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Language Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 99-121, 1995
Pergamon
Copyright Š 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0388-0001/95 $9.50+ 0.00
0388-0001(95)00011-9 W H O ARE W E ? T H E N A T U R A L S E M A N T I C S O F PRONOUNS CLIFF GODDARD Working within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework of Anna Wierzbicka, this study proposes reductive paraphrase explications for a range of first-person pronominal meanings. A general explicatory schema is first developed for English we. It is then shown how this can be elaborated to accommodate the inclusive/exclusive distinction, dual number and trial number, and how it can be applied to minimal-augmented systems. Data is taken from various languages of Australia and Asia. It is argued that NSM explications are preferable to conventional feature analyses for two reasons: they are less subject to charges of arbitrariness and obscurity; and they are located within a comprehensive theory of semantic representation.
Introduction From the time of the early Greek grammarians, linguists have arranged personal pronouns into tables (paradigms), and labelled the rows and columns with terms such as: first, second, third person; singular, dual, plural number. 1 Typological studies conducted in these terms (e.g. Forchheimer, 1953) have shown that all human languages have both first and second person pronouns, and that all, except for some pidgins, draw some number distinctions among them. 2 But it has been long recognized that from a semantic point of view the conventional categories leave something to be desired. As various writers (e.g. Jespersen, 1933: 204; Lyons, 1968: 277) have pointed out, the term 'plural' is not used in a clear or consistent way: youpl may perhaps represent a plurality of you s, but we does not represent a plurality of Is. Further, if it can be argued that I is semantically indivisible and inherently singular (cf. SOrensen, 1958; Benveniste, 1971; Wierzbicka, 1976; and below), it makes no sense to depict its meaning in terms of a conjunction of separate properties ('first-person singular'). Attempts to improve upon the traditional terminology of person and number have not generally been motivated by the kind of concerns just mentioned, however, but rather by a desire to translate the traditional arrangement into more formal, explicit terms, and at the same time to put it on a typologically sounder footing so as to accommodate 'exotic' pronoun systems such as those Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Dr Cliff Goddard, Department of Linguistics, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia. 99
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found in certain languages of the Philippines, North America, Africa, and Australia. One variety of formalisation can be illustrated by the notation of 'deictic features' used by Ingram (1978); his depictions of English I and w e are shown below. In (la) we see the basic elements of the system: first and second person are represented as [+sp] ('Speaker') and [+hr] ('Hearer'), and third person as [X] ('Other'). The curly brackets, of course, form part of the notational system, denoting a 'deictic unit'. -hr
+
--X
+hr
(1~)
4-X n
T
'we'
ahr
ahr J
T
'we'
(lb)
Ingram notes that the clumsiness of (la) can be overcome by introducing within the brackets a variable number specifier ('alpha') which may assume any value consistent with the number of the overall deictic unit, designated separately by a small figure at the upper right of the braces (which may also include a 'greater than' sign > ). An additional convention enables the introduction of an additional feature if the number specification calls for it. Thus he arrives at (lb), which represents English I and w e more elegantly from a formalist point of view. More recently, Greenberg has used another type of notation to facilitate cross-linguistic generalisations about pronoun systems. He proposes (Greenberg, 1988: 13) a universal 'language' consisting of: an infinite number of sets whose members will be drawn from one or more of the following: I, 2 3, signifying first, second and third person respectively.., the meaning of any individual p r o n o u n can be expressed as a set of these sets.
A similar proposal can be found in Zwicky (1977). In such a system, English I is defined as ((1)), and y o u (assumed to be ambiguous between singular and plural readings) as: ((2), (2,2), (2,2,2) etc.; (2,3), (2,3,3) etc.; (2,2,3), (2,2,3,3)) etc. Despite use of the 'etc.', Greenberg refers to this procedure of 'listing the sets' as an extensional definition, although he also notes (Greenberg, 1988: 14) that: it is usually possible to give an intensional definition by means of the properties c o m m o n to the constituent sets, and this will be briefer and more informative. Thus, I can be defined as
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the set of level 2 whose only member is (1) and you as the set of all sets whose members contain at least one occurrence of 2 and no occurrence of 1.
