% when preceded by one (cf. Poplack 1980a: 63). In contrast, forsequences of the -øs, -ss and -s type, deletion was clearly disfavoured (cf. Poplack 1980a:64). Only in rare cases can ambiguity result from -s-deletion. If the respective NP is thesubject of the clause, plurality will be indicated in the verb as well as in vowel changes ofdeterminer and/or noun. Possibly ambiguous cases occur when the NP does not functionas subject (cf. Poplack 1980b: 59).

Although the observed pattern of redundant plural marking in NPs seems uneconomic incertain ways, it turns out to be economic in others. Martinet (1962) provides a di;erentunderstanding of the theory of least e;ort, not automatically equating “longer/containingmore phonemes/morphemes" and “less economic". Martinet implies connections with cog-nitive linguistics, a discipline which became the major contributor to the field of syntacticpriming:

Concord is redundancy, and contrary to what could be expected, redundancy resultsas a rule from least e;ort: people do not mind repeating if mental e;ort is therebyreduced [...] (Martinet 1962: 55; quoted in Poplack 1980b: 65)

Many authors have found e;ects similar to those observed by Poplack in their respectiveareas of study. Weiner and Labov (1983), for example, worked on the active/passive alter-nation in spontaneous conversations of Philadelphians, with the factor ‘parallel structure’emerging as one of the strongest constraints.

Pereira Scherre and Naro (1991) study subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese,with a focus on “the marking on verbs in sequences of adjoining clauses with the samesubject" (Pereira Scherre and Naro 1991: 24). The probability that a marked verb wouldbe preceded by another marked verb was 84%, while it was rather unlikely (35%) for anunmarked verb to be preceded by a marked verb:

These results show quite clearly that a parallel marking process is occurring. Althoughisolated or first occurrences of verbs reflect no special influences, verbs that followother verbs tend to mimic the marking of the previous occurrence.

(Pereira Scherre and Naro 1991: 25)

Verb phrase marking is once more the topic in Poplack and Tagliamonte (1993), this timein two varieties of earlier Black English, namely Samaná English and the variety of Englishof the Ex-Slave Recordings. The authors tested all possible combinations of factors, and“[p]erhaps the most striking result of [this] study is that no matter which way the data areconfigured, the same three factor e;ects obtain" (Poplack and Tagliamonte 1993: 171).Presence or absence of a marker on the preceding verb was one of those factors:

[W]e observe a concord e;ect, whereby lack of marking on a preceding referenceverb leads to a greater probability of zero marking on the current verb (at .68 forSamaná English and .66 for the Ex-Slave Recordings), while overt marking leads tomore marking. (Poplack and Tagliamonte 1993: 190)

The authors also emphasise that the observed marking strategy contradicts not only func-tional considerations in general, as already mentioned above, but also patterns postulatedfor creole verbal marking in particular (cf. Poplack and Tagliamonte 1993: 197). Similarresults are obtained from a study of past time markers in Nigerian Pidgin English, whereparallel marking was almost to be expected: “[T]he strongest predictor that each [form,marker] will be selected, zero included, is after a verb on which it has already occurred"(Poplack and Tagliamonte 1996: 82).

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In a completely di;erent context, Rickford et al. (2007) have recently looked at persis-tence e;ects – which they call “quotative harmony”, in alignment with ‘vowel harmony’:They study quotative all in di;erent corpora and find that “perseverance” has a significante;ect on the selection of following quotatives in both investigated corpora (2007: 14, 16).

Persistence e;ects have been observed in various areas of grammar such as agreementmarking, future reference, double object constructions, but also in domains of discoursesuch as the use of quotatives. Explanations range from psychological to pragmatic ones,with the latter of particular relevance in the present context. For example, Stewart (2003)uses the notion of “pragmatic weight” to account for clustering e;ects:

In the [investigated data] there appeared to be clusters of marked pronominal presenceand clusters of marked pronominal absence which, I shall argue, are pragmaticallymotivated and relate to the negotiation of self within the on-going communicativeevent. (Stewart 2003: 197)

9.3 Persistence in studies on null subjects

To the present author’s knowledge, none of the studies mentioned above has ever discussed(or even mentioned) a theoretical issue that comes to the forefront when analysing anytype of null variable: How legitimate is it to discuss a zero realisation as an instance of per-sistence? If the standard definition is applied (recall the definition provided earlier: recentlyactivated forms are easier to retrieve), ‘null’ should not actually fall within it – or is ‘zero’activated in exactly the same way as an overt form? In Poplack’s work, for instance, thisseems to be taken for granted. Nevertheless, it presents an interesting conceptual chal-lenge. If null can indeed be treated just like an overt form, this would lend strong supportto generative theories in assuming an underlying representation not only for (phonetically)realised but also for unrealised forms – null and overt subjects do not di;er in this respect.

Another question relates to the variant/variable issue raised by Szmrescanyi (2005,2006): Can an unrealised form trigger another one of a di;erent type? Or, more preciselyin the context of null subjects, are null subjects triggered across person? Would it thus belegitimate to include cases with (mostly) obligatory null subjects, such as imperatives inEnglish? Consider this (constructed) example: Ø? Go on! Ø didn’t know that. Here, wewould be dealing with a switch from zero you to zero I.

