Privileges of First-Person Reference and of Third-Person Reference

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Guido Melchior
KÜLÖNBSÉG ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Éva Kocsis

We have direct access to our thoughts, therefore we think we can attribute beliefs and actions to ourselves differently than to others. However, linguistic concepts enable us to think about ourselves the same way as we think of others. The research question of the paper is how it is possible to find a unified model of first, second, and third person reference in language use that can allow for the personal quality of first person reference. The paper shows why the ’I’ in first person statements should be seen as a ineliminable item that is not reducible to non-indexic expressions semantically. Also, the paper claims that first, second, and third person references formulated by the same speaker have similar qualities (spontaneity, lack of identification, directness). Finally, the paper discusses the role of perception in these references.


1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Perrin

The categories of DIRECT SPEECH and INDIRECT SPEECH may be distinguished by differing policies of pronoun reference. Direct speech takes its pronoun orientation from the clause in which it is immediately embedded: for example, in the following sentence: (I) John Said to Peter, ‘I Can see you’, the first person pronoun I refers to the participant who is identified as speaker in the preceding clause (John said to peter) and the seconf person you refers to the participant identified as addressee. Of the two clauses involved, the second or embedded clause (‘I can see you’) May conveniently be referred to as the quotation content. The first or main clause may be referred to as the Reporting Clause; this correspondes ti the use of the term Margin in recent studies from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Lowe, 1969; Pike, 1966; Pike & Lowe, 1969) from which the inspiration for this paper has been taken. Any third person reference in the quotation content in direct speech must refer to a participant who is neither speaker nor addressee in the reporting clause.


2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Alibašić Ciciliani ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur

In this article we present some fundamental properties of the Croatian Sign Language (Hrvatski Znakovni Jezik, HZJ) pronominal system. The most common functions of pointing in HZJ are pronominal, demonstrative, locative, possessive and reflexive. Examination of the first person pronoun shows that the signer uses nonmanuals to indicate that she has taken the role of another person. Thus, the signer points to herself, but the intended reference is to a character in the story and not to the signer. These findings are used to provide evidence for grammatical first person. Viewed from Berenz’s (2002) perspective, grammatical second and third person pronouns show some degree of consistency within each category and differences across categories. When reference to the second person is intended, the characteristics hand orientation, eyegaze and the head will usually line up. In contrast, when reference to third person is intended, disjunction of some of these features occurs. Thus, the distinction between second and third person pronoun is linguistically marked in HZJ. Therefore we argue against Liddell (1995, 2003), who treats pointing as deictic, gestural, hence nonlinguistic. Furthermore we argue with Berenz against Meier (1990), who claims that at least for ASL there is no distinction between second and third person reference. Our morphological analysis reveals no gender distinction in the pronoun system, but there are distinctions between singular, plural, inclusive and exclusive pronouns. No correlation between spoken Croatian case marking and either HZJ handshape choice or systematic mouthing was found.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (s42-s1) ◽  
pp. 111-154
Author(s):  
Luca Ciucci

Abstract Chamacoco is a Zamucoan language of northern Paraguay that has considerably restructured its person reference system. Starting from the existing reconstruction of Proto-Zamucoan, I will analyze the evolution of person marking in free pronouns, verbs and possessable nouns. The verb lost the realis/irrealis distinction in speech act participants, while the third person underwent some allomorphic changes and introduced a distinction between third singular and plural, dependent on an innovative animacy hierarchy. The first person proved overall particularly unstable. In possessable nouns, it was replaced by a form for unspecified possessor, while a new exponent was created for the latter. In free pronouns, the first plural shifted to the first singular and then grammaticalized to the new verb prefix for the first singular. The most significant changes concern the introduction of clusivity in verbs and free pronouns, which was combined with an unusual number term: the greater plural. Besides, the verbal first-person exclusive is typologically unexpected, since it derives from the inclusive. I will discuss the reasons for these and other minor changes, which involve internal factors and language contact. Finally, I will show how recent contact with Spanish has affected the Chamacoco person system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 189-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renatus Ziegler ◽  
Ulrich Weger

