scholarly journals A Comparison of the Referential Properties of Third Person Pronouns in Finnish and Estonian

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.31 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser ◽  
Katrin Hiietam
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Reference Resolution ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
The Third ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

Abstract: This paper investigates the referential properties of third person anaphors in two closely related languages, Finnish and Estonian. Previous crosslinguistic research has shown that the most salient referents are referred to with the most reduced referring expressions. Moreover, factors such as (i) grammatical role, (ii) word order and (iii) the main/subordinate clause distinction have been claimed to be correlated with referent salience. In this paper, we focus on how these factors influence the referential properties of the different members of the third person anaphoric paradigms in Finnish and Estonian. We use corpus evidence and native speaker survey data to investigate the referential properties of the Estonian forms and to compare them to the patterns observed for the Finnish pronoun <em>hän</em> ‘s/he’ and demonstrative <em>tämä</em> ‘this’ (see Kaiser, this volume; Kaiser 2000). Our preliminary results suggest that (i) the Estonian short pronoun <em>ta</em> ‘s/he’ patterns like the Finnish pronoun <em>hän</em> ‘s/he’, in that they both prefer to refer to subjects, and (ii) the Estonian demonstratives <em>see/too</em> ‘this/that’ resemble the Finnish demonstrative <em>tämä</em> ‘this,’ generally referring to non-subjects, postverbal NPs or subjects in subordinate clauses. Moreover, we find that the Estonian long pronominal form <em>tema</em> ‘s/he’ differs from the Finnish demonstrative <em>tämä</em>, despite their historical connection: As suggested by Pajusalu (1997), in Estonian, <em>tema</em> is used to refer to entities that contrast with something, whereas in Finnish <em>tämä</em> is used for entities low in salience (Kaiser, this volume). The implications of our findings for ‘accessibility hierarchy’-based approaches to reference resolution are also discussed.

scholarly journals Word Order, Grammatical Function, and Referential Form: On the Patterns of Anaphoric Reference in Finnish

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.28 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Reference Resolution ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Referential Expressions ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Anaphoric Expression

Research on reference resolution has shown that there exists a connection between the form of a referring expression and the accessibility/salience of its referent. More specifically, the most salient referents – i.e. those currently at the center of attention and most prominent at that point in the discourse – are referred to with the most reduced referring expressions. This raises the question: What kinds of factors influence a referent’s salience, i.e. make it a good candidate to be referred to with a reduced anaphoric expression? This paper focuses on two factors which have been claimed to influence referent salience: (1) grammatical/syntactic role and (2) word order. These issues are addressed from the perspective of Finnish, a highly inflected, flexible word order language which has canonical SVO order and two kinds of third person anaphors: the gender-neutral pronoun <em>hän</em> ‘s/he’ and the demonstrative <em>tämä</em> ‘this.’ In this paper, I present the results of three psycholinguistic experiments investigating the referential properties of these two anaphors, and show that <em>hän</em> and <em>tämä</em> differ in their referential properties and are sensitive to different kinds of factors. The results indicate that instead of trying to define the referential properties of these forms according to a unified notion of salience, we should investigate how different factors may be relevant for different referential expressions. The implications that these findings have for our view of how referential systems work are also discussed.

Effects of Light-Hearted and Serious Entertainment on Enjoyment of the First and Third Person

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
First Person ◽  
Online Experiment ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Perceived Enjoyment ◽  
The Third Person

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.

Causal determinism and a totally global fatalism from the third-person perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Third Person

The human brain and the human language are precisely constructed together by evolution/genes, so that in the objective world, a human brain can tell a story to another brain in human language which describes an imagined multiplayer game; in this story, one player of the game represents the human brain itself. It’s possible that the human kind doesn’t really have a subjective world (doesn’t really have conscious experience). An individual has no control even over her choices. Her choices are controlled by the neural substrate. The neural substrate is controlled by the physical laws. So, her choices are controlled by the physical laws. So, she is powerless to do anything other than what she actually does. This is the view of fatalism. Specifically, this is the view of a totally global fatalism, where people have no control even over their choices, from the third-person perspective. And I just argued for fatalism by appeal to causal determinism. Psychologically, a third-person perspective and a new, dedicated personality state are required to bear the totally global fatalism, to avoid severe cognitive dissonance with our default first-person perspective and our original personality state.

scholarly journals Deictic Shifting in Greek Contractual Writing (I–IV AD)

Philologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Klaas Bentein
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

AbstractMuch attention has been paid to ‘deictic shifts’ in Ancient Greek literary texts. In this article I show that similar phenomena can be found in documentary texts. Contracts in particular display unexpected shifts from the first to the third person or vice versa. Rather than constituting a narrative technique, I argue that such shifts should be related to the existence of two major types of stylization, called the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ style. In objectively styled contracts, subjective intrusions may occur as a result of the scribe temporarily assuming himself to be the deictic center, whereas in subjectively styled contracts objective intrusions may occur as a result of the contracting parties dictating to the scribe, and the scribe not modifying the personal references. There are also a couple of texts which display more extensive deictic alter­nations, which suggests that generic confusion between the two major types of stylization may have played a role.

Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

1975 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-242
Author(s):  
Jay G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

“Might it not be possible, just at this moment when the fortunes of the church seem to be at low ebb, that we may be entering a new age, an age in which the Holy Spirit will become far more central to the faith, an age when the third person of the Trinity will reveal to us more fully who she is?”

The optimal impact phenomenon: beyond the third person effect

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
VERA HOORENS ◽  
SUZANNE RUITER
Keyword(s):  
Third Person Effect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

The Mystery of Jesus' Teaching about “The Son of Man”

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-80
Author(s):  
Edward A. Beckstrom
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
High Priest ◽  
The Third ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
Will Of God

For centuries a mystery has surrounded the meaning of Jesus' term “The Son of Man” in his ministry, and today it is often called “The Son of Man Problem.” Studying “Son of Man” in all of its biblical references, and apocryphal usages, together with insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls, I propose a solution that the idiom means “Priest” or “High Priest,” but most especially “Heavenly High Priest” and is framed in the third person by Jesus because it is expressed as his destiny given by God—it is the Will of God. “The Son of Man” is distinct from Jesus own will, but is the destiny he follows. It is also the use of this term that caused Caiaphas to cry “blasphemy” at Jesus' Sanhedrin trial, who then sent him to Pilate for crucifixion, yet asserting that Jesus proclaimed himself “King of the Jews.” Caiaphas, knew, I believe, that “Son of Man” was synonymous with “High Priest.”

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