The orientation of such work on pronoun representation as Ingram's and Greenberg's is fundamentally typological-descriptive, rather than semantic. Neither author mentions semantics, let alone considers how the proposed schema could be integrated within a comprehensive semantic theory. It should be obvious, however, that such a project would face difficulties on account of the obscurity and non-intuitive nature of the formalisms. I intend in this paper to address the cross-linguistic analysis of pronominal systems from an entirely different approach, namely from within the 'semantic primitives' or Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework developed primarily by Anna Wierzbicka (Wierzbicka, 1972, Wierzbicka, 1980, Wierzbicka, 1989a, Wierzbicka, 1989b, Wierzbicka, 1992a, Wierzbicka, 1992b). It is not necessary (or possible) here to give a full account of the premises and development of NSM theory, nor to adduce extensive evidence or engage in rigorous argumentation in support of it. The brief outline below is merely expository. It should be noted, however, that the NSM approach to semantic explication has been fruitfully applied to the description and analysis of a very wide range of lexical, grammatical and illocutionary phenomena in various languages, including ethnopsychological vocabulary (Wierzbicka, 1990a, Wierzbicka, 1992a, Goddard, 1990, Goddard, 1991a), speech act verbs (Wierzbicka, 1987), colours (Wierzbicka, 1990b), passives (Wierzbicka, 1988; Chappell, 1986a, Chappell, 1986b), causatives (Wierzbicka, 1988; Chappell, 1991), particles (Goddard, 1979; Wierzbicka, 1986), interjections (Ameka, 1992) and conversational routines (Ameka, 1987; Wierzbicka, 1991), among others. The NSM approach relies on reductive paraphrase as the vehicle for semantic representation, and posits the existence of a universal metalanguage of basic, indefinable concepts which would be capable of finding lexicalized expression in every human language. The latest version of the metalanguage (Wierzbicka, 1989b, Wierzbicka, 1992b) comprises about three dozen proposed lexicosemantic primitives, listed in Table 1 in groups of roughly comparable elements. The words listed are, of course, the English exponents of the primitive set, but Table I. Posited lexico-semantic primitives SUBSTANTIVES:
META-PREDICATES:
L you, someone, something, people
not, if can, like, because, very
DETERMINERS AND QUANTIFIERS:
T I M E A N D PLACE:
this, the same, other, one, two, many, all
when, where, after, before, under, above
M E N T A L PREDICATES:
MERONYMY AND TAXONYMY:
think, say, know, feel, want
part of, kind of
A C T I O N S A N D EVENTS:
E V A L U A T O R S A N D DESCRIPTORS:
do, happen to
good. bad, big, small
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a growing body of cross-linguistic research indicates that an essentially isomorphic set can be located in every human language. For instance, studies contained in Goddard and Wierzbicka (in press) confirm the existence of lexical counterparts for all these elements in languages as diverse as Thai, Yankunytjatjara, Ewe and Japanese, cf. also Goddard (1990, Goddard, 1991b). 3 Along with a universal set of simple lexicalized meanings, the NSM hypothesis posits the existence of a universal set of combinatorial principles ('elementary syntax') by which the primitive meanings may be combined to form simple propositions. For instance, it is assumed that in every human language one could express propositions with meanings like the following (among many others): I want to know something; Someone did something bad," It happened at the same time, in the same place; I f you do this, people could say something bad about you. The formal realisation of such meaning combinations will not of course be perfectly isomorphic across languages, as there may be languagespecific rules of allomorphy, grammatical agreement, and so on. The lexico-semantic primitives together with their elementary combinatorial syntax comprise the universal 'natural semantic metalanguage', which according to NSM theory is to be found at the semantic core of every human language; for further argument and exemplification in many languages, see Goddard and Wierzbicka (1994). The aim of the present study is to develop and justify reductive paraphrases (explications) for pronouns couched within this posited 'natural semantic metalanguage', concentrating on the semantics of pronominal person and number. In the interests of manageability, we restrict ourselves to referential uses of first person (subject) pronouns. As mentioned, it appears that all languages (or at least, the overwhelming majority) have at least one such we word, and often several. Also, by focusing on the first-person we avoid the complications posed by the honorific and other social meanings that are frequently found with second-person pronouns. The inquiry has a special interest from the point of view of NSM theory, since it is the first NSM exploration of the semantic organisation of a classic 'paradigm', in the sense of a closed set of grammatically important words whose semantic interrelationships form a small, well-defined system. The traditional insight is that there are systematic relationships of opposition and complementarity among the meanings of pronouns. We hope to go beyond that, and to substantively characterize the main semantic dimensions of pronoun paradigms within a universal theory of semantic representation. The outline of the paper is as follows. The first section after this introduction explores the dimensions of the problem, developing explications for English we. The next section extends the approach to languages with the inclusive/exclusive distinction, as well as dual and trial number, and then considers minimalaugmented systems. Then follow some concluding remarks.
