Motivations for first and second person subject expression and ellipsis in Javanese conversation

•First and second person subject ellipsis is the default in Javanese conversation.•Use of overt first and second person subjects is marked in Javanese interaction.•Overt subject use is motived by information flow, rhetorical structure and stance.•Politeness is not a primary motiving factor for ellipsis.•The discourse functions of subject expression afford its use to mark politeness.

This article examines first and second person subjects in a corpus of Javanese conversational data where ellipsis is common, and shows that ellipsis is best understood as the default mode for subject representation in conversational interaction in Javanese. Thus the relevant question is not why are subjects ellipted, but rather what motivates their overt expression. Discourse functions associated with overt expression include topic and rhetorical structure, contrast, expression of stance and constructed dialogue. Previous discussion in the literature has associated ellipsis in Javanese with politeness, however results of the present study strongly suggest that politeness is a secondary motivating factor for ellipsis. Precisely because ellipsis is so common due to its role as a discourse grammatical device, speakers are also afforded the opportunity to take advantage of ellipsis to mark social relationships through avoidance of explicit pronominal use when this is interactionally expedient.