Malamud (2006, 2007)

Malamud (2006, 2007) proposes a unified account which aims to capture both the impersonal and the referential use of English you by analyzing it as a special sort of indefinite expression: the empathy tracking effects observable for the impersonal use of you are taken as a reflection of the common semantic core of both uses—a relation between the addressee and potentially other individuals that the addressee empathizes with.³⁰ To model this relation, Malamud proposes two primitive notions from which an individual is made-up: its self and its persona. The self of an individual can be seen as its body, i.e. its physical form; the persona of an individual represents its mind or soul which is connected to an individual’s self-awareness and point of view.³¹

30As introduced in Section 1.2, Malamud (2006, 2007) argues that the empathy tracking effects observable for the impersonal use of you signal that the speaker invites the addressee to empathize with the set of individuals generalized over. In other words, the addressee is invited to share the perspective of these individuals.

31Malamud(2006), in contrast to her proposal in her2007draft, links the partition of an individual into its self and its persona to essential properties of Lewisian counterparts (cf. Lewis 1971). The idea is that all counterparts share the same bundle of essential properties across worlds, which may be analyzed as these individuals’ self. The persona are those properties of specific individuals that are not part of the self. InMalamud(2007), she abandons this link because of the possibility to state identity counterfactuals like the following.

(i) If I were a stone, I would not be able to feel any pain.

The analysis inMalamud(2006) predicts that the stones picked in the accessible worlds share essential properties with the speaker, which is, of course, undesirable.

Malamud argues that the notions of self and persona are needed to account for iden-tity counterfactuals and dream reports, and are, therefore, independently motivated.

She analyzes identity counterfactuals, as well as dream reports, in terms of “pretense”.

In both cases, the speaker pretends that an individual’s persona inhabits the self of another individual. Consider examples (51) and (52).

(51) If you were Mary, you wouldn’t be dating this horrid guy she’s with!

= If the addressee’s self had Mary’s persona, this individual wouldn’t be dating this guy.

(adapted from Malamud 2007:23)

(52) I dreamed that I was Brigitte Bardot and I was walking down the street.

John’s dream: Brigitte’s body with John’s mind walking down the street.³² (Malamud 2007:25)

The idea of apersona is defined in(53).

(53) Persona y of x in s is an individual existing in the situation s, which has a subset of the properties of individual y that does not include y’s point of view/mind/soul, but includes the point of view/mind/soul of individual x.

(taken from Malamud 2007:25 with minor omissions)

As defined in (52), the notion of a persona does not fit with Malamud’s informal as-sumptions about the status of an individual’s persona and self reported above. In her analysis of identity counterfactuals and dream reports, she suggests that the persona and the self are proper subparts of individuals that do not count as individuals them-selves, while in (52), the persona is a full-fledged individual. Therefore, I assume that the definition in(53) has to be understood as in (54).

(54) The personay of xin s is related to the individualxin the following way: For x and y and a situation s, there is an individual z in s such that y consists of z’s physical form and x’s point of view in s.

Note that in both (52) and (54), a persona seems to be a combination of a physical form and a point of view of two possibility distinct individuals.

For her formal analysis, Malamud introduces persona as a primitive, intensional relation between two individuals, see(55).

32In Malamud’s (2007) original example, she writesJohn’s self instead ofJohn’s mind. Given the division of individuals introduced above, replacing self with mind seems to be what was intended.

The same switch betweenmind andself happens in the original definition of the “persona”-relation given in(53), where it is also amended.

(55) persona(y)(x)(s) = 1 iff y is an entity as defined in(53) (Malamud 2007:25 with minor changes)

Based on the persona relation in (55), Malamud (2006, 2007) proposes the following account, which aims to capture the impersonal and referential uses of you.

(56) JyouK

g,w,c =λs.λP. ∃y[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s) & P(y)(s)]

In(56),youis analyzed as an existential generalized quantifier which takes a propertyP and a situationsas arguments. Thepersona-relation and the propertyP are applied to a variable ywhich is existentially bound. Given the amended definition of the persona relation in(54), the variable y represents the individual in the situation sthat has the point of view of the addressee and the physical form of some individual z.

How are the impersonal and referential uses ofyoucaptured in this account? Surpris-ingly in neither of her works, Malamud formalizes ordinary generic sentences containing impersonal uses ofyou. Only formal analyses for sentences containing referentially used you, as in (57), and sentences showing quantificational variability effects between you and some adverb of quantification, as in (58), are provided.

