This research analyses the pronominal system of Soikkola Ingrian. The main goal of the article is descriptive, because existing publications on Soikkola Ingrian give only a superficial analysis of ...pronouns and there are no detailed descriptions based on data from the 21st century. The article focuses on both interspeaker and intraspeaker variation in four groups of Ingrian pronouns: personal, demonstrative, reflexive and reciprocal. The field data collected by the authors in the 21st century are compared with the data presented in grammars written in the 19th and 20th centuries. The research concludes that although the pronominal system has not changed significantly, there are a number of innovations in Ingrian pronominal forms and their variation. The most frequent type of variation is the variation between individual speakers, but not between sub-dialectal groups. Free variation is also common, while other types of variation are less relevant.
Kokkuvõte. Anna Schwarz, Fedor Rozhanskiy: Isuri keele Soikkola murde pronoomenite süsteem: isikulised, demonstratiivsed, refleksiivsed ja retsiprooksed pronoomenid ning nende varieerumine.Uurimus analüüsib isuri keele Soikkola murde pronoomenite süsteemi. Artikkel on olemuselt kirjeldav. Olemasolevad Soikkola murret puudutavad uurimused esitavad üsna pealiskaudse pronoomenite analüüsi ning puuduvad 21. sajandi andmetel põhinevad üksikasjalikud kirjeldused. Artikkel keskendub nii kõnelejasisesele kui ka kõnelejatevahelisele varieerumisele neljas isuri pronoomenite rühmas: personaal-, demonstratiiv-, refleksiiv- ja retsiprookpronoomenid. Autorite poolt 21. sajandil kogutud välitööde andmeid võrreldakse 19. ja 20. sajandil kirjutatud grammatikate andmetega. Uurimuses jõutakse järeldusele, et kuigi pronoomenite süsteem pole oluliselt muutunud, on isuri pronoomenite vormides ja nende varieerumises mitmeid uuendusi. Kõige sagedamini esineb varieerumist üksikute kõnelejate vahel, kuid mitte murde allrühmade vahel. Levinud on ka vaba varieerumine, samas kui muud tüüpi varieerumised on vähem olulised.
A groundbreaking, comprehensive formal theory of grammatical person that recasts its empirical foundations and re-envisions its theoretical core.
Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive ...and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends understanding of a universal and ubiquitous grammatical category. Breaking with much past work, Harbour establishes three core theses, one empirical, one theoretical, and one metatheoretical. Together, these redefine the data subsumed under the rubric of “person,” simplify the feature inventory that a theory of person must posit, and restructure the metatheory in which feature theory as a whole resides.
At its heart, Impossible Persons poses a simple question of the possible versus the actual: in how many ways could languages configure their person systems, in how many do they configure them, and what explains the size and shape of the shortfall? Harbour's empirical thesis—that the primary object of study for persons are partitions, not syncretisms—transforms a sea of data into a categorical problem of the attested and the absent. Positing, innovatively, that features denote actions, not predicates, he shows that two features alone generate all and only the attested systems. This apparently poor inventory yields rich explanatory dividends, covering the morphological composition of person, its interaction with number, its connection to space, and properties of its semantics and linearization. Moreover, the core properties of this approach are shared with Harbour's earlier work on number features. Jointly, these results establish an important metatheoretical corollary concerning the balance between richness of feature semantics and restrictiveness of feature inventories. This corollary holds deep implications for how linguists should approach feature theory in future.
Using naturally-occurring spoken data from the NIKL Daily Conversation Corpus and Spoken Corpus, we examine pragmatic uses of Korean personal pronoun tangsin which is used as a second person address ...term as well as a third person pronoun. In particular, we focus on how intimacy and honorification affect the (im)polite readings of constructions with second person pronoun tangsin as the subject. Using the Sejong Historical Corpus, we also investigate the development of the personal pronoun tangsin, with special attention to how the third person reflexive developed into the second person pronoun. The findings of this study reveal that politeness is the driving force for its development, and intimacy plays a significant role in determining the (im)politeness readings of second person pronoun tangsin. Our analysis also shows that honorificity (often manifested through the speech level endings accompanying the use of tangsin) also interacts with intimacy to produce (im)politeness readings.
•Korean tangsin is used as a second person pronoun as well as a third person pronoun.•Intimacy plays a role in determining the (im)politeness readings of 2SG tangsin.•The third person reflexive tangsin developed into the second person pronoun.•Politeness is the driving force for development of Korean personal pronoun tangsin.•Honorificity interacts with intimacy to produce (im)politeness readings of tangsin.
The language of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by difficulties with pronouns. The underlying reasons for such difficulties are still unclear. This study is the ...first to test the abilities of children with ASD who speak Italian, a language in which overt subject pronouns are optional but verbs obligatorily feature person-referencing morphology. We found that Italian children with ASD were less accurate than typically-developing (TD) Italian children in the production of first-, second-, and third-person singular pronouns, avoiding pronouns in favor of nouns or names more often than controls. Moreover, children with ASD produced more overt pronouns than null pronouns in marked contexts, compared to TD children. These phenomena can be accounted for by difficulties with pragmatics.
