Cover not available
Part of
The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns
Edited by Laure Gardelle and Sandrine Sorlin
[Studies in Language Companion Series 171] 2015
► pp. 45–68

Chapter 3. Free self-forms in discourse-pragmatic functions

The role of viewpoint and contrast in picture NPs

| University of Duisburg-Essen
This paper contributes to the study of picture NPs, as one of various contexts that encourage the use of unbound self-forms. The paper emphasises the need for a clear terminological distinction between different self-forms, of which standard reflexives are only one type. Based on findings from the British National Corpus, the Northern Ireland Corpus of Transcribed Speech, and the Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects, an extended definition of picture NPs is proposed for cases with and without representational nouns (That’s (a picture of) myself) which can be attributed to the conversational context. A Pronoun Usage Questionnaire is used to test constraints and explanations proposed in previous studies on self-forms in picture NPs (in particular Cantrall 1974 and Kuno 1987), and to assess their general acceptability among English native speakers. The results presented provide strong evidence against a ‘one form-one meaning’ approach, showing that pronoun choice in conversation is frequently influenced by discourse-pragmatic factors, such as viewpoint and contrast.
Published online: 10 November 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.03her
References (43)
References
Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baker, Carl L. 1995. Contrast, discourse prominence, and intensification, with special reference to locally free reflexives in British English. Language 71(1): 63-101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cantrall, William R. 1973. Reflexive pronouns and viewpoint. Linguistische Berichte 28: 42-50.Google Scholar
. 1974. Viewpoint, Reflexives, and the Nature of Noun Phrases. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Carroll, Susanne. 1986. On non-anaphor reflexives. Revue Québécoise de Linguistique 15(2): 135-165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding [Studies in Generative Grammar 9]. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Drogosz, Anna. 2008. Reflexivization in English and Polish – A Cognitive Grammar Approach. Olsztyn: Instytut Neofilologii UWM.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1986. Grammatically deviant prestige constructions. In A Festschrift for Sol Saporta, Michael Brame, Heles Contreras & Frederick J. Newmeyer (eds), 93-129. Seattle WA: Noit Amrofer.Google Scholar
Filppula, Markku. 1999. The Grammar of Irish English – Language in Hibernian Style. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2004. Irish English: Morphology and syntax. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax, Bernd Kortmann & Edgar Schneider (eds), 73-101. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Gast, Volker. 2004. The interpretation of logophoric self-forms, and some consequences for a model of reference and denotation. In Proceedings of the 5th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphora Resolution Colloquium DAARC, António Branco, Tony McEnery & Ruslan Mitkov (eds), 75-80. Lisbon: Ediçôes Colibri.Google Scholar
Goldwater, Micah B. & Runner, Jeffrey T. 2006. Coreferential interpretations of reflexives in picture noun phrases: An experimental approach. In Proceedings of the 2004 Texas Linguistics Society Conference. Issues at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface, Pascal Denis, Eric McCready, Alexis Palmer & Brian Reese (eds), 28-34. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Grano, Thomas. 2006. ‛Me and Her’ Meets ‛He and I’: Case, Person, and Linear Ordering in English Coordinated Pronouns. BA thesis, Stanford University. <[URL]>Google Scholar
Hagège, Claude. 1974. Les pronoms logophoriques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 69: 287-310.Google Scholar
Harris, John. 1993. The grammar of Irish English. In Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, James Milroy & Lesley Milroy (eds), 139-186. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Heacock, Paul (ed.). 2008. Cambridge Dictionary of American English, 2nd edn. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood & Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Hernández, Nuria. 2002. A context hierarchy of untriggered self-forms in English. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) – A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture 3: 269-284. Special issue Reflexives and Intensifiers: The Use of Self-Forms in English , Ekkehard König & Volker Gast (eds).Google Scholar
. 2012. Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England: A Corpus Study of Grammatical Variation in Spontaneous Speech. PhD dissertation, Freiburg University. <[URL]>Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1949 (1909). A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Vol. VII: Syntax. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Kirk, John M. 1992. The Northern Ireland transcribed corpus of speech. In New Directions in English Language Corpora: Methodology, Results, Software Developments, Gerhard Leitner (ed.), 65-73. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kjellmer, Göran. 1986. ‛Us Anglos are a cut above the field’: On objective pronouns in nominative contexts. English Studies 67(5): 445-449. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kleinedler, Steven R. & Eggert, Randall. Indexi-lexicography. In Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn [Studies in Language Companion Series 80], Betty J. Birner & Gregory Ward (eds), 195-215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo
König, Ekkehard & Siemund, Peter. 2000. Intensifiers and reflexives: A typological perspective. In Reflexives: Forms and Functions, Vol.1 [Typological Studies in Language 40], Zygmunt Frajzyngier & Traci S. Walker (eds), 41-74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuno, Susumu. 1987. Functional Syntax: Anaphora, Discourse, and Empathy. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
. 2006. Empathy and direct discourse perspectives. In The Handbook of Pragmatics, Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds), 315-343. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lees, Robert B. & Klima, Edward S. 1963. Rules for English pronominalization. Language 39(1): 17-28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: CUPGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Deixis. In The Handbook of Pragmatics, Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds), 97-121. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Jim. 1993. The grammar of Scottish English. In Real English: The Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles, James Milroy & Lesley Milroy (eds), 99-138. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Parker, Frank, Riley, Kathryn & Meyer, Charles F. 1988. Case assignment and the ordering of constituents in coordinate constructions. American Speech 63(3): 214-233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. Untriggered reflexive pronouns in English. American Speech 65(1): 50-69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rooryck, Johan & Vanden Wyngaerd, Guido. 2007. The syntax of spatial anaphora. Tromsø Working Papers on Language & Linguistics: Nordlyd 34(2), special issue on Space, Motion, and Result, Monika Bašić, Marina Pantcheva, Minjeong Son & Peter Svenonius (eds), 33-85. Tromsø: Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics.Google Scholar
Runner, Jeffrey T., Sussman, Rachel S. & Tanenhaus, Michael K. 2003. Assignment of reference to reflexives and pronouns in picture noun phrases: Evidence from eye movements. Cognition 81(1): B1-B13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, David, Thibault, Pierrette & Bérubé, Hélène. 1978. Semantic field variability. In Linguistic Variation: Models and Methods, David Sankoff (ed.), 23-43. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schütze, Carson T. 2001. On the nature of default case. Syntax 4(3): 205-238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2003. Varieties of English from a cross-linguistic perspective: Intensifiers and reflexives. In Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, Günter Rohdenburg & Britta Mondorf (eds), 479–506. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Stein, Dieter. 1997. Syntax and varieties. In Taming the Vernacular – From Dialect to Written Standard Language, Jenny Cheshire & Dieter Stein (eds), 35-50. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Stern, Nancy. 2004. The semantic unity of reflexive, emphatic, and other –self pronouns. American Speech 79(3): 270-280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1994. Standard and non-standard pronominal usage in English, with special reference to the eighteenth century. In Towards a Standard English 1600–1800, Dieter Stein & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds), 217-242. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Warshawsky, Florence. 1965. Reflexivization. Mimeographed, MIT.Google Scholar
Zribi-Hertz, Anne. 1989. Anaphor binding and narrative point of view: English reflexive pronouns in sentence and discourse. Language 65(4): 695-727. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Kim, Jungsoo & Sanghoun Song
2024. An In-depth Corpus-based Investigation of Unbound Reflexives. English Studies 105:4 ► pp. 620 ff. DOI logo
Hernández, Nuria
2021. Personal Pronouns: Variation and Ambiguity. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 69:3 ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.