English Null Subject Relative Clauses in the Arkansas Regional Variety
English Null Subject Relative Clauses in the Arkansas Regional Variety

Summary/Abstract: Modern Standard English does not license null subjects in finite clauses, making the subject an obligatory element whenever the verb is inflected for person, number and tense, even when the meager English morphology fails to show it. A rare exception to this rule are relative clauses in certain non-standard varieties of English in which the wh-word or that which would otherwise occupy the subject position are not pronounced. This seems to be a systematic feature of those varieties and it is claimed to be under the influence of sociolinguistic factors, such as the level of formality, and to appear under specific syntactic conditions. This paper will examine some of these factors by analyzing a regional dialect found in the southern United States as depicted in the speech of characters in the crime drama series "True Detective".

• Details
• Contents