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Before beginning, however, some additional orientation about the formulation of NSM explications may be helpful. Additional orientation
To begin with, it will apparent that terms like 'first person' and 'second person' (or formalist equivalents like [+sp], [+hr], (1), (2), and so on) can have no place in the explications. In their stead, we simply use I and you, which are assumed to be irreducible. Both are also regarded as inherently singular, a reasonably indisputable proposition in the case of L but arguable in respect to English you (see below). However, it must be noted that in explications it is sometimes necessary to allow for contextual variation in the form by which a semantically primitive meaning is expressed. For example, the primitive element identified above as I occurs post-verbally as me, as a consequence of a language-specific rule of English whereby most pronouns have post-verbal variants (1line, he~him, they~them, etc.). In a combinatorial frame like I'm thinking o f X, therefore, if X is semantically L it appears in the form me. In recent NSM work, this phenomenon of contextually determined variation between semantically equivalent forms is known as 'allolexy' (cf. Wierzbicka, 1989a). Another example of allolexy concerns the meaning someone in combination with determiner and quantifier elements such as this, two and the same. Though comprehensible, English expressions like this someone, two someones and the same someone sound strange and may confuse the reader. To express such combinations more naturally, the word person is used as an allolexic variant of someone; the phrases this person, two persons, and the same person are regarded as semantically identical with the unusual-sounding expressions just mentioned. Aside from the personal substantives and the determiner and quantifier elements, the main items from the NSM lexicon that will be needed in our explications are from the mental predicates group, namely the illocutionary primitive say and the cognitive primitive think. In the explications, we will allow these verbs to occur with a prepositional phrase designating their 'intensional complement', e.g. think of X, say about Y. It is assumed that comparable meanings could be expressed in all (or most) languages, though of course there is no assumption made that the relationships would be signalled by analogues of the English prepositions. Another English-specific feature of the explications that is perhaps worthy of comment at this stage is the use of the present 'progressive' with think o f to convey the meaning of 'having something in mind', as in the expression I'm thinking of you. This is the most natural sounding English locution with the requisite meaning, but no assumption is made that a grammatical category comparable with the (so-called) 'progressive' would be necessary in other languages.
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Finally, it should be noted that the word you in the explications below is yousg. That is, in this study the traditional analysis is adopted that there are distinct homophonous words yousg and youpt, and it is assumed that the meaning of the latter is complex, being based on the semantically primitive, inherently singular sense. Against this interpretation, an alternative view would be that there is a single semantically 'number-neutral' you in English, which is open to interpretation as either singular or plural, depending on the linguistic and pragmatic context. I shall refer to these as the 'homonymy analysis' and the 'vagueness analysis', respectively. One argument in favour of the homonymy analysis (cf. Lyons, 1968: 277; Fawcett, 1988; Wierzbicka, 1989a) comes from the distinct reflexive forms yourself versus yourselves. In (2a) myself is singular because it is the reflexive counterpart of its antecedent subject I, which is singular. In (2b) ourselves is plural in number because its antecedent we is plural. What then of yourself vs. yourselves in (2c) and (2d)? To preserve the generalisation that a reflexive pronoun agrees in number with its antecedent,4 we must recognize grammatically distinct words young and yourt. (2a) I saw myself in the mirror. (2b) We saw ourselves in the mirror. (2c) You saw yourself in the mirror. (2d) You saw yourselves in the mirror. Consider also the facts displayed in (3). With reciprocal and relational-symmetric predicates it is possible to substitute you in place of we, but I and other singular pronouns are excluded. On traditional assumptions, this would be sufficient to recognize the existence of a plural word you, homophonous with its singular counterpart. Or again, consider the 'appelative' constructions in (4a)(4d). The number of the predicate nominal (fool vs. fools) is linked with that of the demonstratives in (4a) and (4b); the fact that a similar number distinction is drawn in (4c) and (4d) implies the existence of distinct, homophonous words, young and youpt. (3a) We/you looked at each other. (3b) We/you are sisters. (3c) We/you are a team. (4a) That fool! (4b) Those fools! (4c) You fool! (4d) You fools! Grammarians have been traditionally quite prepared to recognize homonymy where grammatical processes indicate the existence of separate words with the
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same word-form. Bloomfield (1933: 224) says, for instance, that the fact that the same phonetic form sheep is substitutable for both singular lamb and plural lambs forces us to regard sheep as 'a set of homophones, a singular noun sheep.., and a plural noun sheep'. Few contemporary linguists would disagree. Similarly, few would dispute that the English verb hit has a past tense despite the fact that hit (past tense) is identical in form with hit (infinitive). It is hard to understand resistance to the apparently straightforward conclusion that there is an isolated instance of homonymy in the English pronoun paradigm. 5 Admittedly, appeals to the generality of grammatical categories and processes are not necessarily compelling. Proponents of the vagueness analysis may simply forego the ideal of uniform grammatical rules and accept numerous idiosyncratic exceptions (though the arguments above undermine any presumption that the generality analysis is somehow more 'economical' than the traditional analysis). Within the premises of NSM semantic theory, however, a conclusive argument against the vagueness analysis can easily be mounted. Meanings may indeed be vague, but they must nonetheless be statable within some system of indefinable and translatable semantic primitives. To give a concrete example, consider the word complain, which is defined by the Oxford Paperback Dictionary (1979) as: complain:
1. to say that one is dissatisfied, to protest that something is wrong; 2. to state that one is suffering from a pain, etc.
