Abstract This paper discusses the phenomenon of pronoun deletion in sentence-initial position in Dutch informal speech. The deletion is constraint by the recoverability condition of an identifiable antecedent. It will be argued that the deletion of a d-pronoun is ‘topic drop’. Dropped topic d-pronouns are subject to the same syntactic conditions as overt topic d-pronouns (Auteur, Nederlandse Taalkunde 2010). Like the topic d-pronoun, the dropped d-pronoun refers to a unique antecedent in the discourse, the preceding focus constituent. A dropped p-pronoun, by contrast, does not have a unique antecedent. It cannot be analyzed as discourse topic drop. The referential properties of p-pronouns are more free. Therefore, dropping a p-pronoun is more limited. In written texts, it may solely occur as subject maintenance with 3rd person and 1st person pronouns.