Abstract. In psychology, thinking is typically studied in terms of a range of behavioral or physiological parameters, focusing, for instance, on the mental contents or the neuronal correlates of the thinking process proper. In the current article, by contrast, we seek to complement this approach with an exploration into the experiential or inner dimensions of thinking. These are subtle and elusive and hence easily escape a mode of inquiry that focuses on externally measurable outcomes. We illustrate how a sufficiently trained introspective approach can become a radar for facets of thinking that have found hardly any recognition in the literature so far. We consider this an important complement to third-person research because these introspective observations not only allow for new insights into the nature of thinking proper but also cast other psychological phenomena in a new light, for instance, attention and the self. We outline and discuss our findings and also present a roadmap for the reader interested in studying these phenomena in detail.


Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.


Author(s):  
Benj Hellie

Recent neo-Anscombean work in praxeology (aka ‘philosophy of practical reason’), salutarily, shifts focus from an alienated ‘third-person’ viewpoint on practical reason to an embedded ‘first-person’ view: for example, the ‘naive rationalizations’ of Michael Thompson, of form ‘I am A-ing because I am B-ing’, take up the agent’s view, in the thick of action. Less salutary, in its premature abandonment of the first-person view, is an interpretation of these naive rationalizations as asserting explanatory links between facts about organically structured agentive processes in progress, followed closely by an inflationary project in ‘practical metaphysics’. If, instead, praxeologists chase first-personalism all the way down, both fact and explanation vanish (and with them, the possibility of metaphysics): what is characteristically practical is endorsement of nonpropositional imperatival content, chained together not explanatorily, but through limits on intelligibility. A connection to agentive behavior must somehow be reestablished—but this can (and can only) be done ‘transcendentally’.


Author(s):  
Hye-Kyung Lee

Lee’s chapter provides a corpus-based analysis of Korean first-person markers by examining the semantic and pragmatic features emerging from their dictionary definitions and their usages in discourse. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the use of the grammatical category of a pronoun does not quite fit the Korean data, because the exceptionally large number of the lexical items are highly specialized in their use. While the first-person markers have the primary function of referring to the speaker, self-referring via first-person markers in Korean is mediated by the speaker’s awareness of his perceived social role or public image, which is expected to conform to honorification norms. The author also argues that the situation with first-person reference in Korean supports the view that the indexical/non-indexical distinction standardly adopted in semantic theory ought to be reconsidered.


This book addresses different linguistic and philosophical aspects of referring to the self in a wide range of languages from different language families, including Amharic, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Newari (Sino-Tibetan), Polish, Tariana (Arawak), and Thai. In the domain of speaking about oneself, languages use a myriad of expressions that cut across grammatical and semantic categories, as well as a wide variety of constructions. Languages of Southeast and East Asia famously employ a great number of terms for first-person reference to signal honorification. The number and mixed properties of these terms make them debatable candidates for pronounhood, with many grammar-driven classifications opting to classify them with nouns. Some languages make use of egophors or logophors, and many exhibit an interaction between expressing the self and expressing evidentiality qua the epistemic status of information held from the ego perspective. The volume’s focus on expressing the self, however, is not directly motivated by an interest in the grammar or lexicon, but instead stems from philosophical discussions of the special status of thoughts about oneself, known as de se thoughts. It is this interdisciplinary understanding of expressing the self that underlies this volume, comprising philosophy of mind at one end of the spectrum and cross-cultural pragmatics of self-expression at the other. This unprecedented juxtaposition results in a novel method of approaching de se and de se expressions, in which research methods from linguistics and philosophy inform each other. The importance of this interdisciplinary perspective on expressing the self cannot be overemphasized. Crucially, the volume also demonstrates that linguistic research on first-person reference makes a valuable contribution to research on the self tout court, by exploring the ways in which the self is expressed, and thereby adding to the insights gained through philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.


Author(s):  
David Rosenthal

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.


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