Null Subjects in Northeast English

This paper presents data and analysis relating to null subjects in spoken colloquial English.

While English is not a „pro-drop? language (i.e. subjects must usually be overt), a corpus of

speech collected on Tyneside and Wearside in 2007 shows that null subjects are permitted in

finite clauses in certain contexts. This paper analyses these examples and follow-up

questionnaires, and compares the data with the other types of null subject described in the

literature (pro-drop, topic-drop, early null subjects, aphasics? null subjects and „diary-drop?),

ultimately concluding that the colloquial English phenomenon is most closely related to diary-

drop.