Subject omission is gendered in English and Swedish

My student, Helen Pettersson, recently completed her MA dissertation on null subjects in English and Swedish text messages. She constructed some fake Whatsapp conversations, presented them to participants online, and asked for their judgements on various types of sentence. She wanted to know whether Swedish behaves like English in its acceptance of null subjects in colloquial registers, and as a sub-question, whether text messages are more like spoken English or like the more elliptical 'diary' register (things like Saw self in mirror today. Felt was growing fatter, which is OK in a diary but not in speech). Well, spoilers, in all the contexts she tested, English and Swedish are quite similar. But there was one way in which they differ, and it wasn't the topic of her dissertation but it is quite interesting.

Some of her stimuli presented a message with no prior context (it wasn't a reply to another text message) and asked her respondents what they thought the missing pronoun was: was it I, you, he, she, it, we, you (plural) or they? These were sentences like Might watch a film later. We expected that the majority of people would choose I, because that's what we know null subjects most commonly refer to in English, probably because it's the most accessible referent (you're more likely to be talking about yourself than someone else). But we also thought that there would be some variation, as it's perfectly possible that it could refer to someone else.

Here are the results for Swedish:

Mostly I (jag), as expected, with a smattering of the others, mostly He and She. Funnily enough, there are quite a few more participants who went with he when the sentence was about having broken a mirror - perhaps because boys are clumsy? 

And here are the results for English: 

There are lots more votes for they than in the Swedish data, and I wonder if this is because people were allowing it to be singular they, as in the pronoun used when it's an unspecified person involved with no known gender or possibly even number, as well as the third person plural pronoun. But in addition, just look at how many more votes the masculine pronoun got than the feminine! This is really a striking difference from Swedish, and I'm not aware of any particular reason for this, which makes it all the more intriguing.

Swedish words of the year

Why Swedish? Well, why not. They're so much better than our boring old candidates for this honour, anyway. 


One I like is åsiktstaliban. It means 'opinion taliban'. Perhaps related is attitydinkontinens, which if you read it carefully says 'attitude incontinence', or an inability to keep your opinions to yourself. 

As proof (if we needed it) that knowing the etymology doesn't affect your use of a word, they have juholtare, which describes 'a situation when someone says something hastily and then has to take it back', and terja, which is to manipulate a photograph. Both handy words, and both come from the names of people you've probably never heard of if you're not Swedish. Håkan Juholt is the leader of the Social Democratic party and apparently keeps making rash and incorrect statements. Terje Hellesø is a nature photographer who confessed to having messed about with his photos (which won an award). This also makes him unusual in having a word based on his first name rather than his surname. 


appa, which means to solve a problem by using an app, is another good word which we simply don't have in English and I think might be usefully borrowed. We could just use app as a verb, as in:

What's the weather going to be like tomorrow? Hold on, I'll just app it.  

Some of the words are frankly bizarre. Take Säpojogg ('Säpo jog'), 

a term describing a run or race emulating how security service agents jogged in suits and ties behind a vehicle, such as at Crown Princess Victoria's wedding.

Why would you need such a word? Why would there be a race like that? 


And what about mobildagis ('mobile phone daycare')? It means  

a place for the collective storage of multiple mobile phones

What? What is such a place? Like the place in the house where everyone's phone lives? These crazy Swedes.