Actually, I agree with what I think is one thing
the article that Alxmrphi shared was saying. Oftentimes when English speakers "drop" pronouns it's more like we're just knowingly failing to pronounce them. I think we usually imagine the pronounce on some level before we say the sentence, even if we know full well we're not saying it.
Q: "What
is that?"
A: "...
Don't know."
Out of the blue.
"[I'm] going to the cinema."
If I were the answerer, I would probably have had no pretense in my mind of actually saying the word
"I", but I also probably would have thought it as I said the sentence. The article seems to be saying that it's similar to contractions in English, though for me personally, it feels rather different. (I don't think
"I am" when I say
"I'm") This might be dialectical or the result of education though.
There is another thing I noticed though:
Q: "What are you doing?"
A: "Eating ice-cream." (most common) or "I'm eating ice-cream." (almost as common), or "M'eating ice-cream." but never "Am eating ice-cream" (for most speakers).
This might be because the whole of
"eating ice-cream" is essentially an adjective (participial phrase?) (and looks exactly like a noun (gerund) phrase), and adjectives and noun phrases
absolutely can occur alone as answers to questions in spoken English, if they're replacing the
"question word" (
"what" in this case I think, even though
"doing" also is needed in the question). Many speakers will also use verbs without subjects (but possibly their other arguments) as answers to questions:
Q: "What did you do when you woke up?"
A: "Brush my teeth." or "Brushed my teeth." or "I brushed my teeth."
Q: "What will you do in the interview?"
A: "Just be myself." or "Be myself.", or "I'll just be myself." or "I'll just be myself." or maybe "I will just be myself."
Even people who do this (which I think is most English speakers) probably wouldn't say
"Am eating ice-cream", the full word
"am" only exists in the more formal/enunciated version of this sentence (
"I am eating ice-cream.") while the word
"I'm" is used in the informal unenunciated form. You will sometimes hear things like
"M'eating ice-cream.", with either a syllabic or a non-syllabic [m]. (usually non-syllabic if before a vowel)
That last parentheses meant
"(It is usually non-syllabic if it is before a vowel.)", and was an example of dropping both subject and verb, similar to the "Eating ice-cream." example. In writing, I believe this type of clause is supposed to be separated by a comma from the rest of a sentence, rather than being considered a separate sentence, but it confuses me when it's a parenthetical so I often write it that way.