personal indices and personal pronouns

[W. Schulze]

Matthew's comments on Claude's message are indeed very helpful and draw our
attention to some core issues of typology (I especially enjoyed the third
paragraph of Matthew's message). Nevertheless, I have to add that some of his
statements etc. raise additional problems which I want to briefly address
(although I'm not sure whether the audience still is interested in this
exchange - if not, please excuse!).

Matthew wrote:

> There is an important distinction between pronouns, which occur in
> paradigmatic opposition to full noun phrases, and pronominal indices, which
> are not noun phrases, and which freely co-occur with full noun phrases, and
> which are restricted to coding pronominal features of a particular clausal
> argument, like subjects. In this sense, Hausa /ya/ is is a pronominal index,
> not a pronoun.

My concern is that pronouns are said to "occur in paradigmatic opposition to
full noun phrases". Perhaps, this statement too strongly relies on the notion
of 'pro-noun'. If I understand Matthew's term 'paradigmatic oppositon'
correctly, it means that pronouns (which type so ever) stand in say a
'co-hyponymic' relation to 'full noun phrases' sharing with them a peculiar
functional aspect, but differing from them in another. However, we should first
make clear whether we are talking about 'personal' pronouns in the strict sense
(SAP), of 'personal' pronouns in a broader sense (SAP + Anaphorics), or of
paradigms that involve 'personal' pronouns (SAP) *and* demonstratives. It is a
well-known fact that demonstratives behave more noun-like that 'true'
SAP-pronouns, especially when functioning as anaphorics (which makes sense).
If we define 'nouns' as a cluster of referential and qualitative properties of
a concept, we may say that 'non-personne' pronouns deictically refer to the
referential domain, leaving the 'qualifying' segment open to inference. In this
sense, they are deixes of '(referential) existence' and share with nouns just
this notion of 'existence'.

Personal pronouns, however, are completely different: There are several ways to
analyze the conceptual layer of EGO, TU etc., and it immediately comes clear
that cultural and communicative models heavily influence the conceptualization
of these entities. For instance, one model may favor the 'referential' reading
of these pronouns, construing EGO as a more or less 'time-stable' part of the
'Self' of a person, whereas TU is used to deictically refer to another 'Self'
present in a Speech Act. Here, EGO would have (auto)referential properties
coming close to those of nouns, whereas TU would be deictic in nature. Another
model may stress the 'origo' of a Speech Act disregarding any notions of
'Self'. Again, another model may conceptualize TU as being just a part of the
non-EGO world, associating TU with a sociocentric perspective, etc. etc. (there
are many more options).

In other words: The so-called 'paradigm' of personal pronouns may considerably
differ *in itself* as for those properties that are thought to be typical for
nouns. Hence, we cannot use 'reference' as the common denominator of 'personal'
pronouns and nouns. This observation brings us to another problem: 'Reference'
is generally thought to represent one of the universal features of linguistic
conceptualization, whatever the means to express the different types/degrees of
reference may be. Now, if we observe commonalities between 'nouns' and
'pronouns', we have to postulate an even more universal (and more 'abstract')
layer of language that overrides aspects of referentiality and that involves
both nouns and pronouns.

Matthew continues:

> To my mind, one of the most fundamental ideas of typology is that languages
> differ as to whether morphemes of the same functional or semantic category
> are affixes or separate words.

I do not want split hairs. Nevertheless, I think it is important to make a
difference between 'same' and 'similar'. If we take a fundamentally functional
perspective, we have to assume that everything in language is functional and
that every process influences the semantic, categorial, or functional layer of
the process input. In other words: An 'affix' can be similar to a given 'word'
in another language, but it cannot be the 'same', just *because* the one is an
affix, the other a 'word'.

> For any kind of affix, we ought to be able to find or at least imagine a
> language in which the same function is performed by a separate word,

Again, we should speak of 'similar' instead of 'same'. In addition, I do not
fully understand whether Matthew aims at unctions/categories in a 'natural'
language or to a metalanguage. If we 'imagine' such a 'word', it means nothing
but to construe a metalinguistic descriptor of the functional scope of a given
morpheme. Whether this would be a 'word' is a matter of definition. Personally,
I doubt whether we can speak of 'words' (a 'natural' language phenomenon) when
referring to a metalinguistic or conceptual layer.

Best,

Wolfgang
--
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze
Institut für Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft
Department 'Kommunikation und Sprachen' (Dep. II) - F 13/14
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
D-80539 München
Tel.: ++49(0)89-2180-2486 (Sekr.) / -5343 (Büro)
Fax: ++49(0)89-2180-5345
Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/wschulze