Wierzbicka (1992/1993: 51-52) argues that it is possible to formulate a single general meaning, vaguer than either of the above, to cover both cases; roughly, that the complaining person has to convey the following message: something bad happened to me, I feel something bad because of this, I would want someone to do something because of this. For an example closer to the subject matter of the present paper see Section 2 below, where it is shown that a single general meaning may be stated (in an explicit paraphrase) for English we, compatible with both inclusive and exclusive uses. It seems impossible, however, to actually state a general meaning to cover both yOUsg and yOUpt. Formulations like ?one you versus ?more than one you are bizarre and at odds with the conventions of ordinary English. The term 'second person' is unsuitable because being a technical term, unknown to those without training in grammar, it is not a plausible semantic primitive. And it is no good using a disjunction such as 'the addressee or a group including the addressee', because a disjunctive definition is effectively two separate definitions (and also, because 'addressee' is a more complex term than you itself). Finally, from the point of view of translatability the proposition that English lacks a singular you would mean that, strictly speaking, there could be no exact translatability between English and most of the world's languages. It would be
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impossible to render the exact meaning of the vague English you into French, for instance, and conversely, impossible to render into English the meanings of tu and vous. An expression like that which forms the title of Martin Buber's celebrated book Ich und Du would be impossible to convey with complete faithfulness in English. This would constitute a signal limitation on the expressive power of the English language. From the standpoint of NSM semantic theory, therefore, English must be recognized as a language with an isolated instance of homonymy in its pronoun paradigm. There is a word you1 with a semantically primitive (and inherently singular 6) meaning, corresponding to the meaning of French tu, Chinese ni and Yankunytjatjara nyuntu, and there is a second word you2 with a more complex (plural) meaning, related to that of the first. In the explications proposed in this paper, only the first of these words is used. With these preliminaries out of the way, we may begin our exploration of the semantics of referential u s e s 7 of first person non-singular pronouns in the languages of the world, beginning with English we, and proceeding onto examples of increasing semantic complexity from a variety of other languages.
English w e Since we adopt a model of analysis by reductive paraphrase in ordinary language, it behooves us to ask at the onset: What's wrong with saying, as many grammars do, that we means I and some other persons/other people, or the like? Though intelligible, and effective for pedagogical purposes, from the point of view of NSM principles such a paraphrase has many defects. To begin with, what is meant by and? It is surely a complex word in its own right, and therefore stands in need of further explication. As well, do we really want to say that plural pronouns are literally coordinate structures? There are languages which lack an additive conjunction akin to English and (Mithun, 1988), but have plural pronouns nonetheless. The paraphrase (at least, the version with other persons) also relies on the English -s plural morpheme, which hardly resolves the semantics of plural number, but only shifts the problem. Also, there are many languages for which number distinctions are drawn differently among pronouns and nouns (of. Croft, 1990: lllf; Mallinson and Blake, 1981: 88). But worst of all, because English we may be used to refer to two people only, the paraphrases I and some other persons and I and some other people would both fail, since they imply at least three people altogether. Allowing a disjunction within the paraphrase, viz. I and another person, or some other people, solves this problem, but seems to say that we is polysemous rather than simply vague, as seems intuitively correct. It would clearly be preferable to assign we a paraphrase which is indifferent to the number of other people involved.
