FEATURES ON ARGUMENTS

Section 11-1 FEATURES ON ARGUMENTS

Pronoun is like a determiner
Roles of speaker and hearer
Category of person
Feature of number
Agreement in number
Feature of gender
Morphology of pronouns
Semantics of pronouns

There are certain attributes of the thing that the argument, i.e., subject or objects, refer to that have significance grammatically. The phrase structure rule that describes the constituency of the nominal has a terminal constituent on the right — an element on the lexical level that contributes characteristic grammatical features. The nominal is mentioned in [P16], [P18] and [P22], which latter rule is an extension of [P21]:

The nominal may manifest itself in several ways as an element of syntax, perhaps at its simplest as a pronoun. [P23] is the first rule that introduces a pronoun:

Pronoun is like a determiner.

In [P16] the nominal might regularly appear with a determiner, which is normally the situation with nouns, but not with pronouns. It is clear that the pronoun has the distribution of a noun phrase, which we accounted for in rule [P16]. This similar distribution accounts for the name “pro-noun.” But in some respects it looks very much like a determiner, were it not that the determiner accompanies a noun. In the rules proposed here the pronoun may be viewed as originating on either node. Both of these nominals are related both lexically and semantically. The possessive nominal as a determiner in rule [P21]) is related lexically to the personal pronoun of rule [P23]. In (1) the subject pronoun “I” is an argument: [[[PPN]_PRN]_NOM]_NP]_ARG. The the possessive “my” is a determiner: [[[[PPN]_PRN]_NOM + [POSS]]_DET]_DTP. In both cases the author intends the pronoun (PRN) to refer to himself, i.e., s, the speaker in the speech act or the author of the written form.

	Sentence	Proposition	Additional Propositions
(1)	I like my friend.	LIKE(s,a)	FRIEND(a) OF(a,s)

Roles of speaker and hearer.

Here, as it was in the analysis of the sentence, the term ‘speaker’ is taken as a primitive element for referring to a person’s role in the speech act. Hence, the concept of ‘speaker’ is not an inherent attribute of some specific person but an accidental attribute of the person involved at the time of the utterance. The two attributes of ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer’ come and go together. The definitional set of the one attribute, { x | SPEAKER(x) }, is non-intersecting with the definitional set of the other:

SPEAKER

HEARER

Category of person.

The above two attributes are fundamental to the significance of the grammatical category called person. Person is the grammaticalization of ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer.’ Since these are two mutually exclusive sets, the linguist has the possibility of indicating their possible values in the segment structure rule with an “n.” The speaker is counted as the first person and the hearer, the second.

Rules of Interpretation For First & Second Person Personal Pronouns

Normally the English speaker defines the third person as someone who is neither ‘speaker’ nor ‘hearer.’

Rules of Interpretation For Third Person Personal Pronouns

The linguist will have to distinguish the various possible interpretations of the pronouns by spelling out the relationship between the semantics of the objects referred to and these seven grammatical features as in the following paragraphs.

Feature of number.

Another important feature of English pronouns is number. This attribute grammaticalizes in a Boolean fashion being singular, when the pronoun refers to a single entity, and plural, when it refers to more than one. If a pronoun subject is singular, it cannot refer to both speaker and hearer. The English speaker uses the plural forms of the personal pronouns to refer to any of a number of actually quite distinct logical configurations of multiple speakers and hearers:

The normal definition of grammatical number makes it convenient to adopt the sign "> 1" to abbreviate "= n

0."

Agreement in number.

Number is one of the features which is important in selecting the correct form of the verb which usually appears as part of the auxiliary. Suppose that the English user expresses a subject that carries the features [nPerson,

Singular]_ARG. With such a subject the author will take care that the verb indicate the features [nPerson,–

Plural]_AUX. In this case the subject will agree with the verb in person and number. Agreement is a compatibility condition between the subject and the verb, i.e., the auxiliary (AUX). The description by means of a transformation allows the description of the effect on the interpretation of the predicate (its argument), whereas with a context sensitive segment structure rule the interpretation is otherwise given by rules.

