Logophoricity and shifts of perspective
New facts and a new account
This study presents a typology of existing approaches to logophoricity and discusses problems the different
approaches face. It addresses, in particular, perspective-based accounts describing constructions with logophoric pronouns in
terms of their intermediate position on the direct-indirect continuum (Evans 2013), and
lexical accounts incorporating the idea of coreference with the reported speaker into the pronoun’s meaning, either through
role-to-value mapping mechanisms (Nikitina 2012a, b), or through feature specification (Schlenker 2003a, b). The perspective-based approach is shown to be unsatisfactory when it comes to
treating language-specific data in precise and cross-linguistically comparable terms. It fails to account, for example, for
cross-linguistic differences in the behavior of logophoric pronouns, for their optionality, and for their close diachronic
relationship to third person elements. Lexical accounts are better equipped to handle a variety of outstanding issues, but they,
too, need to be revised to accommodate a variety of discourse phenomena associated with logophoricity, including alternation with
first person pronouns. The proposed solution follows the lines of lexical approaches but aims at enriching the pronouns’ lexical
representation with notions pertaining to narrative structure, such as the role of Narrator. A separate solution is proposed for
treating conventionalized uses occurring outside speech and attitude reports.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1The puzzle of logophoricity
- 1.2Three recent accounts: A contrastive analysis
- 2.Little-discussed properties of logophoric systems
- 2.1Logophoric pronouns are not restricted to indirect discourse
- 2.2Logophoricity comes in varieties
- 2.3Logophoricity need not involve special pronouns
- 3.Issues problematic for all three approaches
- 3.1Logophoric pronouns are not restricted to attitude reports
- 3.2Logophoric pronouns can refer to the actual speaker
- 3.3Logophoric pronouns can alternate with first person
- 4.Proposed tentative solutions
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
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Cited by
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Frontiers in Communication 6
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