CALR lecture

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Taking care of yourselves and each
otherreflections on reflexives and reciprocals

• CALR lecture
• University of Southampton
• 12th March 2008

Dr Glyn Hicks Glyn.Hicks_at_soton.ac.uk
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Why pronouns?

• Pronouns are packed with linguistic goodness of
  every possible type
• Morphology
• Phonetics/phonology
• Dialectal/sociolinguistic variation
• Semantics
• Syntax

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Morphology of pronouns

• The English Case system makes its last stand with
  pronouns (nomininative versus oblique Case). No
  other noun phrases show Case inflections
• He loves her
• She loves him
• But no Case distinctions in
• John loves Jane
• Jane loves John

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Phonetics/phonology of pronouns

• Pronouns, like many grammatical elements, are
  susceptible to phonological reduction. E.g.
• Both you and your may be pronounced as an
  unstressed ye j?
• I is also commonly to be reduced to ?

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Dialectal variation in pronouns

• Unlike many other grammatical elements,
  pronouns are highly variable across dialects.
  E.g.
• West Country dialects nominative object
  pronouns
• Don't tell I, tell he!
• North-East dialects may contain
• youse for you (pronounced j?z)
• we for us (pronounced w?)
• us for me (pronounced ?z)

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Todays talk

• The syntax of reflexives and reciprocals
• The semantics of reflexives and reciprocals
• At what point in the construction of a sentence
  is reflexive/reciprocal interpretation fixed?
• What can we learn from crosslinguistic variation?
• What are the implications beyond those immediate
  ones for theoretical linguistics?

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Syntax and semantics of pronouns

• What pronouns have in common is that even within
  a given context , their interpretation is
  variable
• John thought he1 had won but Bill thought he2 had
  lost
• he1 John (probably)
• he2 John or Bill
• John liked Bill. That made him very happy
• him John or Bill

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Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns

• Reflexives and reciprocals (anaphors) are
  pronouns requiring an antecedent within the same
  sentence
• John won the lottery. It delighted himself.
• cf. John won the lottery. He was delighted.
•  
• John and Mary told jokes. Each other laughed.
• cf. John and Mary told jokes. They laughed.

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Syntactic requirements for antecedents

• Moreover, a reflexive/reciprocal needs to have
  the right kind of syntactic relationship with its
  antecedent
• John loves himself
• John loves pictures of himself
• Each other love John and Mary
• The antecedent needs to be to the left of the
  reflexive or reciprocal

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Syntactic requirements for antecedents

• It seems prima facie that the antecedent needs to
  be in the same clause as the reflexive or
  reciprocal
• Mary said Clause that John loved himself
• John said Clause that Mary loved himself
• But this doesnt explain the grammaticality of
• John and Mary believe Clause each other to be at
  fault

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Syntactic requirements for antecedents

• Maybe the maybe the antecedent just has to be the
  closest one to the left? But no
• John showed Paul pictures of himself
•  In fact, the syntactic factors are far more
  complex
• Subj Johns mother loves himself
• Subj Rumours about John embarrass himself
• Subj The woman John likes refused to go out
  with himself

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The semantics of reflexivisation

• In Hicks (2006) I identified two logical
  possibilities for how reflexive interpretation is
  established.
• A reflexive pronoun marks a verb as having a
  reflexive interpretation (direct reflexivisation)
• A reflexive pronoun is related syntactically to
  its antecedent, from which it receives its
  interpretation (indirect reflexivisation)

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The semantics of reflexivisation

• English reflexives are not restricted to being
  part of a reflexive verb, as in e.g. Romance
  unstressed reflexives. I.e. theres not a
  reflexive interpretation in
• John showed some friends pictures of himself
• John believes himself to have been badly treated

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Two types of reflexive in Dutch

• Dutch has (at least) two types of reflexive
  pronouns, zich and zichzelf (both can mean
  himself or herself) . In some cases like the
  following they are interchangeable, in others,
  not.
• Max scheert zich/zichzelf
• Max shaves himself
• Max is shaving (himself).

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Münchhausen reflexives

• Zich and zichzelf can give rise to different
  meanings (Voskuil and Wehrmann 1990a,b)
• Münchhausen trok zich/zichzelf uit het
  moeras
• Münchhausen pulled himself out of the swamp
• Münchhausen pulled himself out of the swamp.
• Zich he pulled himself out (using a branch,
  etc)
• Zichzelf he pulled part of his own body (in
  Münchhausens story, his hair)

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Dutch reflexives at Mme. Tussauds

• Similarly, the Dutch reflexives result in
  interpretation differences in Mme. Tussaud
  contexts (Jackendoff 1992, Lidz 2001)
• Ringo scheert zich
• Ringo shaves himself his own beard
• Ringo scheert zichzelf
• Ringo shaves himself the waxworks beard,
  or his own

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Consequences for reflexivity

• This tells us that reflexive interpretations can
  potentially arise from two distinct scenarios
• An individual performs a genuinely reflexive
  action on their own person
• An individual performs an action on another
  individual, and both individuals share the same
  identity

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Model of sentence construction
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Where is reflexive interpretation determined?

• Under this Minimalist model of sentence
  construction, the interpretation of these
  pronouns must either be determined
• syntactically at some point when a sentence is
  being constructed.
• semantically - when the completed sentence is
  assigned a semantic interpretation (meaning).

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Where is reflexive interpretation determined?

• The crosslinguistic data suggest that both of
  these options are potentially available.
• English reflexives, the Dutch zichzelf (and, it
  seems, Romance reflexives) involve a shared
  identity with an antecedent in a suitable
  syntactic position.
• Dutch reflexive zich, and the corresponding
  English null reflexive behave not like pronouns,
  but as markers of semantic reflexivity on verbs.

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Parallels in L1 acquisition

• This division between Dutch zich vs. Dutch
  zichzelf and Romance reflexives may reflect facts
  reported in the L1 acquisition literature.
• Baauw et al. (2006) report that Dutch and Spanish
  childrens use of zichzelf or the Spanish
  reflexive se (respectively) is fairly adult-like
• Dutch childrens correct use of zich lags some
  way behind that of zichzelf.

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Further questions

• To what extent do principles determined in the
  syntactic stage and semantic interpretation stage
  show different behaviour in terms of L1 and L2
  acquisition?
• If we didnt find any differences, does that tell
  us
• That the theoretical analysis is wrong?
• That the model of sentence production is wrong?
• That theres no reason to expect differences in
  acquisition anyway?

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Summary

• Identifying both syntactic and semantic aspects
  of reflexives and reciprocals in English.
• Interaction of syntax and semantics in reflexive
  interpretation means that interpretation of
  reflexives can be fixes either at the sentence
  building stage, or the meaning assignment stage.
• These possibilities are instantiated in different
  reflexive elements and may correlate with
  interpretive nuances between different
  reflexives.
• Can we find patterns of acquisition to support a
  distinction between the two types of reflexives?