Abstract
Different forms of the personal pronouns have different constraints on their interpretations. Chomsky described such differences syntactically, in terms of binding rules. Levinson and Huang propose pragmatic accounts. They describe the differences as differences in implicature, and claim to derive them from the neo-Gricean Q-, I-, and M-principles. Some explanations invoke the disjoint reference presumption (DRP), which Huang and Levinson derive from the I-principle. Following in their footsteps but taking a different path, Ariel proposes pragmatic explanations in terms of her “functional principle,” which makes no reference to implicature, but does take expectations of conjoint or disjoint reference to be fundamental. I first consider these neo-Gricean accounts as synchronic explanations, arguing that they are unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. I conclude by considering whether the pragmatic principles instead explain pronominal differences diachronically. While more plausible, I present evidence that a diachronic account based on neo-Gricean principles is also unsuccessful.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See also Lyons 1977, p. 667; Chomsky 1981, p. 188; Quirk et al. 1985, p. 356 ff.; Akmajian et al. 1990, § 5.4; Haspelmath 1997, p. 99 ff.; Comrie 1998; Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 2000: § 2.4; Huang 2000: § 2.1; 2006a, p. 232; Van Gelderen 2001, § 0.2; Sportiche 2003, p. 408; Lightfoot 2006, § 3.4; Ariel 2008, Chap. 6. Contrast Wiese 1983 p. 377 ff., 396. Chomsky used “anaphor” for reflexive pronouns, and “pronominal” or “pronoun” for nonreflexives.
- 2.
The difference between John believes her to be smart and John believes that she is smart is that her is governed by the main clause in the former (note the accusative marking) whereas she is governed by the subordinate clause in the latter (Chomsky 1995, p. 101).
- 3.
- 4.
Cf. Chomsky 1995, pp. 95, 101–104. By “nominal phrase” I mean a noun phrase that can occur as the subject or object of a verb. Thus, the red book and red books are nominal phrases, but not red book. On some analyses, nominal phrases are headed by determiners rather than nouns, and so are called determiner phrases.
- 5.
α must also “c-command” β. If a phrase structure diagram is thought of as a family tree, a node c-commands any sibling node and all the sibling’s descendants.
- 6.
What is relevant for pronouns, of course, is having the same referent on an occasion of use, which is partly pragmatic (cf. Wiese 1983, p. 399).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
These exceptions to Rule A can be avoided by requiring the local domain to be a clause. But then more exceptions to Rule B are created given that nonreflexives can appear with the same antecedents. On Chomsky’s (1995, pp. 102–105) final formulation, the local domain differs for reflexives and nonreflexives, and creates new problems for Rule A. The Reinhardt and Reuland (1993) version of Rule B allows (10), but also allows *1 Tom works with 1 him.
- 12.
The second sentence here comes from a CNN interview cited by Ariel (2008, p. 252).
- 13.
Levinson 2000, pp. 314–315, 423; Huang 2000, pp. 225–229, 2004, p. 2.4.1, 2006a, pp. 235–237; Fillmore 2003, p. 406; Sportiche 2003, p. 408; Bhat 2004, p 33; Chap. 3. Pronouns also occur logophorically in thought bubbles, where they are demonstrative rather than anaphoric. Logophoric uses of pronouns in English have been overlooked, I believe, because of three widespread misconceptions: (i) that quotation marks are always metalinguistic, used to form the name of the enclosed expression; (ii) that thinking is inner speech; and (iii) that I and you are always used deictically to refer to the speaker and the speaker’s addressee.
- 14.
- 15.
In Levinson’s (2000, p. 76) formulation, what can be inferred is the speaker knows –P +. But then the default inference is not the GCI, as Levinson maintains, and as is true in the I- and M-principles. I also made all the corollaries statements rather than directives (as in Levinson’s formulation of the M-principle) so that they have truth values and make predictions.
- 16.
Levinson’s (2000, p. 114) formulation was “Amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance, by finding the most specific interpretation, up to what you judge to be the speaker’s m-intended point, unless the speaker has broken the maxim of minimization by using a marked or prolix expression.” To better suit Levinson’s purposes, I made the maxim consistent with the heuristic, which specifies what is stereotypically exemplified, and dropped “up to what you judge to be the speaker’s m-intended point,” which is inappropriate for generalized conversational implicatures.
- 17.
- 18.
To say that conventions are arbitrary is not to say that they arose randomly (compare and contrast Ariel 2008, § 4.1). Driving cars on the right is arbitrary in America in that Americans could drive on the left. But the convention did not arise randomly: it was a natural extension of driving horses and carriages on the right. Napoleon reportedly ordered a change to driving horses and carriages on the right because the enemy Britain drove them on the left.
- 19.
- 20.
It does not follow that the number of Q-situations is smaller than the number of P-situations. For, both numbers are infinite and may be of the same cardinality. Even though the even numbers are a proper subset of the integers, the two sets can be put in a one-to-one correspondence. So, we cannot say that there are more integers than even numbers.
- 21.
