Abstract This study uses a quantitative approach to investigate subject realization in 659 clauses in Uruangnirin, an endangered Austronesian language of eastern Indonesia. In this language, subjects may be referenced in the clause with an NP, pronoun or zero pronoun, and they are optionally indexed on the verb. We establish that the most common combination is to drop the subject in the clause while indexing it on the verb. We find that verbs are more likely to be inflected if the subject of the clause is a speech act participant (SAP), if it is a zero pronoun or an NP, or if it is a patient. When comparing overt subject expression with zero expression we find that non-SAPs, subjects of transitive clauses, new subjects and subjects with high referential distance are more likely to be expressed as an NP. We also identify variables that play a role in the choice of alternative strategies.
Faghiri et al. (Sat,) studied this question.