Jakarta Indonesian first-person singular pronouns

Jakarta Indonesian is a colloquial variety of Indonesian spoken primarily in Indonesia’s capital, where it was originally a contact variety between Betawi, the local variety of Malay, and Standard Indonesian. Like other varieties of Indonesian, Jakarta Indonesian is a language with a relatively open system of pronominal reference and multiple forms for self-reference. In this paper we focus on variation in the use of first-person pronouns in Jakarta Indonesian, using two corpora of spoken data collected three decades apart. We employ both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the form, function and social meaning of 1sg pronouns in Jakarta Indonesian, investigating both inter- and intra-speaker variation over time.

Differential innovation in 2nd person pronouns and agreement indexation in Trans-Himalayan languages

Tibeto-Burman languages show a drastic difference in the stability of independent and bound 2nd person forms. The 2nd person pronoun *naŋ is the most stable form in the Proto-Trans-Himalayan paradigm, preserved in almost every low-level clade, while 1st person is sometimes replaced. But 2nd person indexation in the verb is highly unstable. There were two distinct forms already in PTH, a suffix #-na, belonging to the original paradigm, and an innovative prefix #tV-, as well as an irrealis form which could be used with 2nd person reference. In daughter languages across the family we find further innovations in this category. These facts pose two questions. The first – why is 2nd person indexation so unstable? – can be interpreted in terms of politeness and face management. But this raises another question – if 2nd person indexation is inherently unstable, why is 2nd person independent pronominal reference not? The difference in stability reflects a difference in function. In Tibeto-Burman languages, with or without argument indexation, independent pronouns are always ‘optional’, i.e. carry some information management function such as contrast. Thus when pronominal reference to the addressee might be awkward, it can always be avoided, so there is no need to innovate face-saving substitutes for it. In contrast, in languages with argument indexation, the verbal index is obligatory, so any desire to avoid direct reference to one’s interlocutor requires adopting an alternative construction which then, over time, may grammaticalize into a new 2nd person index.

The linguistics of reading literature

In this paper, I attempt a bridge between linguistics, in particular text pragmatics, and school reading of literary texts. I propose a linguistic model of these peculiarities of the reading of literary texts, especially poetry, that have been called ‘aesthetic reading’, arguing that a linguistically founded basis is what is lacking for school engagement with (not only literary) texts. In the last years there has been extensive research on the linguistics-literature interface; however, what is surprisingly still missing, is a consistent linguistic model of literary reading. In this paper, I propose such a model and show that ‘aesthetic reading’ involves a distinct reading strategy that can be captured in terms of text-world-models and the differentiation between coherence and text sense displaying. Consciously reading poetry amounts, linguistically seen, to a close reading (i) especially focusing marked expressions, i.e., deviations from phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and textpragmatic routines, (ii) maintaining of unsolved ambiguities and thus (iii) generating an array of ‘authorized inferences’ that can be productively used for a principled plurality of interpretations. I specify this proposal and illustrate it with two cases of marked pronominal reference, arguing that my proposal has some important implications that make it particularly suitable for school context.

