[Lingtyp] Definition of “personal pronoun"

[Chao Li]

Most of us on this list server, if having some shared broad linguistic
framework at all, probably practice some form of Basic Linguistic Theory,
and many of us probably even view our work as theory-neutral. Also, even if
we view any definition as necessarily bound by a theory, it does not change
the fact that within our community per se it is still more desirable for at
least most of us to have some consensus when we use some core terms,
whether it is passive, relative clause, or personal pronoun. I believe this
would be better for our linguistic research. How many times do we have to
say that for the same linguistic term Researcher A's definition is X,
Researcher B's definition is Y, Researcher C's definition is Z, and so on
and so forth, and to avoid misunderstanding my own definition in this study
is N? Then the next researcher of the next or the same generation has to
examine these more definitions and might provide another new definition. Is
this healthy for our research and for its continuity and development? A
terminology committee would be very helpful to sort things out and to
provide advisory definitions after discussions, debates, and careful
deliberations. This work is not prescriptive and will actually surely
recognize that the same notion might be used completely differently in
another linguistic theory or framework. It only plays an advisory role,
offers some guidance, and never forces any fellow linguist to accept their
view. It fosters consistency and encourages (but never forces) researchers
to come up with some new term to refer to something different than what is
meant by an existing term defined by the committee. I personally believe
that this is really something beneficial to this community of researchers
who value crosslinguistic and typological studies and who devote themselves
to such endeavors.

Best regards,
Chao


On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 5:50 AM Christian Lehmann <
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

> I second Bill’s verdict that terms are not defined in isolation;
> definitions have their place in a theory. The concepts defined have their
> place in a taxonomy and/or meronomy. And since our theories are empirical
> theories, if two objects systematically share some ascertainable
> property, then it is useful to subsume them under a suitable hyperonym. For
> instance, if you have a language in which not only interrogative pronouns,
> but also interrogative pro-adjectives and even interrogative pro-adverbs
> share some formal properties like starting with *wh-* and some behavioral
> properties like preferring the initial focus position etc., then a
> hyperonym like ‘interrogative proform’ is useful. And once you have defined
> it (in your theory of interrogation, grammaticalization (of proforms)
> etc.), you can even use it in the description of a language whose
> interrogative proforms do not seem to share formal properties or which does
> not even seem to have such a class, just in order to conveniently state
> this fact. Needless to say, the same goes for personal pronouns, proforms
> in general and just anything.
> --
>
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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