(57) a. You burned a house.

b. λs₀.∃y∃z[house(z)(s₀)&persona(y)(addressee(c))(s₀)&burned(y)(z)(s₀)]

(adapted from Malamud 2007:26)

(58) a. In those days, you usually/rarely lived to be 60.

b. λs₀. Most/Fews

(in-those-days(s)&s ∈M in(λs⁰.∃y[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s⁰))]) (∀s⁰⁰[s < s⁰⁰ →lived-to-60(ιy[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s)])(s”)]) (adapted from Malamud 2007:26)

c. Paraphrase: Most situations that are situated in those days and are min-imal with respect to the existence of an individual with the addressee’s point of view are such that in all extensions of this minimal situation, the individual with the addressee’s point of view lived to be 60.³³

In contrast to Lewis (1975), Heim (1988 [1982]), and Chierchia (1995b), Malamud assumes that quantificational variability effects arise from quantification over situations only. That is, quantification over individuals arises indirectly by quantification over situations containing only one relevant individual (cf. von Fintel 2004/1995).³⁴

33This is not the paraphrase given in Malamud (2007), which does not make the connection to quantification over situations transparent. Also note thats0is vacuously bound in Malamud’s original proposal.

34Adverbs of quantification are modelled in situation semantics as quantifying over “minimal situa-tions” (cf.von Fintel 2004/1995). Minimal situations are defined as situations that contain only those individuals and circumstances as required by the quantification expressed in the sentence.

The biggest problems for the account proposed in Malamud(2006, 2007) are caused by the persona-relation. Even though the split of an individual into its self and its persona was motivated by the empathy tracking data, which suggests a connection between the referential and the impersonal use, thepersona-relation makes undesirable predictions for both the impersonal and the referential uses.

Since the relation restricts the domain of the existentially quantified variable, it is predicted that a generalization expressed by a sentence with impersonal you is only stated for those individuals that share the addressee’s point of view, mind, or soul. The generalizations found in the data, however, apply to people sharing certain properties in general, irrespective of the addressee’s point of view. Consider the example in (59).

(59) You have to respect the rights of others.

If this generalization were only to apply to individuals that share the addressee’s mind-set, the speaker could explicitly exclude herself from the generalization by stating that she does not share the addressee’s point of view. A continuation of (59) along these lines, however, results in pragmatic oddness, see (60).

(60) You have to respect the rights of others. #I don’t have to, though, since I don’t share your point of view.

The problem becomes even more pronouced if the generalization only applies to a restricted class of individuals, as in (61).

(61) As a farmer, you have to milk your cows.

Malamud’s account predicts that the utterance in (61) expresses a generalization for those farmers that share the addressee’s mindset. This is again not general enough since intuitively(61)applies to farmers in general—again irrespective of the addressee’s point of view.

Two further counter-intuitive predictions for the referential use follow from Mala-mud’s account. Malamud assumes that the referential interpretation arises whenever the situation variable is not bound by either a generic operator or an adverb of quan-tification. This means that the referential uses are treated as last resort readings for you even though the referential use of you is arguably its default use. The second prediction is that in negated sentences, all components of the semantic contribution of you are in the scope of sentential negation. So, for instance, (62) asserts something about the entire set of individuals, even though intuitively only information about the addressee inc is given.

(62) You don’t look good at the moment.

Consider the formalization in(63-a).

(63) a. ¬∃y[persona(y)(addressee(c))(s) & P(y)(s)]⇔

∀y[¬persona(y)(addressee(c))(s)∨ ¬P(y)(s)]

b. Paraphrase: All individualsyare such thatydoes not stand in the persona relation to the addressee or y is notP.

Since the persona-relation holds for all individuals that share the addressee’s point of view, (63-a) predicts that all people that share the addressee’s mindset, are P, i.e.

sharing the addressee’s mindset determines beingP. Hence,(62) should only be true if all individuals that stand in the persona-relation with the addressee do not look good at the time of utterance. To mitigate this problem, Malamud argues that usually, the persona-relation is the identity relation: the only person to whom the addressee stands in this relation is himself. How this can be ensured, though—apart from stipulating that thepersona-relation is only different from the identity relation when an adverb of quantification or the generic operator is involved—is unclear to me.