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#EnglishSyntax

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Anna Nicholson<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://woof.group/@aphyr" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>aphyr</span></a></span> <span class="h-card"><a href="https://chaosfem.tw/@theogrin" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>theogrin</span></a></span> Most people in the replies seem to have addressed the typographical conventions of italics or asterisks to distinguish stage directions etc.</p><p>But as an erstwhile syntactician, I’m much more interested in the syntax, which is an example of pro-drop (omission of a pronominal subject) in English</p><p>Off the top of my head, I can think of these instances of English pro-drop:</p><p>• Imperatives (implied 2nd person subject)</p><p>• A few elliptical responses (implied 1st person subject) such as ‘Done!’, ‘Got it!’, ‘Will do!’</p><p>• Journalling style (usually only in writing, past tense, implied 1st person subject), e.g. ‘Got up. Went downstairs. Had breakfast.’</p><p>… and …</p><p>• Stage directions (usually only in writing, narrative present tense, implied 3rd person subject)</p><p>Asterisk-bracketed asides in social media posts seem like stage directions – with the added twist that the implied third-person subject is the writer of the post!</p><p>A sequence of posts could be read as a play, as each ‘actor’ in a conversation is clearly labelled, so it makes sense that there would be stage directions too</p><p>*ducks for cover*</p><p><a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/syntax" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>syntax</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/EnglishSyntax" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>EnglishSyntax</span></a> <a href="https://eldritch.cafe/tags/ProDrop" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ProDrop</span></a></p>
Dr. Angus Andrea Grieve-Smith<p>Northampton, MA. Is it just my feeling, or has the use of the &quot;you&quot; vocative been declining in American English? <a href="https://lingo.lol/tags/linguistics" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>linguistics</span></a> <a href="https://lingo.lol/tags/HistoricalLinguistics" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>HistoricalLinguistics</span></a> <a href="https://lingo.lol/tags/EnglishSyntax" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>EnglishSyntax</span></a></p>
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