Levinson (2000, p. 274) says “Existential statements are weak…; consequently, the fewer existential commitments the stronger the “theory” (read “assertion” for our purposes),” a claim repeated by Huang (2000, p. 216). This is backwards. Every additional existential commitment represents an additional requirement for an assertion to be true (and hence an additional way it could be false). What Levinson could say is that the fewer the existential commitments, the safer the theory is epistemically. The weaker the theory, the less evidence is needed to verify it.
- 22.
- 23.
Following Reinhart and Reuland 1993, Ariel (2008, p. 218) restricts the DRP to “arguments” of “predicates,” where these terms are understood in a particular way. She takes the predicate in (33) to be x shot y rather than x shot y’s cat. So, Ariel takes the arguments in (33) to be Hemingway and his cat, which would invariably refer to different things. She also excludes adjuncts from predicates, and counts d’chiel and with her as adjuncts.
- 24.
The DRP is therefore more accurately formulated as saying that co-arguments are presumed to be disjoint in reference unless they are reflexively marked or identical. Alternatively, the identity of co-arguments could be considered a special case of reflexive marking. When applied to other languages, the DRP must also be restricted to cases in which the verb is not reflexive marked. Huang (2007, p. 261) observes that in Chinese, when a verb is reflexive-marked by an affix, a nonreflexive pronoun must corefer with the subject.
- 25.
A Google search turned up the following gem: There is one simple reason why America should put America first, and that is because America is America….
- 26.
These facts present a problem for Chomsky’s (1995, pp. 96–97) treatment of binding condition C: “An r-expression must be free.” Chomsky marks John 1 criticized John 1 as ungrammatical, and takes it to violate Rule C. It does not violate Rule C if binding is properly understood as anaphoric linkage rather than mere conjoint reference. For, names cannot be used anaphorically. Moreover, there is nothing ungrammatical about John 1 criticized John 1 . Variants on Evans’s (1980) example show this: If everyone criticized John, then John criticized John and If John criticized everyone, then John criticized John are grammatical and true when the same John is the referent. Horn (2008, p. 174) presents attested examples. The pronunciation in Evans’s example does need to give the second John at least as much stress as the first, not the lighter stress himself would normally get.
Huang (2010, p. 4) proposes a Q-account of Rule C, based on the assumption that a proper name is “semantically weaker” than a reflexive. It is as problematic as the Q-account of Rule B.
- 27.
In the case of (38), the I-principle is vague as to which stereotype is relevant. Is it the stereotypical way in which Hemingway shaves Hemingway, Hemingway shaves someone, someone shaves Hemingway, or someone shaves someone? The answer does not matter in this case. Since Hemingway was not a barber and barbers are vastly outnumbered by nonbarbers, the relevant stereotype either way would be shaving oneself. (They would not be the same if Hemingway were changed to The barber of Seville.)
- 28.
Source: Huang 2007, p. 265.
- 29.
Huang says that the reflexive would be used in (41) to indicate some sort of unexpectedness. That may be true, but it does nothing to make the proposed accounts of conjoint and disjoint reference work.
- 30.
- 31.
For example, the principles do not predict that himself cannot have Bob as its antecedent in Ed painted Bob’s wife with himself.
- 32.
Huang (2004, p. 307) says that “emotions such as being ashamed/frightened/proud are typical examples of self-directed action.” Mary is ashamed is indeed true only if Mary is ashamed of herself; so being ashamed (simpliciter) is self-directed. But Mary can also be ashamed of her children, and being ashamed of others is no less typical than being ashamed of oneself.
- 33.
French provides another example: se versus lui “him” (Ariel 2008, p. 228).
- 34.
See also Ariel 2008, pp. 226, 238, 242, 244, 252, 253; Comrie 1998. Ariel sometimes gives a weaker formulation, describing which pronoun is preferred rather than which should be used (see e.g., Ariel 2008, pp. 228, 229, 233, 236–241, 244). Only the weaker formulation conforms to the observation that himself is more common than him in John carried a picture of __ when coreference is intended. This observation does little to confirm either formulation, though. For, Ariel (2008, p. 248) also notes that himself is more frequent than him in John took it upon __ to act, even though coreference is expected. Moreover, a preference rule cannot explain rules specifying what is obligatory or prohibited.
- 35.
- 36.
Ariel (2008, p. 243) also proposes a cross-linguistic hypothesis: “Dutch has a variation between a relatively unmarked zich form and a more marked zichzelf form…whereas self-directed verbs may take either form, other-directed verbs must take the marked form…. In general, it’s never the case that grooming verbs employ a more marked reflexive form than verbs of bodily harm within the same language…” (see also Huang 2007, pp. 262–263). If this is confirmed for the large number and bewildering variety of natural languages, it would be a remarkable fact.
- 37.
- 38.
More precisely, Ariel (2008, p. 248, 253) believes grammaticized structural principles account synchronically for pronoun use in most contexts, with the functional principle accounting for the rest, including about objects (but recall (53) and (54)).
- 39.
- 40.
This process is only superficially similar to that by which the use of animal to Q-implicate nonhuman became conventional and lexicalized, resulting in the narrow sense of animal. The use of animal in the general sense did not become syntactically restricted. Him never had a Q-implicature, and did not acquire an additional sense.