Some researchers answer this question with a resounding “yes” (cf. e.g. Hudson 2010:297f.). Support for the “maintenance of type” theory also comes from FLA research. Ser-ratrice’s work suggests “that children are indeed more likely to produce an overt pronoun in[both a referent maintenance and switch referent context, SW] when they have listened toand repeated, or even just listened to, a structure containing an overt pronoun” (Serratrice2007a: 195f.).125

The handful of studies that have attempted to include persistence e;ects have alsostruggle with interaction e;ects between categories, which have proven to be di<cult tohandle – switch reference, discourse connectedness and persistence are interrelated (cf.8.3.7). None of the previous studies on null subjects in English that discussed persistence(cf. Chapter 6) are very comparable to the present one, since only a small portion of overtsubjects were coded each time (recall the 1:2 proportionate extraction mechanism). Theonly studies that are directly comparable from a methodological point of view – as theyconsider persistence e;ects from a quantitative perspective – are based on (varieties of)Spanish and Italian. These will be reviewed below.125 Serratrice works on Italian, thus her “overt” corresponds to “null” in the context of English.

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9.3.1 Persistence in First Language Acquisition

Serratrice (2005, 2007a,b, 2009) supports the view that priming is not only an issue ofactivation, but also of learning. Should this be the case, “then it is reasonable to assumethat the more frequently a structure is encountered together with a certain meaning, themore likely it is that that meaning will be encoded using that structure" (Serratrice 2007a:193). This in turn may lead to the di;erent behaviour of null subjects in di;erent languagesdespite similar conditions: referent maintenance, for example, results in overt pronouns inEnglish, but null pronouns in Italian (ibid.).

As already mentioned, Serratrice’s research suggests “that children are indeed more likelyto produce an overt pronoun [...] when they have listened to and repeated, or even justlistened to, a structure containing an overt pronoun" (Serratrice 2007a: 195f.). This sup-ports the ‘maintenance of type’ argument present earlier in this chapter: In null subjectusage, type (overt vs. null) may be more important than same reference criteria. Serratricecalls for priming to be tested in (bilingual) acquisition data:

None of the studies in the bilingual literature have yet systematically addressed thepossibility that redundant pronominal subjects may be the result of the activation ofstructures containing overt pronouns in the non-null-subject language, or even theoutcome of implicit learning over time. (Serratrice 2007a: 195)

Serratrice complains about the lack of studies that discuss priming in connection withreferent maintenance: “there are no published studies in the priming literature that I amaware of testing whether the use of an overt pronoun in a referent maintenance contextcan be primed by the previous comprehension and/or production of an overt pronoun”(Serratrice 2007a: 195). The present study will attempt exactly that: it will be shown thatnull subjects are indeed more likely to occur both when the interlocutor or the speaker haveused a null subject in previous discourse.

9.3.2 Persistence in regional dialects of Spanish

Cameron and Flores-Ferrán (2004) do not actually discuss new data, but rather reanalysetheir earlier studies in light of possible persistence e;ects and try to apply Dell’s Spread-ing Activation Theory to their findings (cf. Dell 1986, Cameron 1994 and Flores-Ferrán2002). Consequently, their results are not actually comparable to each other, since di;erentmethodologies were employed in the original analyses. Cameron’s study on Puerto Ricanand Madrid Spanish, for example, only includes singular pronouns, whereas Flores-Ferránalso discusses plural forms (cf. Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 47), and Flores-Ferrán’sstudy is limited to same-reference contexts, whereas Cameron’s includes switch reference,as well (cf. Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 50). Table 9.1 summarises their findings andcross-tabulates switch reference and persistence, indicating that switch reference plays acrucial role when analysing persistence phenomena in subject realisation.

A number of caveats should be added when discussing Cameron’s results. First, theauthor(s) do(es) not provide raw frequencies for Cameron’s data (only Varbrul weights).The only indication that low raw frequencies might actually be a problem can be deducedfrom the remark that plural subject pronouns are relatively infrequent in the data, whichseems remarkable for conversational data (cf. Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 47).

Second, the presentation of results by itself – separated for switch and same reference– points to the fact that persistence is not a very strong factor in the data. In fact, switchreference is still the overall stronger predictor of variation. As Table 9.1 shows, overt

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subjects are always favoured if there is a switch in reference, no matter whether the triggerNP is null or overt: Varbrul weights range between a minimum favouring e;ect of .66 fora null trigger in the San Juan data and a maximum e;ect of .75 for an overt trigger inMadrid Spanish. Note that with a value of 8 and 7, respectively, the ranges are very smallin both data sets.

