Pronominal typology and the de se/de re distinction
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Pronominal typology and the de se/de re distinction Pritty Patel-Grosz1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology interfaces with de se and de re interpretations, and highlights a correlation between strong pronouns (descriptively speaking) and de re interpretations, and weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for the idea of a dedicated de se LF as argued for by Percus and Sauerland. Keywords Pronouns · De se/de re · Attitude reports
1 Introduction This paper investigates how regular pronominal typology (e.g., clitic vs. non-clitic pronouns) interfaces with de se and de re interpretations; it highlights a correlation between strong pronouns (descriptively speaking) and (non-de se) de re Preliminary ideas that this paper is based on grew out of a course I co-taught on de se at the 26th ESSLLI in 2014. I thank my co-instructor, Hazel Pearson for helpful comments and lengthy discussions, and the audience for valuable feedback. I am immensely grateful to Patrick Georg Grosz for copious amounts of fine-grained remarks concerning the technical aspects of this paper and detailed discussions about the Austrian Bavarian data. Thanks also to Malte Zimmerman and three anonymous Linguistics and Philosophy reviewers. The research in this article was partially funded by the Collaborative Research Center SFB 833 (Projects B2 and C4) of the German Science Foundation (DFG) at the University of Tu¨bingen. & Pritty Patel-Grosz [email protected] 1
Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1102, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway
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interpretations, and between weak pronouns and de se interpretations. In order to illustrate this correlation, I contrast different pronominal forms within a single language, null versus overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati, and clitic versus full pronouns in Austrian Bavarian. I argue, as outlined in the remainder of this paragraph, that the data presented here provide cross-linguistic comparative support for a view where de se pronouns have a special status, as in the dedicated de se LFs of Percus and Sauerland (2003a, b). The empirical findings in this paper reveal a new observation regarding pronominal typology, namely that stronger pronouns resist a de se construal. Contrastively, the “weaker” a pronoun is (in comparison to other pronouns within the same language), the more likely it is to be interpreted de se. To analyse this, I propose that pronominal strength correlates with structural complexity (in terms of Cardinaletti and Starke 1999), i.e. overt pronouns have more syntactic structure than null pronouns; similarly, non-clitic pronouns have more
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