References
Akmajian, A., R. A. Demers, and R. M. Harnish. 1990. Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ariel, M. 2008. Pragmatics and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Atlas, J. D., and S. C. Levinson. 1981. It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: Radical pragmatics (revised standard version). In Radical pragmatics, ed. P. Cole, 1–61. New York: Academic.
Bhat, D. N. S. 1978. Pronominalization: A cross-linguistic study. Pune: Deccan College.
Chierchia, G., and S. McConnell-Ginet. 2000. Meaning and grammar: An introduction to semantics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Chomsky, N. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Comrie, B. 1998. Reference-tracking: Description and explanation. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 51:335–346.
Davis, W. A. 1998. Implicature: Intention, convention, and principle in the failure of Gricean theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davis, W. A. 2003. Meaning, expression, and thought. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Davis, W. A. 2010. Irregular negations: Implicature and Idiom theory. In Meaning and analysis: New essays on H. Paul Grice, ed. K. Petrus, 103–137. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Davis, W. A. 2011. “Metalinguistic” negations, denial, and idioms. Journal of Pragmatics 43:2548–77.
Davis, W. A. 2013. Irregular negations: Pragmatic explicature theories. In Pragmatics and philosophy, ed. A. Capone, F. Lo Piparo, and M. Carapezza 303–350. Cham: Springer.
Evans, G. 1980. Pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 11:337–62.
Farmer, A., and R. M. Harnish. 1987. Communicative reference with pronouns. In The pragmatic perspective, ed. J. Verschueren and M. Bertuccelli-Papi, 547–565. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fillmore, C. J. 2003. Pronouns: Overview. In International encyclopedia of linguistics. 2nd ed., ed. W. J. Frawley, 406–407. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flanigan, B. O. 2006. Upper Ohio Valley speech. In Encyclopedia of Appalachia, ed. R. Abramson and J. Haskell, 1030–1031. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Gazdar, G. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York: Academic.
Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Haspelmath, M. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Horn, L. R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Horn, L. R. 2008. “I love me some him”: The landscape of non-argument datives. In Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 7, ed. O. Bonami and P. C. Hofherr, 169–192. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss/.
Huang, Y. 1991. A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora. Journal of Linguistics 27:301–35.
Huang, Y. 1994. The syntax and pragmatics of anaphora: A study with a special reference to Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huang, Y. 2000. Anaphora: A cross-linguistic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huang, Y. 2004. Anaphora and the pragmatics-syntax interface. In The handbook of pragmatics, ed. L. R. Horn and G. Ward, 288–314. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Huang, Y. 2006a. Anaphora, Cataphora, Exophora, Logophoricity. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 2nd ed., ed. K. Brown, 231–240. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Huang, Y. 2006b. Neo-Gricean Pragmatics. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 2nd ed., ed. K. Brown, 586–590. New York: Elsevier.
Huang, Y. 2007. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huang, Y. 2010. Pragmatics of anaphora. In The pragmatics encyclopedia. London: Routledge. http://www.credoreference.com/entry/routpragmatics/anaphora_pragmatics_of.
Lakoff, G. 1972. Natural logic. In Semantics of natural language, ed. D. Davidson and G. Harman, 545–665. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Lewis, D. 1969. Convention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Levinson, S. C. 1987. Pragmatics and the grammar of anaphora. Journal of Linguistics 23:379–434.
Levinson, S. C. 1991. Pragmatic reduction of the binding conditions revisited. Journal of Linguistics 27:107–61.
Levinson, S. C. 2000. Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Lightfoot, D. 2006. How new languages emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montgomery, M. 2006. Language. In Encyclopedia of Appalachia,ed. R. Abramson and J. Haskell, 999–1005. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Montgomery, M., and J. S. Hall. 2004. Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Perry, J. 1977. Frege on demonstratives. Philosophical Review 86:474–97.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.
Reinhart, T. 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reinhart, T., and E. Reuland. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry 36:657–20.
Saxena, A. 2006. Pronouns. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 2nd ed., ed. K. Brown, 131–133. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Sportiche, D. 2003. Pronouns: Pronominals. In International encyclopedia of linguistics. 2nd ed., ed. W. J. Frawley, 407–409. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Visser, F. T. 1963. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: Brill.
Van Gelderen, E. 2001. A history of English reflexive pronouns: Person, self, and interpretability. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Wales, K. 1996. Personal pronouns in present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wiese, B. 1983. Anaphora by pronouns. Linguistics 21:373–417.
Wolfram, W., and D. Christian. 1976. Appalachian speech. Arlington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Yale Grammatical diversity project: English in North America, personal datives. http://microsyntax.sites.yale.edu/personal-datives. Accessed 2015.
Acknowledgments
I thank Ernie Lepore and Lucia Morra for reading and commenting on drafts. I am especially grateful to Alessandro Capone for his unfailing support and many helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davis, W.A. (2016). Pronouns and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics. In: Capone, A., Mey, J. (eds) Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12615-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12616-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)