Resolving pronominal reference in local contexts: a referent selection task

Studies on global and local discourse have shown that sign languages indeed allow for occurrence of referentially unanchored pronominal index (ıx) signs referring to non-present antecedents to appear in ambiguous contexts. In local contexts, resolving the reference of these expressions has been suggested to either depend on a modality-specific anaphora resolution mechanism (localization) or on the next mention bias (first/second mention preference) influencing the salience of the referents. This paper presents a two-alternative forced choice referent selection task investigating the impact of a default localization pattern on the interpretation of referentially unanchored pronominal ix sign, in the local discourse with two competing antecedents. To do that, comparative response data was collected from right- and left-handed signers of German Sign Language (DGS) and Turkish Sign Language (TİD). Results provide evidence for second-mention or object preference for pronominal ix in both languages. In addition, the default localization pattern is identified only in restricted environments (i.e., with reciprocal verbs) to resolve pronominal reference. This modality-specific means is shown to be subject to variation across two unrelated sign languages under investigation. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------RESOLVENDO A REFERÊNCIA PRONOMINAL EM CONTEXTOS LOCAIS: UMA TAREFA DE SELEÇÃO DE REFERENTESEstudos existentes sobre discursos globais e locais mostram que as línguas de sinais claramente permitem que os sinais de apontação (ıx) pronominais referenciais não-ancorados referindo-se a antecedentes ausentes possam ocorrer em contextos ambíguos. Em contextos locais, sugere-se que a resolução da referência dessas expressões dependeriam tanto de um mecanismo de resolução anafórica específico da modalidade visual (localização), bem como de uma tendência de que a próxima menção (uma preferência pela primeira/segunda menção) influenciasse na saliência dos referentes que serão retomados. Este artigo apresenta uma tarefa de seleção de referentes feita obrigatoriamente a partir de duas alternativas que teve por objetivo investigar o impacto do padrão de localização default na interpretação do sinal de apontação pronominal referencial não-ancorado no discurso local, tendo como competidores, dois potenciais antecedentes. Para realizar tal tarefa, comparamos os dados obtidos das respostas de sinalizadores destros e canhotos da Língua de Sinais Alemã (DGS) e da Língua de Sinais Turca (TİD). Os resultados evidenciam que ıx pronominal retoma preferencialmente o segundo referente mencionado ou o objeto em ambas as línguas. Ainda, identificamos que o padrão de localização default só resolve a referência pronominal em ambientes restritos (ex: com verbos recíprocos). Mostramos que este modo de resolver a referência pronominal é específico da modalidade visual e está sujeito à variação paramétrica nas duas línguas de sinais investigadas, que não possuem relação de familiaridade.---Original em inglês.

Sociolinguistic Markers of Friendship Among Persons With Dementia in Long-Term Care

Sociolinguistics and discourse analysis provide tools through which to examine how friendship is socially constructed through language and communication. Research on social isolation and loneliness reveals the importance of social interaction on the psychological and physical health of older adults. Given that linguistic, communicative, and functional abilities decline as dementia progresses, it is challenging to identify markers of friendship. The Friendship Project is an ethnographic study of social interaction among persons with dementia living in a long-term care setting. The data are from transcripts and field-notes of social interactions among residents with a range of cognitive impairments over a six-month time period. Results reveal that persons with dementia employ specific linguistic features such as narrative, evaluation, evidentials, and pronominal reference to make meaning and create relationships over time. Practical implications will be discussed.

On Gender Marking in the English Language

The paper is concerned with a diachronic study of gender marking in the English language. The study aims to trace the evolution of markers differentiating the grammatical category of gender. It is revealed that the decay of gender in the English language resulted from that of case inflections which used to be the distinct gender markers of Old English noun and adjective paradigms. The paper also examines linguistic and extralinguistic causes of the development of third-person pronouns which are referred to as the main gender markers in Modern English. Gender aspect of pronominal reference is viewed form a sociocultural perspective associated with attempts to eliminate sexism in language. In this regard, it is shown to what extent this tendency has influenced the meaning, forms and functioning of English pronouns.

Presupposition Failure and Intended Pronominal Reference: Person Is Not So Different from Gender After All

This article aims to show that (one of) the main argument(s) against the presuppositional account of person is not compelling if one makes appropriate assumptions about how the context fixes the assignment. It has been argued that unlike gender features, person features of free pronouns cannot yield presupposition failure (instead, can yield only falsity) when they are not verified by the referent. The argument is flawed, however, because the way the referent is assigned is not made clear. If it is assumed to be the individual that the audience can recognize as the referent intended by the speaker, the argument is reversed.

Effects of perspective-taking on pronominal reference to humans and animals: Logophoricity in Finnish

This paper investigates the logophoric pronoun system of Finnish, with a focus on reference to animals, to further our understanding of the linguistic representation of non-human animals, how perspective-taking is signaled linguistically, and how this relates to features such as [+/-HUMAN]. In contexts where animals are grammatically [-HUMAN] but conceptualized as the perspectival center (whose thoughts, speech or mental state is being reported), can they be referred to with logophoric pronouns? Colloquial Finnish is claimed to have a logophoric pronoun which has the same form as the human-referring pronoun of standard Finnish, han (she/he). This allows us to test whether a pronoun that may at first blush seem featurally specified to seek [+HUMAN] referents can be used for [-HUMAN] referents when they are logophoric. I used corpus data to compare the claim that han is logophoric in both standard and colloquial Finnish vs. the claim that the two registers have different logophoric systems. I argue for a unified system where han is logophoric in both registers, and moreover can be used for logophoric [-HUMAN] referents in both colloquial and standard Finnish. Thus, on its logophoric use, han does not require its referent to be [+HUMAN].