1.5 The semantics of personal pronouns
1.5.4 Kratzer (2009)
A recent account in which the main goal isnot to find a unified account forall uses of all (singular) personal pronouns is put forth in Kratzer (2009). Kratzer proposes that bound uses of first, second, and third person pronouns need to be modelled separately from their referential, co-referential, and E-type uses, and that also first and second person pronouns differ in their semantic contribution from third person pronouns. The first split between the bound use vs. the other uses is based on Rullmann’s (2004) observation that in some cases binding is possible even though the morphological make-up of the binder only partially coincides with the make-make-up of the bound pronoun, see (136).
(136) Only you prepared a handout for our first appointment.
(Kratzer 2009:190)
This data, Rullmann argues, suggests that the semantic contribution of a pronoun is built up from morphosyntactically manipulable parts. Kratzer agrees with Rullmann’s analysis, and furthermore argues that the “fake indexical” data in general points in the same direction.
Building on recent typological and syntactic research on the denotation of mor-phosyntactic features, i.e.φ-features (cf.Harley and Ritter 2002,Harbour 2006), Kratzer proposes that syntactically, personal pronouns only exist as hierarchically structured sets of features, which can be manipulated in the syntax. The specific pronominal forms are inserted at a later point in the derivation via vocabulary insertion rules.
They only spell out specific φ-feature combinations.81 For English singular personal pronouns Kratzer proposes the vocabulary insertion rules in (137).
(137) [1st] [singular] → I [2nd] →you
[female] [singular] →she
81Kratzer assumes a constraint on vocabulary insertion rules for pronouns: onlyφ-features are tar-geted. This prevents combinatorial features, like [def], [group], and [sum] from featuring in these rules.
The constraint is motivated by an observation in Cysouw(2003), who notes that some combinations of features are never explicitly spelled out in any language even though they are conceptually sound.
[male] [singular] → he [thing] [singular] →it
The vocabulary insertion rules for German differ from the ones for English only in the φ-feature specification for the second person since German morphologically distinguishes second person singular and plural.82
(138) [1st] [singular] → ich [2nd] [singular] → du [female] [singular] → sie [male] [singular] → er [thing] [singular] →es
At the level of Logical Form, the structured sets of features are interpreted compo-sitionally. In all of their uses, all personal pronouns are individual-denoting nominal expressions. The specific denotations differ for first and second vs. third person pro-nouns, on the one hand, and (co-)referential and E-type uses vs. bound uses, on the other hand.
The referential uses of first and second person singular pronouns are built up from number-neutral, directly referring first and second person features, [1st] and [2nd], and a singular feature, [singular].83
(139) a. J[1st]NK
g,c= the speaker(s) of c b. J[2nd]NK
g,c= the addressee(s) ofc
The singular number feature contributes a presupposition which filters out all plural individuals.84
(140) J[singular]K
g,c=λx:xis an atom. x
82Kratzer’s proposal does not take into account that in contrast to English, the form of German personal pronouns may depend on the grammatical gender of an expression or the natural gender of its denotation. In(i), the third person singular female pronoun sie and the third person singular neuter es may both be used to co-refer with das M¨adchen (Engl. ‘the girl’; grammatical gender: neuter, natural gender: female). Cf.Sauerland(2007) for details.
(i) Das
the
M¨adchen1
girl
hat has
jetzt now
kurze short
Haare.
hair
Sie1/es1
she/it war was
beim at-the
Friseur.
hairdresser
‘The girl now has short hair. She had her hair done.’
83Note that(139)should not be read as [1st] or [2nd] being interpreted as definite descriptions. The expressionsthe speaker(s) of candthe addressee(s) ofc have the same status as Kaplan’scS andcA.
84Plural is left unmarked. To form the associative plural needed for the first and second person plural pronouns, Kratzer introduces a combinatorial [group] feature, which takes a participant feature and returns the group associated with the given participant. She also introduces a combinatorial [sum]
feature and aφ-feature [dual] to deal with other pluralities pronouns can refer to. For details on dual or plural forms seeKratzer(2009).
Hence, the semantic contributions of the feature combinations for first and second person singular pronouns come out as in (141).
(141) a. Jich/IK
c,g =J[singular]K
g,c(J[1st]NK
g,c) =
the speaker(s) of c, defined if the speaker(s) of cis an atom b. JduK
c,g =J[singular]K
g,c(J[2nd]NK
g,c) =
the addressee(s) of c, defined if the addressee(s) of c is an atom c. JyouK
c,g =J[2nd]NK
g,c= the addressee(s) ofc
In contrast, third person singular pronous in their (co-)referential and E-type uses are definite descriptions built from descriptive (i.e. non-presuppositional), predicate denoting gender features, the [singular] feature, and a definiteness feature.
(142) a. J[male]NK
g,c=λx. x is one or more males b. J[female]NK
g,c =λx. x is one or more females c. J[thing]NK
g,c=λx. x is one or more things
The definiteness feature is not part of the set ofφ-features. It is part of a set of combi-natorial features which linkφ-features, or modify them to allow for a compositional in-terpretation of feature sets. For example, the gender features and the [singular]-feature cannot be combined, as such, because of their conflicting types: gender features are of typehe, tiwhile the [singular]-feature has type he, ei. The definiteness feature can link these two features since it is a silent version of the definite determiner.85
(143) J[def]DK
g,c=λPhe,ti. σxP(x)
When the gender features, the [singular] feature, and the definiteness feature are combined, the following interpretations for non-bound uses of third person singular pronouns in English and German are derived.
(144) a. Jer/heK
c,g =J[singular]K
g,c(J[def]DK
g,c(J[male]NK
g,c)) =
the unique xsuch that x is one or more males, defined ifx is the unique male individual in cand x is an atom
b. Jsie/sheK
c,g =J[singular]K
g,c(J[def]DK
g,c(J[female]NK
g,c)) =
the uniquexsuch thatxis one or more females, defined ifxis the unique female individual in cand x is an atom
85Since Kratzer (2009) also models plural personal pronouns, she adopts the denotation of the plural definite determiner, which uses Link’s (1983)σ-operator. The σ-operator is the plural version of the standard ι-operator that is used to define the denotation of the singular definite determiner (cf. Chapter 2). In an expression of the form σxP(x), theσ-operator picks out the unique, maximal plurality that satisfies the predicate P.
c. Jes/itK
c,g =J[singular]K
g,c(J[def]DK
g,c(J[thing]NK
g,c)) =
the uniquex such thatx is one or more things, defined ifx is the unique thing in c and x is an atom
So far, Kratzer’s account recreates the meaning proposed in Kaplan(1978 [1989]) for the referential use of first and second person singular pronouns. For third person singular pronouns, it builds up an Elbourne-style definite description account, which captures their referential, co-referential, and E-type uses.
To account for the bound uses of first, second, and third person pronouns, Kratzer’s main idea is that bound pronouns do not enter the syntax with a fully specified inherent feature specification. They are “born” with a minimal, lexically specified pronominal
“base” consisting of a nominal numerical feature, see (145).
(145) J[n]NK
g,c=g(n)
Note that this numerical feature more or less corresponds to a numerical index put into object language.
In addition to the numerical feature, a bound pronoun can enter the syntax with limited additional φ-features. The full morphosyntactic feature make-up of bound pronouns, though, is built up in the course of the syntactic derivation. The bound pronouns usually acquire most of their features from their binders. These acquired features are only visible to the vocabulary insertion rules, but are not interpreted at logical form, which captures the behavior of “fake indexicals”. For full details on the specifics of Kratzer’s account, I defer the reader toKratzer (2009).