Languages without pronouns?

[Paolo Ramat]

Concerning Scott's reply to Elizabeth's question:
The real problem is, also in the che present case, to exactly define what we
mean by the categorial term 'PROnoun'. Do Port. "o senhor" + 3Sg/Pl. or
Sicil. "vossia/voscenza" belong to <<a closed set of  paradigmatically
related anaphoric forms>> ? If "o senhor" would completely substitute "ele"
and "eles" -as it seems to be the trend in Bras.Portug.- I wouldn't hesitate
to label "o senhor" as PRO. No doubt, however, that "o senhor" functionally
behaves as a full PRO: it <<serves the anaphoric and vocative functions
usually filled by pronouns>> (Scott). Such a form demonstrates that also the
categorial border between PROs and other word categories is a fuzzy area and
not a sharp line.

Paolo Ramat
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott DeLancey" <delancey at DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU>
To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 22:16
Subject: Re: Languages without pronouns?


> On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Elizabeth Ritter wrote:
>
> > I've been told that there are languages with NO pronouns.  Does anyone
> > know of any...and what does the language do instead?   Could such a
> > language have subject agreement for person and/or number and/or gender?
>
> This is often said about Southeast Asian languages (and sometimes about
> Japanese) with highly-elaborated systems of honorific reference.  These
> typically have an elaborate set of forms, all derived (some pretty
> transparently) from nouns, which serve the anaphoric and vocative
> functions usually filled by pronouns.  In Thai, for example, there are
> 25-30 or so of these.  And then kinship terms and various occupational
> titles (e.g. 'teacher') are also used in exactly the same ways.  So one
> can argue (I would, myself) that such languages don't have pronouns per
> se, i.e. a closed set of paradigmatically related anaphoric forms.
>
> None of the examples that I'm familiar with have any kind of verb
> agreement.
>
> Scott DeLancey
> Department of Linguistics
> 1290 University of Oregon
> Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA
>
> delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
> http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html
>