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The obvious alternative is an analysis based on inclusion rather than conjunction--something like the group o f people o f which I am a part. Though appealing in that it is number-neutral, this paraphrase cannot be taken literally either. For one thing, group is not a readily cross-translatable word. Also, it seems counter-intuitive to say that every instance of we contains a reference to a group (and that a sentence with subject we is about a group). It must be kept in mind, furthermore, that the people referred to by an instance of we need not constitute a group in any spatio-temporal sense. (Consider, for instance: what do me and George Bush have in common? Answer--we both dislike broccoli.) If there is a sense in which the referents are 'brought together' by being referred to as we, this action seems to take place in the speech-act itself, rather than in any external, real-world sense. From an illocutionary point of view, as MiJhlh~iusler and Harr6 (1990) have recently stressed, when I say we I speak not just of and for myself, but also of and for others. There is a sense is which every we involves an act of 'same-saying'. One final observation. It is obvious that the meaning structure of we has more complex referential presuppositions than I. When I say /, saying it is a deictic gesture which is completely self-sufficient. I do not presuppose that you will have to do some work to figure out who I mean. I issue the I as a pure index. When I say we, however, I do at least invite you to think of who else I am talking about. With these considerations in mind, I would like to advance the explication schema in (5), for English we. (6) shows how this schema would apply to a declarative sentence with a simple intransitive predicate. Essentially, this depicts we as constituting a metalinguistic act of 'same-saying', by which one applies the same proposition to a set of people one has in mind, one of whom is oneself. (5) We = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person (6) We got lost. = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person got lost
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Before turning to some apparent problems in applying this proposal to other types of example, let us note some of its advantages; it will be helpful to distinguish the 'referential structure' (represented by the first two lines, in the examples above) from the 'dictum structure' (or predicative structure). Observe that (5) is non-committal, as required, as to whether or not the addressee is included in the collective reference, and also on the number question. Even in contexts where it is obvious that, aside from the speaker, there is only one other person involved (as in Suzie and ! went to the shops, and on the way we got lost), the word people in the referential structure, and the locution all these people in the dictum structure remain felicitious. Observe also that the group aspect of a we-reference is depicted, according to (5), as being constituted by the meta-predication, which says 'the same' about all the people involved. That is, they are a 'group' for the purposes of what I want to say about them (but not necessarily in any other sense). It may be also noted that (5) depicts we as a fully collective statement, in the sense that what it is 'about' is characterized by a single referential phrase--a// these people. Shortly, I consider how to apply these notions to the use of we in reflexive/reciprocal contexts, with symmetrical and relational predicates, and to various types of collective predicate. Before that, a word of explanation about the word these in explication (5). In other contexts, the choice of these (rather than this) signifies plurality, and these must be regarded as semantically complex. In the expression all these people, however, the form these may be regarded as merely an allolexic variant of this, because the expression* all this people is not well-formed in English, and because the plurality of the expression all these people is already fully implicit in all people. I would also note at this point, in support of the general structure of explication (5), that among languages whose we pronoun is formally analysable, it is common to find morphological exponents of L all, people and same. This is clearest in newly stabilized pidgins, where there has been no time for historical change to obscure the etymology. According to Miihlh/iusler (1986: 159), Samoan Plantation Pidgin had mi 'I' and mi ol 'we', where quantifier ol English 'all'. Early Tok Pisin also had mi 'I', but mi-pela 'we', where the form -pela, from English fellow, could be regarded as an exponent of the concepts 'people' or 'person'. Mandarin Chinese has wo-men 'we' based on wo 'I'. Aside from acting as a plural marker on pronouns, -men is optionally used to indicate plurality with certain nouns denoting humans, s including the names of professions and occupations (Chappell, in press). According to Norman (1988: 121), the most likely origin of-men is a fusion of mei 'each, every' and ten 'person'.
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I now briefly run through a variety of predicative types, showing that with minor adjustments the same explication schema can be applied in all cases.
lndividuating predicates
One point about explication (5) which may not be fully obvious is why the dictum structure takes the form I say the same about all these people, rather than more simply I say this about all these people? The need for such a mediating 'same-VP' component is quite clear, however, in relation to sentences like (7), where the nature of the predicate is such that it could not be taken as applying literally, as it were, to individual members of the collective we. (7) We scratched our heads. = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person scratched his/her head The same solution can be applied to reciprocal predicates as in (8), which pose a similar problem. A notable characteristic of such sentences is that they are vague, in the sense that if more than two people are involved the situation being depicted is compatible with a wide range of physical scenarios---each person looking at one other only, each looking at some of the others, each looking all the others, etc. The proposed explication, which specifies the minimum requirement, is compatible with the full range of more elaborate possibilities. (8) We looked at each other. = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person looked at one other person Collective agency
Perhaps the most obvious difficulty facing the proposed explication is how it could apply with transitive, resultative predicates. For instance, a sentence such as we carried it over there does not imply that each of the people referred to carried it over there; it need not even be sayable that I carried it over there-the object could be so heavy that any of us would be incapable of shifting it alone. The point is that we act together to produce a single result.
