37.1465, Diss: General Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Typology: Ivona Ilić: "The Structure of Pronouns and Allomorphy"

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1465. Thu Apr 16 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1465, Diss: General Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Typology: Ivona Ilić: "The Structure of Pronouns and Allomorphy"

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Date: 16-Apr-2026
From: Ivona Ilić [ivona.ilic at uni-goettingen.de]
Subject: The Structure of Pronouns and Allomorphy


Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Degree Date: 2025

Dissertation Title: The Structure of Pronouns and Allomorphy

Dissertation URL: https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009913

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Morphology
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Dissertation Director(s): Artemis Alexiadou, Uli Sauerland

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the following central question: What is
the internal structure of pronouns? I propose and investigate the
hypothesis that contextual allomorphy is a key tool for (a) accessing
the inventory of morphemes that make up a pronoun across languages and
(b) tracking the patterns of their interactions. Namely, allomorphic
alternations involve an interaction of two morphemes, the trigger and
the target of allomorphy. Identifying the trigger and the target in
pronominal forms yields an immediate result - pronouns involve two
morphemes that occupy distinct structural positions in their internal
representation in the narrow syntax. The dissertation presents the
idea that inspecting the series of sequential interactions between
morphemes as basic units of syntactic computations reveals the
complete structure of pronouns within and across languages.
The present study represents a comprehensive investigation of
allomorphy in pronouns, based on a sample of 335 languages covering 75
language families. The analysis is couched within the Distributed
Morphology framework. It scrutinizes directionality patterns, locality
considerations, and the inventory of morphemes that act as triggers
and targets of allomorphy in the pronominal domain.
The focus of the inquiry is on the properties of the internal
pronominal syntax. On the basis of a series of studies, I propose a
multi-morphemic approach to pronouns. Pronouns consist of a
constrained set of syntactic terminals drawn from the set of
functional morphemes. The study identifies the patterns of
universality and variation in the pronominal syntax.
The present dissertation represents a case study on investigating the
ways in which syntactic complexity is implicated in morphological
complexity. The computation of the form is informed both by the
syntactic structure and the PF-unique considerations such as
Impoverishment and Underspecification of individual Vocabulary Items.
Pronouns provide a particularly suitable testing ground for a number
of central questions in morphological theory and the theory of the
morphology-syntax interface. Inspecting pronominal systems reveals
regularities in exponent distribution that go beyond principles of
realization and implicate the narrow syntax.
The results of this dissertation contribute to research on nominal and
pronominal syntax and contextual allomorphy. Recruiting allomorphy as
a test for the internal structure of pronouns yields a twofold result,
as findings from the pronominal domain inform the theory of allomorphy
in important ways.



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