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Can we use verbs like 'miss' and 'love' without the pronouns? I've heard people say things like

Miss you

Love you

I don't know why, but this doesn't sound idiomatic or grammatical to me.

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It is very idiomatic in informal speech to leave out a pronoun at the start of a sentence if it would be clear from context. The practice is called subject pronoun drop or diary drop:

Sentences in English are generally considered to require overt subjects. In a standard description of English, (1 a) below would be considered grammatical, while (1 b) would be considered ungrammatical:
(1)
(a) I walked the dog yesterday.
(b) Walked the dog yesterday.

But in fact this is not true. (1 b), and sentences like it lacking subject pronouns, are in fact common in colloquial spoken English. This phenomenon has a written counterpart in “diary drop” (Haegeman, 1990, 1997; Haegeman and Ihsane, 1999, 2001); subject pronouns can frequently be dropped in certain registers of written English, such as diaries but also including text messages, emails, and other forms of informal communication...

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  • ' Love you' sounds normal to me but miss you does not :-/
    – user68401
    Mar 9, 2018 at 16:52
  • @user68401 "Love you" is ubiquitous, but "miss you" is common as well.
    – Tashus
    Jan 14, 2019 at 18:55
  • It might help to add that diary drop requires that the missing subject be obvious from context. In a diary, for example, we can safely assume it is “I”, which would be horribly repetitive (nearly every sentence) if not dropped.
    – StephenS
    Apr 8, 2021 at 4:12
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It isn't. If the people were trying to be grammatical then they would need to begin each sentence with the subject, namely "I". But when expressing such emotions, grammar is probably not at the forefront of their minds.

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