Third, in ‘same reference’ contexts, factor weights for an overt trigger and overt targethover around the .5 threshold, indicating that there is no preference for persistence. Theonly relatively strong observation in the table is the one that a null trigger is very unlikelyto be followed by an overt target in same reference contexts (FW .28), but again, bothovert and null triggers disfavour overt targets.

switch reference contextsSan Juan Madridovert target overt target

overt trigger .74 .75null trigger .66 .68

same reference contextsSan Juan Madridovert target overt target

overt trigger .48 .50null trigger .28 .33

Table 9.1: Persistence and switch reference in Cameron (1994) (adapted from Cameronand Flores-Ferrán 2004: 48)

Cameron and Flores-Ferrán (2004: 48, and their Table 2) claim to observe priming in theirdata based on Table 9.1. To the present author, this table does not show that priming isindeed at work in their data – it only shows that switch reference is: An overt subject islikely to come up no matter what the status of the preceding token was if there is a switchin reference ( both factors are favouring an overt pro). Reversely, an overt pronoun isunlikely to surface if the referent remains the same ( both factor weights below .5).

A major problem of both sets of results is that only ‘overt subject’ is used as the de-pendent variable, which would be fine in a binary setting (since the factor weights could bededuced by subtracting the ones for ‘overt’ from 1 to arrive at the FWs for null). However,the authors do not address the fact that, at least in Flores-Ferrán’s data, we are dealingwith five di;erent alternatives of subject realisations (cf. Table 9.2), with overt and nullsimply constituting two possibilities. It is not impossible that results would look di;erenthad ‘null’ been chosen as the dependent variable in the Varbrul runs.

form of previous mention overt target (FW)overt personal pronoun .64demonstrative pronoun .55no previous mention as S (10 preceding clauses) .54lexical .44null personal pronoun .37

Table 9.2: Persistence and subject type in Flores-Ferrán (2002) (same reference only;adapted from Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 51)

As already mentioned, Flores-Ferrán only looked at same-referent subjects in her study ofPuerto Ricans in New York City and also included the notion of ‘previous mention’ in her

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coding. The author chose the ‘unusual’ constellation as testing grounds for priming e;ects– in Spanish, this is the sequence overt–overt, because null subjects are (still) the normand overt subjects the exception. As shown in Table 9.2, a preceding overt pronoun isindeed likely to be followed by another overt pronoun (factor weight of .64), which wouldindicate the presence of persistence e;ects. A null subject, on the other hand, disfavoursa subsequent overt subject (FW .37; Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 51).

However, a favouring e;ect can also be observed for a preceding demonstrative and evena new or recently unmentioned referent (FWs of .55 and .54 respectively). One shouldalso recall from the earlier discussion of the switch reference criterion that overt subjectsare actually expected to be the exception rather than the rule in same-referent contexts inSpanish (cf. Chapter 5), which raises the question of how many tokens actually representeach of the categories favouring a following overt form – they should be quite rare, whichbrings us back to the problem of low raw frequencies.

At the disfavouring end of the table, it is not only a preceding null subject that is unlikelyto be followed by an overt pronoun; the same holds for lexical subjects. Does this imply thata lexical subject is (also) likely to be followed by a null form? Unfortunately, this question isnot addressed by the authors, and it cannot simply be assumed from the results – althoughthe authors do just that when saying that they “find a preservative e;ect: A null [subject]is more likely to be followed by a null [subject]” (Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004: 51).

9.3.3 Persistence in narratives and conversation in two varieties of Spanish

Travis’s (2007) study of subject expression in Colombian and New Mexican Spanish focuseson first person singular subjects exclusively, which makes it the closest available match tothe present investigation. Nevertheless, coding strategies di;er in a number of respects,which will be pointed out in the discussion of persistence e;ects in Section 9.4.126

Since the author was not only interested in persistence e;ects, but generally in whichfactors a;ect subject expression in the investigated varieties, the data were coded for theusual categories. This includes three FGs which were not selected as significant (clause type;relationship with previous TAM; position in turn), as well as four significant FGs, namelyverb class, distance from previous mention, realisation of previous mention (= persistence),and ambiguity of TAM marking (cf. Travis 2007: 114-122).

The factor group ‘verb class’ with the factors psychological, copula, speech, other andmotion, proved to have the strongest overall e;ect on subject expression in both corpora.For the New Mexican data, factor weights range between .35 and .70 and between .36and .68 in the Colombian material. Persistence e;ects follow in second position in the NewMexican data (range of 26), but, together with TAM ambiguity, have the weakest e;ectof all investigated factor groups in the Colombian data (range of 14; cf. Travis 2007: 115).

In a separate set of Varbrul runs, Travis uses ‘repetition of form’ as the dependentvariable. Unfortunately, she does not elaborate on how she arrived at this; the only likelyanswer to this question that came to the present author’s mind is the following: the factorgroup is a cross-cut between the old dependent variable (null vs. overt subject) and thefactor group ‘previous realisation’, so that all sequences of null–null and overt–overt aretreated as one possible outcome (repetition ‘yes’) and all sequences of null–overt andovert–null represent the other (repetition ‘no’; cf. Table 9.3).

126 Torres Cacoullos and Travis (2010), Travis and Torres Cacoulos (2011; 2012) also include priming intheir studies, but since those are partly based on the same data, they do not offer any new results.

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current tokenprevious realisation overt nullovert repetition no repetitionnull no repetition repetition

Table 9.3: Factor group ‘repetition of form’ as cross-product of dependent variable and‘previous realisation’ in Travis (2007)

In looking at sequences of pronouns, retention can refer to both 0–0 and 1–1 sequences.Travis then uses zero as the application value in her statistical run, which returns only 0–0sequences as significant in the New Mexican data. In other words, only null subjects areprimed, overt sequences are not (cf. Travis 2007: 123; Table 5 in particular).

