[Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"
Martin Haspelmath
martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de
Fri Jul 9 12:57:27 UTC 2021
Dear all,
It’s actually very tricky to (retro-)define “pronoun” and related terms
in such a way that the definition corresponds to a large extent to the
legacy uses. Below I propose some definitions of ten terms that are
widely taken for granted. Can they be improved on? Four possible issues:
(i) There is no definition of the general term “pronoun” – I wouldn’t
know how to define it, other than by saying that the class comprises
personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite pronouns.
(ii) Sebastian is right that people often use “pronoun” elliptically to
mean “personal pronoun”, but I find this usage confusing.
(iii) Possessive pronouns are sometimes taken to be on a par with
personal pronouns (especially in the well-known Indo-European
languages), but I think they are best thought of as a special subtype of
personal pronouns.
(iv) “Pronouns” are often taken to be “noun-like” (because of the
etymology of “pro-noun”), but I include interrogative adverbs like
“when” and demonstrative adverbs like “there” (following widespread
usage, also in my 1997 book “Indefinite pronouns”).
Best,
Martin
Am 09.07.21 um 11:29 schrieb Sebastian Nordhoff:
> Dear all,
> I think it is useful to have a look at the context in which "personal
> pronoun" is used. There is an opposition to "possessive pronoun",
> "reflexive pronoun" etc. So "personal pronoun" is the kind of pronoun
> which is not possessive, which is not reflexive and so on.
>
> If only "pronoun" is used, without further qualification, normally
> "personal pronoun" is intended. If someone says "The pronouns of
> language X and language Y are similar", the standard interpretation
> would be that this refers to personal pronouns, rather than to reflexive
> pronouns or the like.
>
> Sometimes it is important to clearly state that you are not interested
> in possessive/reflexive/interrogative pronouns. In those cases "personal
> pronoun" is used. I see this as a shorthand for "subject/object pronoun".
>
> Obviously, there are languages with very neat 2x3 paradigms, and there
> are languages where the paradigms are fuzzy at the edges and you get kin
> terms for reference and various politeness effects.
>
> If one sees "personal pronoun" as "subject/object pronoun", the question
> of whether a given form (eg in Korean) is actually third person becomes
> moot.
>
> So, the fact that we call a certain set of items "personal pronouns" is
> probably due to a) opposition to other categories and b) tradition. It
> should not be taken to imply that the category of "person" plays any
> role in there. (After all, possessive pronouns also encode person, but
> AFAICS they are normally not considered personal pronouns).
> Best wishes
> Sebastian
_11 proposed definitions_
A *possessive pronoun *(or adpossessive pronoun) is a personal pronoun
that is used in adnominal possessive function.
A *personal pronoun* is (i) a locuphoric form or (ii) an anaphoric form
that is not a noun and that can be used in a complement clause
coreferentially with a matrix argument.
A locuphoric form (= a locuphor) is a form that denotes the
speaker/producer or the hearer/comprehender speech role.
An *anaphoric form *(or anaphoric pronoun) is a form that is primarily
used for anaphoric reference.
A *demonstrative (form)* is a form that can be used to direct the
interlocutors’ joint focus of attention to entities in the discourse
situation.
A *demonstrative determiner* is a demonstrative that fulfills its
function by occurring next to a noun in a nominal expression.
A *demonstrative pronoun* is a demonstrative that forms a nominal or
adverbial expression by itself without a noun.
An *interrogative (form)* is a form that can be used to specify the open
parameter in a constituent question.
An *interrogative determiner* is an interrogative that fulfills its
function by occurring next to a noun in a nominal expression.
An *interrogative pronoun *is an interrogative that forms a nominal or
adverbial expression by itself without a noun.
A *reflexive pronoun *is an anaphoric form that signals coreference with
an antecedent in the same clause and that forms a nominal by itself (cf.
Haspelmath 2021).
>
>
>
> __ __
>
> *From:*Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> *On Behalf Of
> *Martin Haspelmath
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 07, 2021 6:13 AM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"____
>
> __ __
>
> 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
> <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
> <mailto: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://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzenodo.org%2Frecord%2F1294059&data=04%7C01%7Cedith%40uwm.edu%7Cfcf0475684e1463b39ba08d941382d63%7C0bca7ac3fcb64efd89eb6de97603cf21%7C0%7C0%7C637612532579177572%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=RbFRPnwDeMNZBZ6rSsbcgAFVtnzCtCLFLvJhSRf2Meg%3D&reserved=0>)
> – 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://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPersonal_pronoun&data=04%7C01%7Cedith%40uwm.edu%7Cfcf0475684e1463b39ba08d941382d63%7C0bca7ac3fcb64efd89eb6de97603cf21%7C0%7C0%7C637612532579187566%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=dD%2BshVMYknV2PzXdBgWrIIAYTUuUtpRdjQcgGctDfco%3D&reserved=0>).
>
> 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____
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> ____
>
> -- ____
>
> Martin Haspelmath____
>
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology____
>
> Deutscher Platz 6____
>
> D-04103 Leipzig____
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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
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