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<p>Dear all</p>
<p>The following may be trivial considerations, but :</p>
<p>- the expression "personal pronoun" contains the word "pronoun",
which in principle means an element that stands for a noun but
that is not a (proper) noun (thus excluding brother, Dad, Mum, Ian
etc.); the word "personal" evokes what we generally consider as
"persons", i.e. speech act participants as well as "3rd persons".</p>
<p>- there is a kind of tradition to limit the notion of "person" to
human beings. This is in contradiction with the fact that "it" may
be considered a personal pronoun (I would simply call it a
pronoun). This tradition is especially useful in noun class
languages, where 'it' can have many different forms. In many of
these languages, the 3rd person animate/human behaves differently
from others in at least a few contexts.</p>
<p>- in many descriptions, one find personal indices included in the
"personal pronouns" chart. Despite the fact that these are not
really pronouns, it is again useful to present the whole paradigms
of personal markers. Therefore, the expression "personal markers"
is more appropriate here.</p>
<p>- the question of delimiting personal pronouns from
demonstratives does not seem that difficult at first sight:
demonstratives may modify nouns, whereas personal pronouns may
not. In some languages of course, there may be no difference
between possessive pronouns and possessive modifiers, but that can
be viewed as a case of polyfunctionality.<br>
</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>Guillaume<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Le 06/07/2021 à 11:03, JOO, Ian
[Student] a écrit :<br>
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cite="mid:2d2ec96f-3356-411b-9c89-2dc4de54e7a4@Spark">
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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Dear
Martin,</span><br>
<br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">thank you for your
definition.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">But as for (b),
Korean can express (i) with any noun:</span></div>
<blockquote style="border-left-color: rgb(26, 188, 156); margin:
5px; padding-left: 10px; border-left-width: thin;
border-left-style: solid;">
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">(b) "Does
mom/dad/brother/Ian(i) think that mom/dad/brother/Ian(i) has
an answer?"</span></blockquote>
<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">So
that would classify any noun as a pronoun.</span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">The difficulty of
defining a personal pronoun seems to suggest that it’s not a
good category to begin with. Perhaps “definite pronoun”,
including “personal pronouns” and demonstratives, would be a
clearer category? It would be typologically more meaningful
since many languages don’t distinguish demonstratives from
(3sg) personal pronouns. </span><br>
<span style="font-family:Times New Roman">I’m trying to make
cross-linguistic matrices of personal pronouns (see below),
and for the moment I’m including demonstratives in the
matrices.</span><br>
<br>
<img style="max-width:100%;height:auto"
src="cid:E2530C591C8E49D9AB00BD45CD312A03"
moz-do-not-send="true"></div>
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<div name="messageSignatureSection"><br>
Regards,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
</div>
<div name="messageReplySection">On 6 Jul 2021, 4:49 PM +0800,
Martin Haspelmath <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de"><martin_haspelmath@eva.mpg.de></a>, wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="border-left-color: grey;
border-left-width: thin; border-left-style: solid; margin: 5px
5px;padding-left: 10px;">
Maybe the following will work:<br>
<br>
"A personal pronoun is a free form that (i) denotes a speech
role (speaker/producer and/or hearer/comprehender) OR that is
used as an anaphoric form AND (ii) that can be used in a
complement clause coreferentially with a matrix clause
argument."<br>
<br>
This is a disjunctive definition that brings together
locuphoric forms ('I', 'we', 'you') and 3rd-person anaphoric
(or "endophoric") forms, following the Western tradition (but
not following any kind of compelling logic).<br>
<br>
It seems that personal pronouns need to be delimited from
three types of somewhat doubtful forms:<br>
<br>
– person indexes (I do not include bound forms under "personal
pronoun" here, following my 2013 paper on person indexes:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://zenodo.org/record/1294059"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://zenodo.org/record/1294059</a>)<br>
– demonstratives<br>
– titles like "Your Majesty"<br>
<br>
I think that if a language has a form like "that-one" or
"your-majesty" that can be used coreferentially in a
complement clause, one will regard it as a personal pronoun:<br>
<br>
(a) "My sister(i) thinks that that-one(i) has an answer."<br>
(b) "Does your-majesty(i) think that your-majesty(i) has an
answer?"<br>
<br>
In German, the polite second-person pronoun "Sie" (which has
Third-Person syntax) can be used in (b), but the demonstrative
"die" can hardly be used in (a), so it would not count as a
personal pronoun (yet). However, in Hindi-Urdu and Mongolian,
as mentioned by Ian, the demonstrative can be used in this way
(I think), so it would count as a personal pronoun.<br>
<br>
I don't think we need the general notion of "person" to define
"personal pronoun". Wikipedia's current definition is
therefore quite confusing (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun</a>).<br>
<br>
Thanks for this interesting challenge, Ian! It seems to me
that quite a few of our traditional terms CAN be defined, but
their definitions are not obvious at all (and the textbooks
don't usually give the definitions).<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 06.07.21 um 06:53 schrieb JOO,
Ian [Student]:<br>
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cite="mid:66a4c893-715d-47c7-b19b-8caf055ce418@Spark">
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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman">Dear
typologists,</span><br>
<br>
<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>
</div>
<div name="messageSignatureSection"><br>
From Hong Kong,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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