Thematic null subjects and accessibility *

.  Cole (2009) concludes that thematic null subjects occur where they are recovered both (a) by reference to an antecedent in context and (b) by subject verb agreement up to the point of morphological maximality, namely the maximum point up to which such agreement occurs in a language (with a tolerance for syncretisms). He also observes that recovery at (a) depends on the contextual strength of a language. This article develops the view that this contextual strength is best defined in terms of an adapted version of Ariel’s (1988, 1990, 1994, 2001) theory of accessibility.