[Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"
Martin Haspelmath
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de
Wed Jul 7 11:12:37 UTC 2021
Here's a new version of the definition that addresses Ian's point about
Korean:
"A personal pronoun is a form that (i) denotes a speech role
(speaker/producer and/or hearer/comprehender) OR that is an anaphoric
form which does not contain a noun AND (ii) that can be used in a
complement clause coreferentially with a matrix clause argument."
By saying "anaphoric form *that does not contain a noun*", we exclude
the Korean case where 'brother' can be used coreferentially. Maybe one
should add "ordinary noun" or "a noun that can be used indefinitely",
because someone might claim, for example, that Spanish "usted" is still
a noun (e.g. because it has the noun-like plural "usted-es").
Guillaume Segerer remarked that "pronoun" implies that it is not a noun,
but my proposed definition of "personal pronoun" does not say that a
personal pronoun is "a kind of pronoun", because I don't know how to
define "pronoun" (with such traditional terms, an extensional definition
is often all we can give, e.g. "/pronoun/ is a cover term for /personal
pronoun/, /interrogative pronoun/, ...")
Re Mira's point about deictic uses of 3rd-person personal pronouns: I
would say that this is not definitional – if a 3rd-person form cannot be
used anaphorically, it will not be called "personal pronoun". But of
course, personal pronouns often have other uses as well in particular
languages. Comparative concepts rarely map perfectly onto
language-particular categories.
Guillaume also mentions person indexes (which are often included in
personal pronoun charts), and this led me to look again at what I said
in my 2013 paper about person indexes: I distinguish between
cross-indexes, gramm-indexes, and pro-indexes, and the latter are
actually included in "pronoun" (contrasting with "free pronouns"). So I
now say that "a personal pronoun is a form that..." (not "a personal
pronoun is a free form that...").
Best,
Martin
Am 06.07.21 um 20:48 schrieb Mira Ariel:
>
> But what about (not so common, but attested) deictic references
> (first-mention) to 3^rd person using "personal pronouns"?
>
> Mira
>
> *From:*Lingtyp [mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Martin Haspelmath
> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 6, 2021 1:48 AM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"
>
> Maybe the following will work:
>
> "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."
>
> 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).
>
> It seems that personal pronouns need to be delimited from three types
> of somewhat doubtful forms:
>
> – person indexes (I do not include bound forms under "personal
> pronoun" here, following my 2013 paper on person indexes:
> https://zenodo.org/record/1294059 <https://zenodo.org/record/1294059>)
> – demonstratives
> – titles like "Your Majesty"
>
> 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:
>
> (a) "My sister(i) thinks that that-one(i) has an answer."
> (b) "Does your-majesty(i) think that your-majesty(i) has an answer?"
>
> 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.
>
> I don't think we need the general notion of "person" to define
> "personal pronoun". Wikipedia's current definition is therefore quite
> confusing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun>).
>
> 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).
>
> Best,
> Martin
>
> Am 06.07.21 um 06:53 schrieb JOO, Ian [Student]:
>
> Dear typologists,
>
> I’m having a hard time trying to find a definition of a “personal
> pronoun”.
> One definition is that a personal pronoun refers to a literal
> person, a human being. But then again, non-human pronouns like
> English /it/ are also frequently included as a personal pronoun.
> Another definition seems to be that “personal” refers to a
> grammatical person and not a literal person. Thus, /it/ refers to
> the (non-human) 3rd person, therefore it is a personal pronoun.
> But then again, demonstratives, interrogative, and indefinite
> pronouns also refer to the 3rd person. (This /is/ a book, who /is
> /that man, anything /is /possible) Then are they also personal
> pronouns?
> What’s the clearest definition of a personal pronoun, if any?
>
>
> From Hong Kong,
>
> Ian
>
>
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> --
> Martin Haspelmath
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Deutscher Platz 6
> D-04103 Leipzig
> https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522 <https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522>
--
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.shh.mpg.de/employees/42385/25522
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