| Sumario: | The goal of this study is to show how contextual information, in the form of same reference and knowledge, accounts for the vast majority of the 3096 null subjects in a sample of Andalusian Spanish from Puente Genil, a town of 30,000 people located 42 miles south of Córdoba. The specific proposal is that a hearer can identify the referent of a null subject for a verb whenever it is indicated through same reference, that is by having the same subject as the previous verb, or through knowledge, which takes the form textual knowledge, based on information provided by the speaker in the text of the conversation, or extra-textual knowledge, derived from shared or general knowledge or from the situation. The results show that the null subjects of 1604 verbs (52%) are explained through same reference and 1169 (32%) are explained through knowledge. This leaves only 318 null subjects (10% of the total) unexplained once contextual information is taken into account. Thus, contextual information plays an important role in helping hearers identify the referents of null subject verbs.
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