[Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"

Sun Jul 11 16:05:18 UTC 2021

Hi everyone,

I don’t see any problem with the Basque example: it is a demonstrative used
as a logophoric pronoun. It would be a reflexive in many languages, as
noted by Martin himself, e.g. in a language like Lezgian. What is important
here is that it will be a logophoric pronoun(!) and not a logophoric
strategy. For instance, in the survey I am currently carrying on on
Finno-Ugric languages, often such an example would lack any pronoun, and
this would be a sort of logophoric mode of organizing indirect reported
speech/discourse of a type “she(i) says, (i) comes’. Maybe, Spanish could
be a language like this?

What I am trying to say is that it is the function that matters and not the
form. In many FU lgs, 3rd singular pronouns derive from demonstratives.
Finnish uses the distal demonstrative *se *as an anti-/non-logophoric and
also a less polite way to refer to an animate referent (correct me if I am
a bit "old school"). I believe the definition of personal pronoun should
stem from the common functions of personal pronouns, which I tried to point
out in my letter to the list:

-reference to speech-act participants (egophoric pronouns);
-co-reference in complex sentences (logophoric pronouns);
-3rd person reference (allophoric).

Wouldn’t it suffice? Are there any other types of reference that might be
missing but are carried out by personal pronouns? Is it just a very naïve,
if not an ignorant assumption? If you have any suggestions, I would very
much like to hear them (also in a private message).

Best wishes,
Denys

On 11. Jul 2021, at 18:21, Martin Haspelmath <martin_haspelmath at eva.mpg.de>
wrote:

Yes, Bhat (2004) and Kibrik (2011) are excellent typological books from
which I have learned a lot (thanks to Don Killian and Daniel Hieber for
mentioning them).

But they do not seem to say clearly how personal pronouns are delimited
from demonstratives. Bhat (2004), as in his WALS chapter
<https://wals.info/chapter/43>, discusses the formal relationships between
demonstratives and 3rd person pronouns, but how do we tell them apart? For
example, Basque is sometimes said to lack 3rd-person pronouns and to use
demonstratives instead (*hau, hori, hura*), and sometimes it is said to use
demonstratives "as 3rd-person pronouns"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_grammar#Personal_pronouns> – which of
these is true depends on the definition of "personal pronoun". Kibrik
(2011: 125) considers two criteria (""adnominal use", "a single
structural-distributional system with locuphoric pronouns") but falls short
of providing a clear definition.

This is why I proposed the definition in terms of coreferential use in a
complement clause, as in

*Jon-ek dio hura azkarra d-ela.*
Jon-ERG says DEM smart be-COMP
'Jon(i) says that he(i) is smart.' (Iraola & Ezeizabarrena 2011)

Here the Basque distal demonstrative *hura* 'that (one)' is used
coreferentially with the matrix subject, so according to this definition,
*hura* is (also) a personal pronoun. It contrasts crucially with Spanish,
where the distal demonstrative *aquél* 'that (one)' cannot be used in this
way (*Juan(i) dice que (*aquél(i)) es inteligente*).

A language that is similar to Basque in that it seems to "use its
demonstratives as personal pronouns" is Lezgian, but it appears that they
cannot be used in a complement clause, because reflexive pronouns are
required in this context (Haspelmath 1993: §22.4.2). Thus, even though
Lezgian *am/abur* often correspond to English *he/she/they*, they do not
count as personal pronouns.

[This delimitation may strike one as arbitrary, and it is – but I am
assuming that we want *some* delimitation, because "personal pronoun" and
"demonstrative" are technical terms that we want to have clear definitions
for.]

Thanks also to Riccardo Giomi for mentioning the term "pro(-)form" used in
FDG (along with "pro-adverb", "pro-verb", etc.). These kinds of terms have
been used for quite some time (e.g. in Quirk et al. 1985, the well-known
grammar of English), but they have not become standard. In a recent Twitter
poll, when asked about what term to use for "where", a majority favoured
"adverbial interrogative pronoun" or "interrogative pronominal adverb" over
"interrogative pro-adverb" (
https://twitter.com/haspelmath/status/1413525671163400192).

Best,
Martin

Am 11.07.21 um 06:01 schrieb Daniel W. Hieber:

Dear Ian,

I think it would be worthwhile to also consider the definition of pronouns
advanced in Andrej Kibrik's excellent *Reference in discourse*. Some
relevant quotes are below. Note that Kibrik is here using*pronoun* to mean
primarily *personal pronoun* (p. 121).

"[...] the term 'pronoun' implies only three things. First, a pronoun is a
referential device, directly coding referents. Second, it is a reduced
referential device, that is, it does not have lexical content. Third,
pronouns are *overt* devices, and so are opposed to zero reference." (p.
121; empahsis in the original)

Kibrik also notes that there are other types of items which sometimes share
the function of personal pronouns, but should not themselves be considered
personal pronouns:

Linguistic elements that can be characterized as overt reduced referential
devices most typically coincide with what are traditionally known as
personal pronouns. In the context of referential choice between full and
reduced referential devices, most often these are third person pronouns.
English is a typical example of a language that uses third person pronouns
when a reduced referential device is needed. However, in this kind of
language other reduced devices may be used, such as demonstratives.
Furthermore, not all languages have dedicated third person pronouns: some
languages employ overt reduced referential devices that fall out of the
scope of what traditionally counts as third person pronouns. Several kinds
of linguistic elements that belong to other pronoun types or even different
lexico-grammatical classes may effectively function in discourse as
*analogues* of third person pronouns. Such analogues can be thought of as
marginal overt reduced referential devices.

Among these, the most salient ones are: demonstratives, classifiers, and
social status nouns. All of these devices are distinct from personal
pronouns, in particular because they do not contain the category of person.
[...] However, in certain languages that lack genuine third person pronouns
these devices play the pronominal role. (p. 124; emphasis in the original)

Kibrik also helpfully distinguishes between *strong* vs. *weak* pronouns,
where strong pronouns are prosodically and pragmatically marked, and weak
pronouns are prosodically reduced and/or dependent. Weak pronouns are
functionally analogous to bound pronouns (p. 92).

Hope that's helpful!

Danny

*References*

   - Kibrik, Andrej A. 2011. *Reference in discourse*. Oxford University
   Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215805.001.0001
   <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199215805.001.0001>.

Daniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Alberta Language Technology Lab (ALTLab)
danielhieber.com <http://www.danielhieber.com/>
------------------------------
*From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
<lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of JOO, Ian [Student]
<ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk> <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>
*Sent:* Monday, July 5, 2021 11:53 PM
*To:* LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
*Subject:* [Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"

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
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