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The crucial analytical step is to decompose the predicate into two clauses, one depicting some common action being undertaken, and the other spelling out the result of this collective effort. (Similar 'two-scene' analyses of causation have often been advocated, e.g. Vendler, 1967; Dowty, 1972; Miller and Johnson-Laird, 1976.) (9) We carried it over there. = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person did something (carry it) at the same time as the other people because of this, after that it was over there Collective and symmetrical predicates
A classic 'collective pronoun' sentence like we weigh 160 kgs poses a similar puzzle. Actually, I would say that this sentence is ambiguous: we know it must mean either together or each--but I will here consider only the collective use. The word together, which is essentially 'understood' in the collective reading, means something like: at the same time and/or at the same place. As an approximation for what it is for X to weigh 160 kgs, it is sufficient for our purposes to use a paraphrase like when X is put on a certain kind of scale, the scale will show 160 kgs, because of how heavy X is. Abridging unnecessary details: (10) We weigh 160 kgs (together). = I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: if this person is put on the same scale at the same time as the other people, the scale will show 160kgs Certain kin terms may be predicated 'symmetrically' of plural subjects. One may say for instance, we are brothers~sisters/cousins, thereby establishing that the same relationship--being brother, sister, cousin, etc.--obtains between all of the people involved. I suggest this may be modelled as in (11): the idea is that no matter which of the people referred to is selected, as it were, one can safely say that this person is the brother of any other person selected. (As a matter of fact, the lexical meaning of a term like brother itself involves a reference to the concept of the same, cf. Sorensen (1958), Wierzbicka (1972: 48-51) because to state the meaning of X's brother or X has a brother it is
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necessary to say that this person has the same mother or father as X; but this further decomposition is not necessary for our purposes.) (11) We are brothers. =
I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person is brother of all the other people
A similar line of analysis can be applied to collective lexical predicates such as team and f a m i l y , assuming that collective-membership predicates underlie such words. The explication schema in (12) relies on the equivalence: we are a team/family = we are all part o f the same team/family.
(12) We were a team. =
I'm thinking of people I'm thinking of me I say the same about all these people: this person is part of the same team as all the other people
I conclude that explication (5) can be readily adapted to reciprocal, collective and symmetrical predicates.
Explicating pronominal meanings in other languages I will now show how the approach developed so far may be applied to explicating the meanings of a range of non-singular pronouns in languages other than English. For convenience, from here on only referential structures will be considered. Inclusive~exclusive distinction
Let us turn first to a language with an inclusive/exclusive distinction, such as Malay, where the relevant forms are kita 'we (incl)' and k a m i 'we (excl)'. The meanings of such terms must involve you, including or excluding it respectively. (So it is somewhat misleading to assign such pronouns to the 'first-person' category: they are a hybrid of both first and second person.) But how exactly? A problem arises due to the fact that the you in question is itself open to construal as singular or as non-singular. That is, kita can equally well be used among a group of several people, with the effect of, as it were, addressing them all and including them all, or with a single other person only, with the effect of both addressing and including that single person. One way of looking at this LSC 17/I--1"1
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would be to say that the second-person category in question may literally be either singular or plural. But this amounts to saying that kita is polysemous, rather than just referentially vague. To avoid this consequence, and the complications that arise on trying to incorporate the complex meaning structure of yOUpt into the explication, I would propose the explications in (13) below. They make only one reference to you, in the third component, and that you is the semantically primitive (i.e. inherently singular) you. I submit that this models the way that each individual present experiences the speech act - - as directed toward him or herself personally. (13a) kita (1 pl incl)--
(13b) kami (1 pl excl)=
I'm thinking of people
I'm thinking of people
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of you
I'm not thinking of you
