<div style="line-height:1.7;color:#000000;font-size:14px;font-family:Arial"><div style="margin: 0;">Hi, Ian</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;">Great quesition!</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;">The primary function of personal pronouns is to be associated with speech roles. So the prototypical personal pronouns may be dialogistically defined as shifters, to 'refer' to only addressors and addressees, socalled 1st and 2nd person pronouns. And 3rd person is often negatively defined as to be non-addressor and non-addressee. YOur question may also be related to the situation why a considerable proportion of languages in the world <i>lack </i>what are traditionally defined as third-person pronouns. </div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><div style="margin: 0;">However, 3rd person pronoun, if any, is systemically different from demonstratives, interrogatives, and NPs even if the latter can 'refer' to non-1 or non-2 person, such as morphological structures, syntactic behaviors.</div><div style="margin: 0;"><br></div><p style="margin: 0;">Jeremy</p><div style="position:relative;zoom:1"><p style="margin: 0">--</p><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,</div><div>No.5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing, China; 100732</div><div style="clear:both"></div></div><div id="divNeteaseMailCard"></div><p style="margin: 0;"><br></p><p>At 2021-07-06 12:53:09, "JOO, Ian [Student]" <ian.joo@connect.polyu.hk> wrote:</p><blockquote id="isReplyContent" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Dear typologists,</span><br>
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<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">I¡¯m having a hard time trying to find a definition of a ¡°personal pronoun¡±.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">One definition is that a personal pronoun refers to a literal person, a human being. But then again, non-human pronouns like English </span><em style="font-family:Times New Roman">it</em><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"> are
also frequently included as a personal pronoun.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Another definition seems to be that ¡°personal¡± refers to a grammatical person and not a literal person. Thus, </span><em style="font-family:Times New Roman">it</em><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"> refers to
the (non-human) 3rd person, therefore it is a personal pronoun.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">But then again, demonstratives, interrogative, and indefinite pronouns also refer to the 3rd person. (This </span><em style="font-family:Times New Roman">is</em><span style="font-family:Times New Roman"> a book, who </span><em style="font-family:Times New Roman">is </em><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">that
man, anything </span><em style="font-family:Times New Roman">is </em><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">possible) Then are they also personal pronouns?</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">What¡¯s the clearest definition of a personal pronoun, if any?</span></div>
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From Hong Kong,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
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