For the Colombian data, factor weights fail to reach significance (both at .5). In thiscase, this is actually the desired outcome, because it illustrates that both expressed andunexpressed subjects are responsible for the priming e;ect in the data. Or, in Travis’ ownwords, in the Colombian data, priming “is attributable to all subjects” (ibid.). The authorshows that the New Mexican and Colombian data primarily di;er in their use of TAMmaintenance, which she attributes to genre di;erences. Thus, those are ultimately at theheart of di;erences in priming between the two data sets (cf. Travis 2007: 129).

Another question remains unanswered: If the application value ‘repetition of form’ in-cludes both null–null and overt–overt sequences, should a factor weight of .56 for therealisation ‘unexpressed’ not mean that an unexpressed subject will be favoured after arepeated sequence no matter what (i.e. both after null–null and overt–overt sequences)?

One should also keep in mind that in Spanish, null is actually the ‘unmarked’ value whentalking about null subjects. In the analysis of persistence, the question is raised of whethera persistence e;ect only concerns the marked or also the unmarked value, particularly inunevenly distributed data. In other words, if 95% of all tokens are overt, should a sequenceof overt–overt be considered “primed”? This is the default case – to be expected in 90.25%of all instances (95% of 95%). The “exceptional” case, on the other hand, is a sequenceof null–null, which is only likely to occur in 0.25% of instances (5% of 5%). Sequencesof overt–null or null–overt should both account for 4.75% of tokens (5% of 95% and viceversa).

When comparing Travis’ study with that by Cameron and Flores-Ferrán (2004), this lineof reasoning seems legitimate. In the latter study, the authors observe an (intuitively plau-sible) e;ect of overt pronouns (the ‘exceptional’ scenario) favouring other overt pronouns(cf. Table 9.2). Travis, however, does not find a priming e;ect for 1–1 sequences, but onlyfor 0–0 sequences (which is ‘normal’). While it remains unclear why she tests both 1–1 and0–0 sequences, her result should be the same as Cameron and Flores-Ferrán’s: that 1–1 isprimed but 0–0 is not, simply by virtue of being the default/unmarked sequence.

In actuality, this – in the present author’s opinion – simply means that what Travisidentifies as “priming” is an artefact of the data (distribution). Table 9.4 is an attempt toreconstruct the distribution of primed sequences in Travis’ data (based on her Table 5, cf.Travis 2007: 123). Please note that these figures are only approximations, as the data setsused in the full statistical run (2007: 115) and the testing of persistence e;ects (2007:123) di;er slightly. It is assumed that the basic distribution of null and overt subjects stillholds. Table 9.4 lists the overall distribution of null and overt subjects in columns two andthree. Column four displays the percentages for 0–0 clusters, column five those for 1–1

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clusters. From those values, expected percentages can be calculated and compared withobserved values, as shown in the second and third part of the table.

When trying to replicate Travis’ statistics run with “repetition of form” as the dependentvariable, Rbrul returns the values in Table 9.5. As expected, the program only finds a‘priming e;ect’ for overt forms. However, this is exclusively owed to the distribution of thedata: overt–overt clusters should make up practically all of the data.

This masks the huge di;erence between ratios of 0–0 and 1–1, though. While 1–1 clustersbehave as expected (overt tokens make up some 95% of the data, so the likelihood of anovert pronoun to be preceded by another overt pronoun should also be 95%; in the PouchCove data, it is even slightly higher than this, namely 97.9%), 0–0 sequences show adramatically higher clustering e;ect: 13.7% (vs. an input of 4.61%). In other words, 0–0clusters are three times more frequent than we would expect them to be based on the ‘nullhypothesis’, i.e. the distribution of the data alone (without any clustering e;ects).127

study % null % overt % rep. of form – null % rep. of form – overtTravis (2007) 66 34 75 57

Wagner (2012) 4.61 95.39 13.7 97.9

expected clusters % 0–0 % 1–1 % 1–0 + 0–1Travis (2007) 66 of 66 = 43.56 34 of 34 = 11.56 44.88

Wagner (2012) 4.61 of 4.61 = 0.21 95.39 of 95.39 = 90.99 8.8

observed clusters % 0–0 % 1–1 % 1–0 + 0–1Travis (2007) 75 of 66 = 49.5 57 of 34 = 19.38 31.12

Wagner (2012) 13.7 of 4.61 = 0.63 97.9 of 95.39 = 93.39 5.98

Table 9.4: Distribution of sequences of ‘repetition of form’ for Travis (2007), reconstructedfrom Travis (2007: 123), and the present study

factor log odds tokens appl. input/total centred weightovert 2.819 8,029 0.979 0.944null -2.819 389 0.141 0.056

Table 9.5: Replication of Travis’ (2007) factor group ‘repetition of form’ – results fromlogistic regression

The detailed comparison of Travis’ study with the present one reveals that both studiesmake exactly the same observations:

a) there is a very noticeable increase in the observed ‘unexpected’ clusters: 1–1 forTravis – from 34% to 57%; 0–0 for this study – from 4.61% to 13.7%

b) this increase is not significant in either of the studies, simply because those ‘unusual’sequences are vastly outnumbered by the ‘unmarked’ values in general and by clustersof unmarked values (i.e. 0–0 for Travis, 1–1 for this study) in particular

127 This Rbrul run supposedly explains more than 50% of the observed variation (R2 = 0.542), which shouldalready serve as an indication that something is conceptually wrong with the model : one factor groupalone rarely reaches such a level of significance.

