Features of Person: From the Inventory of Persons to Their Morphological Realization

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Peter Ackema (Professor, University of Edinburgh) Ad Neeleman (University College London)

Features of Person

From the Inventory of Persons to Their Morphological Realization

Peter Ackema (Professor, University of Edinburgh), Ad Neeleman (University College London)

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English

MIT Press
23 October 2018

Grammar, syntax

Series: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs

A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a ""person space"" at the heart of every pronominal expression.

This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a ""person space"" at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, from semantics through syntax to the system of morphological realization. Such an in-depth cross-modular study allows the development of a theory in which assumptions made about the behavior of a given feature in one module bear on possible assumptions about its behavior in other modules.

The authors' new theory of person, built on a sparse set of two privative person features, delivers a typologically adequate inventory of persons; captures the semantics of personal pronouns, impersonal pronouns, and R-expressions; accounts for aspects of their syntactic behavior; and explains patterns of person-related syncretism in the realization of pronouns and inflectional endings. The authors discuss numerous observations from the literature, defend a number of theoretical choices that are either new or not generally accepted, and present novel empirical findings regarding phenomena as different as honorifics, number marking, and unagreement.

A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a ""person space"" at the heart of every pronominal expression.

This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a ""person space"" at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, from semantics through syntax to the system of morphological realization. Such an in-depth cross-modular study allows the development of a theory in which assumptions made about the behavior of a given feature in one module bear on possible assumptions about its behavior in other modules.

The authors' new theory of person, built on a sparse set of two privative person features, delivers a typologically adequate inventory of persons; captures the semantics of personal pronouns, impersonal pronouns, and R-expressions; accounts for aspects of their syntactic behavior; and explains patterns of person-related syncretism in the realization of pronouns and inflectional endings. The authors discuss numerous observations from the literature, defend a number of theoretical choices that are either new or not generally accepted, and present novel empirical findings regarding phenomena as different as honorifics, number marking, and unagreement.

By: Peter Ackema (Professor University of Edinburgh), Ad Neeleman (University College London)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Volume: 78
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
ISBN: 9780262535618
ISBN 10: 0262535610
Series: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs
Pages: 382
Publication Date: 23 October 2018
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Ackema is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. Ad Neeleman is Professor of Linguistics at University College London.