The variability of subject expression has been extensively investigated
across languages. We present a large-scale multivariate statistical analysis of the
choice of subject expression in the 1st person singular in spontaneous Finnish
conversation, with a focus on the choice between pronominal and zero subject.
Spoken Finnish represents an interesting case, as the dominant type of subject
expression is double marking, i. e. the combination of a pronominal subject
marker (subject pronoun) and a verbal subject marker (person marking).
Siewierska (1999, From anaphoric pronoun to grammatical agreement marker:
Why objects don’t make it. Folia Linguistica 33(2). 225–251) notes that this type of
marking is typologically rare. Our findings indicate that the choice of subject
expression is affected by both constructional and cognitive/discourse factors,
and that an important role in the choice of subject expression is played by the
sequential structure of the conversation.