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c) the ‘usual’ clusters also each show an increase from expected to observed clusters,but it is by no means as dramatic

d) in both data sets, using ‘repetition of form’ as dependent variable masks the real prim-ing e;ect, namely the one in the ‘unusual’ clusters; instead, priming is (supposedly)found for the expected clusters (0–0 in Travis’ study, 1–1 in this one)

In conclusion, we must thus interpret Travis’ ‘priming e;ect’ as an artefact of her data/thedistribution of the data. When applying the same methodology to the Pouch Cove data,this is clearly the case.

9.3.4 Persistence in Toronto English

The interpretation taken here was that of the priming e;ect applying to the speaker’smental state, rather than a discourse-level priming e;ect (in which case one wouldexamine continuity across tokens from the speaker and the interviewer). For this reason,the ‘preceding subject’ referred to the nearest preceding token within the variablecontext which was spoken by the interviewee. (Marr 2011: 26)

It should be noted that the coding procedure as Marr describes it here contradicts herearlier coding strategy of extracting only the directly preceding and following tokens. Inorder to code for ‘preceding subject’ in such a way, she must go back to the interviewee’slast subject, ignoring any intervening material uttered by the interviewer. The ‘precedingsubject’ group is also used to calculate “expected rates” of priming, which is based on thefact that the coding procedure produces sequences of 1–0–1 (null tokens as the basis plusthe overt subject immediately to the left and immediately to the right of each null token).

Unfortunately, Marr’s description of the theoretically possible and actually observed casesis far from clear. Her coding procedure is however of essential importance as her findingsfor persistence e;ects are based on the coding scheme. If the scheme is problematical oreven faulty, the results have to be taken with caution. Based on Marr’s extraction method,she expects to find three di;erent types of tokens (A, B, C; Marr 2011: 46).

A) “overt tokens preceded by other overt tokens (these are the tokens preceding eachovert token)”; i.e. 1–1–0 sequences (token in question in boldface)

B) “null tokens preceded by overt tokens (the tokens selected by virtue of being null)”;i.e. 1–0 sequences – the left half of the extracted 1–0–1 sequences

C) “overt tokens preceded by null tokens (the tokens following each null token)”; i.e. 0–1sequences, the right half of the extracted 1–0–1 sequences

On the following page, Marr states that scenario B) should not exist (“[o]f those tokenspreceded by null tokens (B), none should be null”; Marr 2011: 47) and makes clear thatshe is talking about null tokens preceded by other null tokens (i.e. 0–0 sequences ratherthan, as was stated on the previous page, 1–0 sequences). Scenarios A) + C) should eachaccount for 50% of her data.

When comparing expected with actually observed frequencies, Marr registers only a slightdiscrepancy for the rates of overt subjects preceding null tokens. As expected, the rate isaround 50%. However, some 20% of null tokens are preceded by other null subjects – apriming e;ect (cf. Figure 4.17, Marr 2011: 47). In the present author’s opinion, Marr’sfindings only make sense if we make the following coding assumptions:

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9.4 Persistence e;ects in the present study

A) null tokens preceded by overt tokens – the left half of the extracted sequences: 1–0–1

B) null tokens preceded by null tokens – the priming scenario: 0–0–1

C) overt tokens preceded by null tokens – the right half of the extracted sequences:1–0–1

• of all A) tokens, 100% should be overt; of all C) tokens, 0% should be overt; i.e. A)and C) together have a rate of 50–50 null–overt

• in the absence of clustering e;ects, tokens of type B) should not exist

‘Preceding subject’ is not included in Marr’s Goldvarb analyses because, as the authorclaims, “[d]ue to the coding method, we cannot directly gauge the e;ect of precedingsubject realization” (Marr 2011: 46). Why exactly ‘preceding subject’ is treated di;erentlyfrom all other factor groups – which are based on the same coding method/assumptions –remains unclear.

9.3.5 Persistence effects in studies on null subjects – summary of previousfindings

The previous sections have illustrated that persistence is both an interesting but also ratherdi<cult category to investigate. In studies on Spanish, persistence definitely plays an impor-tant role, but its e;ects are not constant and other factors are generally more significant(cf. studies by Cameron and Flores-Ferrán). Persistence also interacts with other factorssuch as switch reference (cf. Cameron and Flores-Ferrán 2004), TAM and genre (cf. Travis2007), which makes generalisations on its e;ect di<cult. The outcome that would supportpersistence in connection with null/overt subjects most strongly only rarely has the desiredstrength when tested for significance. in Spanish, this would be represented by an overtsubject favouring a subsequent overt subject, that is the ‘exceptional’ form triggers anotherexceptional form.

