The Spatiotemporal Dimensions of Person: A Morphosyntactic Account of Indexical Pronouns

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with the deictic and grammatical category person and its associated linguistic expressions: indexical, i.e. first and second person, pronouns. Under the hypothesis that sentence meaning is computed from how words and their associated lexical information combine with each other, indexical pronouns present an interesting challenge: their actual referent can only be determined once interpreted with respect to the utterance context they are being used in. Formulated within the Chomskyan framework of generative syntax (cf. e.g. Chomsky 1995, 2000), this thesis develops a novel approach to the relationship between the morphosyntactic content, the interpretational ranges, and the associated crosslinguistic variation of these pronouns. Primarily based on data from Dutch, English, German (Indoeuropean), and Blackfoot (Algonquian), the main conclusion of this thesis is that person is derivative of spatiotemporal information. Adopting ideas developed in Musan (1995), the temporal component is proposed to restrict the interpretation to specific moments in time, i.e. it picks out a particular temporal stage of the individual denoted by the pronoun. Secondly, spatial information contributes the necessary contextual anchoring and is responsible for identifying the speaker or the hearer. Adapting Déchaine and Wiltschko’s (2002) analysis of the internal structure of pronouns, these spatiotemporal pieces of information are linked to separate projections in the underlying syntactic structure of indexical pronouns. Empirically, this dissertation draws on data from the domains of genericity, possession, tense, and modality. It is shown that the spatiotemporal information underlying indexical pronouns is also encoded in the morphosyntax of indexical pronouns. From a broader perspective, this dissertation addresses questions concerning the relation between context and syntax, morphology and syntax, as well as syntax and semantics.