To appreciate how these explications work, it is helpful to imagine oneself in the position of an individual addressee. According to (13a), upon hearing kita, I know that the speaker is thinking of some people; I know that I am one of them and also that the speaker is one of them. I do not know, or more precisely, I have not been told, whether or not there are any others--this is up to me to decide, on the basis of the situation of utterance at the time. A similar line of explication can be applied to the exclusive form kami, where again it produces referential vagueness, although the overall effect is slightly different. Duals and plurals
Now let us explicate the nearest equivalents to English we in a language with a dual/plural distinction such Yankunytjatjara (Goddard, 1985), whose pronoun paradigm is shown in table 2. Note that the non-singular first-person forms show no inclusive/exclusive distinction. The explications below are modified versions of those for English we, assuming that the dual forms incorporate the element two. 9 The lead component for the dual (14a) simply takes the form I'm thinking of two people instead of I'm thinking of people. Characterising the number category of the plural is more difficult. We can reject three or more on the grounds that it is counter-intuitive to say that the plural pronouns depend semantically on the number three; a better candidate might be more than two, Table 2. YankunytjatjaraFree Pronouns 1st 2nd 3rd
Singular
Dual
ngayulu nyuntu paluru
ngali nyupali pula
Plural nganana nyura tjana
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Table 3. Palaung 1/2 Pronouns 1st
Singular ~
2nd
mi
Dual
Plural
ar yar par
¢ ye pe
Inclusive Exclusive
but the presence of more than seems to imply--wrongly--that a kind of 'grading' process is involved in using the pronoun nganana. I suggest its meaning is simpler than that, involving merely an opposition to the dual (i.e. a denial that the number is two), not an amendment to it (to the effect that the number is 'more than two'). The plural explication in (14b) is, therefore, effectively an 'anti-dual'. (14a) ngali (1 dual)=
(14b) nganana (1 plural) = I'm thinking of people
I'm thinking of two people
I'm not thinking of two people
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
Of course, many languages with dual/plural systems also have the inclusive/ exclusive distinction in the first person. A much-cited example is Palaung (Burma), whose first and second person pronoun paradigm is as shown in Table 3 (Burling 1970: 17). Later we will compare the explication for ar ' l d u incl' below with the socalled 1 + 2 category in languages with a minimal-augmented system. For now, note that (15a) portrays the ldual inclusive as semantically akin to the other dual pronouns in conceiving of a group of two, even though, logically, no other number is possible for the I + you combination. (15a) ar (ldual incl)=
(15b) yar (1 dual excl) =
I'm thinking of two people
I'm thinking of two people
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of you
I'm not thinking of you
(15c) e (1 plural incl) =
(15d) y e (1 plural excl) =
I'm thinking of people
I'm thinking of people
I'm not thinking of two people
I'm not thinking of two people
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of you
I'm not thinking of you
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Table 4. Ngan'gityemerri 1/2 person pronouns 1st
Singular ngayi
2nd
nyinyi
Dual nayin ngarrgu narrgu
Trial nayin + nime ngarrgu + nime narrgu + nime
Plural nayin + nirne ngagurr nagurr
Inclusive Exclusive
'Trial' in combination with inclusive~exclusive Ngan'gityemerri (nonPama-Nyungan, Australia) has a free-form pronoun paradigm with dual, trial and plural number categories, and also an inclusive/ exclusive distinction. In general, the trial forms are morphologically derived from the dual forms, by the addition of a suffix. In the first person inclusive, however, the trial form functions also as the plural form; or, the trial/plural opposition is neutralized in the first inclusive. These facts are displayed in Table 4 (Reid, 1990: 384). Commenting on this arrangement, Reid observes that the 1st person inclusive pronouns form a 'sub-paradigm', with a three-way (singular/dual/plural) number opposition, whereas the larger paradigm sustains the trial number (as well as the dual) in opposition to the plural. Also, as he observes: 'the suffix -nime has clearly different meanings within the two sub-paradigms'. I believe we can elucidate this situation by means of the explications below. First of all, consider (16) for nayin-nime. This portrays a meaning structure which is neutral, as required, on the question of whether three or more people are being referred to. This results from the fact that the collective reference to people is semantically opposed only to the dual number. (16) nayin-nime (ltrial/plural incl) = I'm thinking of people I'm not thinking of two people I'm thinking of me I'm thinking of you Turning now to the specifically trial forms, notice that the explication for ngarrgu-nime in (17a) below manages to imply a reference to three individuals without relying on the numeral three. This results from the sequencing of the components. A number-neutral, but collective reference (people) is made initially; an inherently singular referent--me--is then included within this; only after this has been done is the number of the other people specified as two. As for the plural (> 3) forms, such as ngagurr, note that it is again possible to assign them meaning structures which imply the necessary numerosity without having to mention the numeral three (or four, for that matter). The explication in (17b) below relies on a contrastive opposition both with the dual and