For English, persistence e;ects in the desirable direction – i.e. a null subject favouringanother null in the subsequent slot. However, they can only be assumed so far, since themethod of data extraction in all previous studies did not allow for it to be tested statistically.This gap will be filled in the discussion below.

9.4 Persistence effects in the present study

As discussed earlier, the factor group including all variables that play a role in persistence– turn boundary, value of preceding token, switch reference – was not used in the mainmodel because of interaction e;ects with other FGs caused by small cell sizes. An exclusionof the interacting FG results in a poorer model, which is why the general model was givenpreference in the end.

Table 9.6 shows the reduced Rbrul run. The strength of the factors very nicely reflects theimportance of persistence. It is by far the most significant factor group overall, with a hugespread in the input distribution (2.1 to 25.5%). Recall that the combination of three binaryfactor groups into one FG with six factors may in fact have strengthened the e;ect (basedon Roy’s observation that linguistic factor groups are more likely to lose significance if theyare binary; cf. Roy 2009, 2011 and Bergsma, Croon and Hagenaars 2009: 4). In comparisonwith the main model, turn length and VP complexity switch places. Verb type and crossed

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subject slot/word number were not included in this model (because of interactions). Sex(p=0.502), 1% verbs (p=0.116), religion (p=0.0204) and interviewer (p=0.146) do notreach the significance threshold.

The internal constraints ranking of the FG ‘persistence’ shows a very consistent e;ect:The primary factor responsible for a favouring e;ect is ‘value of preceding token’. Bothfactors including a preceding null favour null subjects very strongly and are in fact the onlyfactors to do so. Same/switch reference does not play a role here. We see that the presenceof a turn boundary has a positive e;ect (although not quite a favouring one); once more,same/switch reference is only of secondary relevance: Same referent tokens always favournull subjects a bit more than switch reference tokens, but the other subgroups – value ofpreceding token and turn boundary – clearly take precedence.

factor group/factor log odds total appl. input/ centred weighttotalpersistence

same reference, preceding null 1.530 110 0.255 0.822switch reference, preceding null 1.428 111 0.225 0.807diff. turn, same ref., prec. overt -0.392 1,067 0.095 0.403diff. turn, switch ref., prec. overt -0.786 1,719 0.059 0.313same turn, same ref., prec. overt -0.795 2,303 0.029 0.311same turn, switch ref., prec. overt -0.985 3,091 0.021 0.272

verb phrase complexity4 1.086 265 0.121 0.7483 0.370 1,772 0.073 0.5912 -0.140 4,279 0.045 0.4651 -1.316 2,087 0.017 0.212

turn length1 0.740 912 0.135 0.6772 0.228 978 0.075 0.5573 -0.274 806 0.043 0.432

3 -0.693 5,704 0.027 0.333clause type

main 1.065 6,781 0.056 0.744subordinate -1.065 1,620 0.006 0.256

age20 0.506 428 0.091 0.624

55–69 0.495 849 0.086 0.62135–54 -0.097 4,849 0.042 0.476

70 -0.290 1,223 0.036 0.42825–34 -0.614 1,052 0.025 0.351

centreddeviance 000df intercept grand mean input prob. Nagelkerke’s R2

2597.56800 17 -2.883 0.046 0.053 0.2

Factor strengths (p-values):

persistence (7.92e-46) + VP complexity (1.38e-25) + turn length (4.66e-19) + clausetype (1.82e-18) + age (4.66e-07) [A]

Table 9.6: Null subjects – results from logistic regression (including threefold factor group‘persistence’)

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9.4 Persistence e;ects in the present study

The same holds for the Goldvarb model which can be found in Table C.11 in Appendix C.However, comparable to the main model, Goldvarb’s ranges once more indicate a di;erentconstraint ranking than suggested by the order of selection of factors in the step-up run.The ranking according to the ranges is 1. VP complexity, 2. Persistence, 3. Clause type,4. Turn length, 5. Age. Once more, the actual order of selection is identical with Rbrul’s:1. Persistence, 2. VP complexity, 3. Turn length, 4. Clause type, 5. Age. Given the expe-rience gained throughout this study, we can assume with some confidence that Goldvarb’s(weighted) factor weights should not be taken as the best indicator of constraint rankings.

It can thus be concluded that – among the three factor groups making up persistence– value of preceding token has by far the strongest e;ect on null subject realisation. Ofcourse, this finding corresponds with the results for the general model, where ‘value ofpreceding token’ was the only factor group which was maintained. Neither of the remainingtwo FGs, turn boundary and switch reference, were selected as significant in the generalmodel – but as mentioned previously, turn boundary was excluded from the model earlierthan switch reference, which almost reached significance (cf. Table 8.1).

The behaviour of those FGs comes as no surprise now when looking at the log odds eachfactor involving these FGs is assigned: The FGs involving turn boundary pattern together,but those for switch reference do not – each time, the other category involved is the decisiveelement in the ranking of constraints.