This article focuses on the anaphoric use of the demonstrative pronoun in Czech and in Italian. While the use of the Czech demonstrative ten is quite frequent and is perceived as neutral, the choice ...of the Italian demonstrative is influenced by various contextual factors. The purpose of this paper is to characterize the relevant factors that lead to the use of demonstrative pronouns questo and/or quello in Italian, and the possibility, or not, of replacing the personal pronoun by the demonstrative pronoun, either in Czech and in Italian. Attention is paid to the type of reference in which the omission of Czech demonstrative doesn’t seem to be possible. The research is based on Czech literary texts translated into Italian.
Many models of reference production suggest that speakers tend to use a reduced referential form, such as a pronoun, to signal the topicality of a particular referent, that is, the Topichood ...Hypothesis. However, little is known about the precise nature of the mapping between topichood and referential form and the mechanisms by which topichood affects referential form. The current study aims to address these issues by investigating how topicality influences different kinds of reduced expressions, namely, null and overt pronouns in Mandarin. We manipulated topicality using a left‐dislocation structure in Experiment 1. We found that topicality increased the use of null pronouns, but not overt pronouns. This suggests that topicality may increase only the most reduced expression available in a given language. Experiment 2 examined whether the topicality effect was related to predictability. We found that participants used more null pronouns for less predictable referents. We suggest that the topicality effect could be better explained by an accessibility mechanism.
Models of language comprehension show that predictable elements are easier to understand. Does predictability also guide production? While many models suggest it does (e.g., Arnold, 1998; Aylett & ...Turk, 2004; Levy & Jaeger, 2007; Jurafsky, Bell, Gregory, & Raymond, 2001; Mahowald, Fedorenko, Piantadosi, & Gibson; Orita, Vornov, Feldman & Daumé, 2015; Tily & Piantadosi, 2009), several models suggest that it does not make speakers more likely to select pronouns (Fukumura & van Gompel, 2010; Kehler et al., 2008; Kehler & Rohde, 2013; Kehler & Rohde, 2019; Stevenson et al., 1994). Claims that predictability does not affect pronoun production are based on evidence that certain semantic roles are more likely to be re-mentioned in discourse, but speakers do not prefer pronouns for those event roles, especially when predictability stems from implicit causality estimates. These findings contrast with studies of transfer verbs, where goals are more predictable than sources, and speakers do use pronouns more for goals versus sources (Arnold, 2001; Rosa & Arnold, 2017). Our study takes a closer look at the predictability of implicit causes, using a novel experimental paradigm that is more contextualized than the methods used in previous studies. In two experiments, we find that implicit causality does affect pronominalization. This suggests that predictability may play a broad role in both reference production and language production more generally.
Five studies explored the ways relative rank is revealed among individuals in small groups through their natural use of pronouns. In Experiment 1, four-person groups worked on a decision-making task ...with randomly assigned leadership status. In Studies 2 and 3, two-person groups either worked on a task or chatted informally in a get-to-know-you session. Study 4 was a naturalistic study of incoming and outgoing e-mail of 9 participants who provided information on their correspondents’ relative status. The last study examined 40 letters written by soldiers in the regime of Saddam Hussein. Computerized text analyses across the five studies found that people with higher status consistently used fewer first-person singular, and more first-person plural and second-person singular pronouns. Natural language use during group interaction suggests that status is associated with attentional biases, such that higher rank is linked with other-focus whereas lower rank is linked with self-focus.
Dowsari Arabic is one of the major dialects of the central zone of the Kingdom, which in many cases match the dialect of Riyadhi Arabic. In this dialect, the incorporated subject pronoun is expressed ...by repeating it. However, the Dowsari dialect of Saudi Arabic constantly repeats the 'incorporated subject pronoun', duplicating the so-called 'separated subject pronoun' this subject is first person singular or second person masculine singular. This study tries to explain this phenomenon in a principled way by conducting a comparative study by looking into various dialects of the Arabic language that may have the same or similar phenomenon. The conceptual development in this study is held through a detailed review ofliterature conducted on this topic to identify different reasons behind pronoun doubling, primarily in the various dialects of the Arabic language. The study arrived at a speculation of the fact that duplicating pronouns is used for emphasis. It is arguedthat the Dowsari Arabic has its own idiosyncratic phenomenon where the incorporated subject pronoun is duplicated for emphasis and disambiguation, since the first person singular and second person singular masculine are morphologically identical.
Does the language people use to refer to the self during introspection influence how they think, feel, and behave under social stress? If so, do these effects extend to socially anxious people who ...are particularly vulnerable to such stress? Seven studies explored these questions (total N = 585). Studies 1a and 1b were proof-of-principle studies. They demonstrated that using non-first-person pronouns and one's own name (rather than first-person pronouns) during introspection enhances self-distancing. Studies 2 and 3 examined the implications of these different types of self-talk for regulating stress surrounding making good first impressions (Study 2) and public speaking (Study 3). Compared with the first-person group, the non-first-person group performed better according to objective raters in both studies. They also displayed less distress (Studies 2 and 3) and engaged in less maladaptive postevent processing (Study 3). Studies 4 and 5 examined how these different forms of self-talk influence the way people appraise social-anxiety-provoking events. They demonstrated that non-first-person language use (compared with first-person language use) leads people to appraise future stressors in more challenging and less threatening terms. Finally, a meta-analysis (Study 6) indicated that none of these findings were moderated by trait social anxiety, highlighting their translational potential. Together, these findings demonstrate that small shifts in the language people use to refer to the self during introspection consequentially influence their ability to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under social stress, even for vulnerable individuals.
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