(1)	One person is not enough.	[+Singular]_ARG_r { x \| number(x) = 1 }
		[–Plural]_AUX_r { x \| P(x) number(x) = 1 }
(2)	Three people are plenty.	[–Singular]_ARG_r { x \| number(x) > 1 }
		[+Plural]_AUX_r { x \| P(x) number(x) > 1 }

VIEW Subject Agreement [Subj-Agree]

Compound-Subject–Predicate Agreement (revised)

Feature of gender.

Another feature that accounts for separate forms of the pronoun is gender. The English speaker usually has to consider sex in order to use the correct pronoun to refer to someone. Sex is usually grammaticalized as the gender of the pronoun. Grammars refer to the three genders by the names: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Morphology of pronouns.

The forms of the pronoun classify into three kinds: 1) personal pronouns, 2) pronominalization of the article, and 3) pronominalization of the identifier. To this last class belong what linguists normally call the indefinite pronouns.

Name	Symbol	Morphological Forms
personal pronoun	PPN + OBJ PPN + SUBJ PPN + POSS	me, you, him, her, it, us, them I, you, he, she, it, we, they my, your, his, her, its, our, their mine, yours, his, hers, —, ours, theirs
pronominalized article	ART + IPN NEG + ART + IPN	some, one none
indefinite pronoun	ID + IPN ID + IPN + POSS NEG + ID + IPN NEG + ID + IPN + POSS	someone, somebody, something anyone, anybody, anything someone’s, somebody’s, something’s anyone’s, anybody’s, anything’s no one, nobody, nothing no one’s, nobody’s, nothing’s

The elements of the pronoun that are morphologically dependent (case markers, root of indefinite pronoun) may be thought of as participating in an amalgamation of syntactically generated parts. In effect the syntactic pluses describing the structure must be realized through morphological transformations. The effects of such rules are illustrated on the following figures. I have neutralized the classes of person, number, gender and case by placing the various forms of each in a dashed-line box. Charts are divided by case with the elements being arranged vertically for the different numbers, and horizontally by number (left and right) and gender (left). When the same form spreads across several classes relative to other forms on the same chart, the box for that form is extended with a dashed outline into the respective classes.

Morphological Amalgamation of Personal Pronouns

Notice that there is a lexical gap with respect to the adjective form of the possessive its. The English speaker cannot grammatically say (1) where the adjective is predicative, though (2), where the corresponding pronoun is attributive as part of the determiner system, is entirely possible.

	(1)	*I have mine and the baby has its.
	(2)	I have mine and the baby has its own.

Morphological Amalgamation of Pronominalized Articles as Indefinite Pronouns

Morphological Amalgamation of Indefinite Pronouns

Notice that the indefinite pronoun no one is written as two words apparently due to the perceived awkwardness of putting two o’s together. Despite its written form, its normal pronunciation with reduced accent on the second syllable betrays its perception as a single word.

Semantics of pronouns.

The three forms of pronouns denote three kinds of objects: 1) persons, 2) objects of discourse, and 3) objects of deixis. This is just a general tendency, since pronouns of all three types participate in referring to any of these objects. Person is an attribute only of personal pronouns; however, third person can refer to any kind of object. Any pronoun can refer to an object of discourse, but only concrete objects can be pointed to with pronouns alone.

The combinations of pronouns with articles and identifiers brings in the semantics of those elements of the determiner, the discussion of which we defer to that chapter. Notice that there is an important lexical gap when using the indefinite pronouns to refer to animals. The English speaker must use some other rhetorical device. Suppose a boy has two pets and wants to say that one of them must have eaten his homework. The pronoun in (1) would imply that the guilty party was a person; but the pronoun in (2) would most naturally only refer to monsters, machines, or robots — not pets.

	(1)	?Someone ate my homework.
	(2)	?Something ate my homework.

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