Tabelle3

Seite 1

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.250

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

ratio null

ratio

nul

l-nul

l

Figure 9.1: Persistence e;ects for individual speakers

Persistence e;ects in the Pouch Cove data are not only owed to a few speakers. Figure 9.1illustrates persistence (0–0 clusters) for individual speakers: the overall null subject ratioper speaker is plotted against the ratio of 0–0 clusters. The trendline shows that there is apositive e;ect: the majority of speakers are much more likely to use null-null clusters thanwe would expect and are thus situated above the trendline.

In summary, the distribution of data shows that there is a clear persistence e;ect for 0–0clusters in the Pouch Cove data. This e;ect is confirmed as statistically highly significant

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and is owed mostly to the factor (group) ‘value of preceding token’, which has a muchstronger e;ect on the variation than turn boundary or switch reference. The latter is in factcompletely negligible in the present context; this is a major di;erence in comparison withstudies on Spanish, where switch reference was practically always found to be significant.However, none of those studies tested for both of the other e;ects.

Put di;erently, in the present data set, a null subject is likely to be followed by another nullsubject, regardless of switch reference or turn boundary status. Moreover, a same-referentsubject is always the tiniest bit more likely to be null than a switch-referent subject. Thiscan be gleaned from the fact that ‘same reference’ is always ranked higher than ‘switchreference’ in each of the six factors making up the FG ‘persistence’. The examples in (54)and (55) are nice illustrations of ‘persistence of type’ playing a bigger role than same/switchreference factors. For some examples, reconstructing the context is indeed rather di<cultbecause of the switch in reference between the null tokens.

(54) Yeah. Once mum, our mum, we were askin’ now can we go here, can we go there,she said no, when she said no, that was it. Ø Ø?would Go to pop, pop, no, ask yourmother. Ø Ø?would Go back to mum again, no, I said no and that’s it. No, that’sit. No go. (MUNFLA C14663)

(55) a. House: Ø Told you, Ø can’t trust people. (House 101)

b. House: Ø Ø Can’t get a picture, Ø Ø gonna have to get a thousand words.(House 101)

c. House: Good morning, Dr. Cuddy! Ø Love that outfit. Ø Says, I’m professional,but I’m still a woman. (House 106)

d. House: Ø Know all about it. Multiple treatments, multiple surgeries. Ø Makingreal progress. Ø Fixed everything but the legs. (House 109)

e. House: Ø Need a consult.Wilson: Ø Ø With a patient. (House 113)

f. House: Ø Just give me a second. Ø Always wanted to use one of these.(House 115)

g. House: Ø Don’t have TiVo on this thing, Ø can’t rewind. Ø Shut up.(House 120)

h. Foreman: Ø Came in late. Ø Had a good time last night?128 (House 120)

i. Patient: I gave him an early graduation gift, old plumb I found. Ø Looks likea fishing weight. Ø Put it on a keychain so he’d always remember where hecame from. (House 205)

9.5 The role of repetition

Repetition [...] is characterized by an unstable balance between variance and invariance,sameness and di;erence, old and new: from the very moment something is repeated,is ceases to be the same. (Bazzanella 2011: 248)

128 Note that had allows for the interpretation of the overt sentence being You had a good time last night?,i.e. a question without inversion or operator; since the show is American, the version with the deletedoperator should be Did you have . . . , which would then be shortened to Ø Have a good time, not ØHad a good time.

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In an early experimental study on repetition of prepositions, Levelt and Kelter (1982) focuson word repeats (their term) in question-answer pairs. In di;erent experiments/conditionswith emphasis on di;erent parameters, they establish a clear correspondence e;ect in theirmost basic experiment: There is an “answerer’s tendency to match the surface form of thequestion as far as the prepositional structure is concerned” (Levelt and Kelter 1982: 83).The results suggest that even with interference (intervening material, distractions etc.),the likelihood for speakers to repeat material is higher than chance (Levelt and Kelter 1982:97). All experiments confirm “that speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk,their own or their interlocutor’s” (Levelt and Kelter 1982: 103).

The role of repetition definitely warrants more attention in future studies on null subjects.The following paragraphs o;er but a glimpse of the phenomenon: At least 10% of all nullsubjects in the data analysed here occur in expressions that can be classified as instancesof repetition or pseudo-repetition. The latter involves a speaker repeating at least one(element of a) structure that was used in the previous turn. Changes may occur in a numberof respects, e.g. vocabulary choice, tense and/or aspect. Overall, though, a parallelism willbe clearly detectable. The examples in (57) to (58) represent some typical instances of(pseudo-)repetitions involving di;erent types of null subjects from this study’s corpora. Inmany ways, repetitions represent the most extreme case of persistence – one speaker’sutterance, including a null subject, is repeated one-to-one by another speaker.

(56) Repetitions with persistence of type (null–null)a. A. Ø Ø Be hard not to go.

B. Ø Ø Ø Hard not to go, yeah. (PC023)b. A. No he used to snare rabbits.

B. Ø Ø Snare rabbits. (PC010)c. A. Did you ever see any wheels around here with the groove in the door there?

B. No, Ø never did.C. Ø Never saw one like that. (MUNFLA C2815)

d. A. Did you ever hear them singing songs when they used hook mats or any-thing?B. No, Ø never did.A. Ø Never heard that, eh? (MUNFLA C2812)

e. A. they cut o; some of it and –B. Oh Ø made it into two like.A. No Ø just made it into one. It was a long double house.B. Oh okay. (PC002)

f. Stacy: I’m just curious. Ø Ø Nothing wrong with that.House: No, Ø Ø nothing wrong with that. (House 203)

g. Foreman: Ø Ø Been looking for you.House: Ø Ø Been avoiding you. (House 212)

(57) Repetitions without persistence of type (switch overt–null)a. A. You said you fished all your life?

B. Ø Fished all my life that was right boy. (MUNFLA C4549)b. A. You also played softball and soccer.

B. Ø Played softball and soccer. (PC018)c. A. Oh yeah, you weren’t worried about that.

B. Ø Wasn’t worried about the ghost. (PC014)

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d. A. All the same. And you’re United church or were christened United church?B. Ø Was christened United church, spent all my time goin’ Catholic school.

(PC019)e. A. Yeah. You didn’t get much out of it.

B. Ø Never got much out of it. (MUNFLA C14666)f. A. Yeah. But you went fishing early in the morning or what?

B. Ø Went fishing early in the morning, yeah. (MUNFLA C14667)g. A. Really? You had it frozen or what?

B. Ø Had it fried, the first caplin. (MUNFLA C14667)h. A. No, we’d sell it in town.

B. (unclear) Some of it (/unclear) Ø [would] sell in town, . . .(MUNFLA C14667)

(58) Pseudo-repetitions

a. A. My Grandfather was a boat builder. Grandfather (gap ’last name’).B. Oh yeah. Ø Built all kinds o’ boats. (PC001)

b. A. Maybe her sister Mary went away with her too, but she never did comehome.B. Ø Never came back. (PC005)

c. A. We had a blackboard. That’s somethin’ they don’t have now.B. Ø Don’t have blackboards? (PC006)

d. A. No, he was afraid that Fred Noseworthy wouldn’t tell us nothing aboutthe ghosts.B. Ø Wouldn’t tell you no frightening stu;. (PC010)

e. A. Now what about hunting, dad, did you guys go hunting?B. Ø didn’t do much hunting, no. (PC012)

f. A. Where did you work in the past? Have you, did you work in Pouch Cove,did you ever work in Pouch Cove? B. Ø Never worked in Pouch Cove. A.Ø Always worked in town. (PC017)

g. A. How much did he make on it, do you know?B. Ø Made a fortune. (PC029)

While a number of authors have mentioned repetition in connection with null subjects,detailed studies on such a link have not yet been conducted. Arnold (2003: 226), forexample, states that “[p]arallel structures facilitate null reference, and nonparallel structuresfavor full forms in reference.”

Bazzanella (2011) discusses di;erent repetition types, with redundancy – i.e. the rep-etition of relevant information – as one subtype and pro-drop as an example (Bazzanella2011: 245). Furthermore, she identifies repetition as a “useful cognitive device (as a sim-plifying/clarifying device, a filler, and a support both for understanding and memorizing)”and “a powerful conversational and interactional resource” (Bazzanella 2011: 249). Majorforms/types of redundancy include monological (i.e. one speaker repeats something) vs.dialogical repetition (i.e. one speaker repeats something somebody else said; Bazzanella2011: 246-250), a di;erentiation other authors make as well:

In Oh (2005), the author only discusses intra-speaker repetition, but not repetition acrossturns. She finds zero anaphora (null subjects) typically occur as a self-referencing devicewhen a speaker disagrees with an interlocutor (“negatively valanced action”; “environmentof disagreement or disalignment”; 2005: 270, 272). Intra-speaker repetition is relatively rare

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in the data analysed here, but witness the following one, involving several variations on ‘go(to) ...’:

Yeah. Once mum, our mum, we were askin’ now can we go here, can we go there,she said no, when she said no, that was it. Ø Ø?would Go to pop, pop, no, ask yourmother. Ø Ø?would Go back to mum again, no, I said no and that’s it. No, that’s it.No go. (MUNFLA C14663)

Oh (2006), on the other hand, discusses examples of typical inter-speaker repetition whichare very similar to the ones presented here. In across-turn instances of repetition (cf.also Bazzanella’s subtypes mentioned earlier), the author assigns null subjects a functioncomplimentary to the one they fulfil in intra-speaker situations. However, Oh does not talkabout question-answer pairs like “(You) ever been to Paris?” – “Never been to Paris”, whichare typical in the interviews used here.

In a subset of such cases, zero anaphora occurs in the talk produced by the speakerin aligning with the prior speaker, oftentimes collaboratively completing the utteranceinitiated by the prior speaker. When employed for this purpose, zero anaphora is mostoften (though not necessarily) co-referential with the prior speaker’s self-referentialterm, that is, the first person pronoun I in the immediately preceding talk. It appearsthat by using zero anaphora instead of a recipient-reference term (i.e. you), the speakerdisplays that s/he is speaking ‘on behalf of’ the prior speaker, as a strong way ofdisplaying his/her understanding of the talk by the prior speaker, and aligningwith him/her. In response, the prior speaker often takes it up, resaying what theinterlocutor has said as his/her own talk, and/or providing an agreement token.

(Oh 2006: 835; boldface SW)

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Null Subjects in English: Persistence effects