THE NATURAL SEMANTICS OF PRONOUNS
115
Table 5. Rembarrnga pronouns arranged according to traditional categories sg 1 incl 1 excl
2 3 masc fem
ngunu ku nawn ngadu
dual
trial
ya~k,t
ngakorrbbarrah ngakorrn
yarrbbarrah nakorrbbarrah ~ J
plural
yarrn nakorru
barrbbarrah barrn
with the trial categories: effectively 'two-ness' is excluded twice, at different levels. To begin with, in contrast with the dual category, two is ruled out as the overall number of the people involved. After this, an inherently singular referent is included within the overall group. Subsequent to this, two is again ruled out as the number of the remaining others; this component contrasts directly with an identical (but opposite polarity) provision in the trial forms. (17a) ngarrgu-nime (1 trial excl) = (17b) I'm thinking of people
ngagurr (1 plural (> 3) excl) = I'm thinking of people I'm not thinking of two people
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
I'm not thinking of you
I'm not thinking of you
I'm thinking of two other people
I'm not thinking of two other people
The explications above are appropriate for a language in which the trial and 'plural' categories are strictly and mutually exclusive: (17b) clearly implies that the 'plural' forms could never be used where the number of people involved was a mere three. In fact, for Ngan'gityemerri Reid (p.c.) reports that the trial forms are rather marked in discourse terms, and tend to be used only when attention is being specifically directed to the number of persons involved. When such attention is not being shown, plural forms are normally used to cover groups of three (though never of two). What this suggests is that the final component I'm not thinking of two other people should not be present in explication (17b). The Ngan'gityemerri 'plurals' would then be semantically identical with those of Yankunytjatjara, so far as number is concerned. Functionally, however, there would still be a difference between the two systems, for only in Ngan'gityemerri does the possibility exist of specifying, by way of the trial category, that the number of other people involved is two, if this is of special interest in discourse terms.
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Table 6. Rembarrnga pronouns arranged by minimal/augmented categories.
1 1/2 2
minimal ngunu y ~k u ku
3 masc fem
nawu ngad~
~
unit-augmented yarrbbarrah ngakorrbbarrah nakorrbbarrah
augmented yarru ngakorr nakorr~
barrbbarrah
barru
J
'Minimal-augmented' Systems Paradigms of the general type to be dealt with here first rose to prominence after Conklin's celebrated (1967) analysis of Philippines languages such as Ilocano (see Greenberg (1989) for a brief review of developments), but they are also found among languages of North America, Africa and northern Australia. As an exemplar of such systems, we will take Rembarrnga (McKay, 1978, McKay, 1979), an Australian nonPama-Nyungan language. As can be seen from Table 5 (adapted from Dixon, 1980: 351), l째 the paradigm appears to be asymmetrical if laid out according to the traditional categories; the first person inclusive seems to distinguish between trial and plural number, a distinction neutralized elsewhere. Furthermore, all duals are marked by -bbarrah except the lincl, but -bbarrah also appears in the lincl trial. Table 6 (Dixon, 1980: 352) shows that symmetry and morphological transparency can be restored by rearranging the paradigm under the assumption that the 'dual inclusive' pronoun (usually called 1 + 2 in this arrangement) is functionally parallel to the lsg and 2sg, in serving as a 'minimal' category which is subject to number modification as shown in the second and third columns. McKay (1990: 429f ) explains as follows: 'Minimal' refers to the smallest number appropriate for the specific person category, 'unitaugmented' refers to minimal-plus-one, and 'augmented' to minimal-plus-more-than-one.
The most distinctive feature of this kind of systems is the existence of the minimal 1 + 2 pronoun yukko. This is the key to the layout of the paradigm, which explains why the forms yarrbbarrah and nakorrbbarrah refer to groups of two in number ('I and one other' and 'you and one other', respectively), whereas the morphologically parallel form ngakorrbbarrah ('I, you and one other') refers to a group of three people. I suggest that the 1 + 2 pronoun does indeed call for an explication somewhat different in nature to any we have met so far. According to (18), it enables the speaker to issue a particularly direct piece of 'same-saying': to say the same
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117
about me and about you, but without conceiving of you and me as comprising a group of two people, in contrast to a true dual inclusive, cf. (14a). (18) y u k k u (1 + 2 min) = I'm thinking of me I'm thinking of you I say the same about these people Unit-augmented forms can be depicted as involving reference to one other person, as in (19a) and (19b). In the case of the 1 + 2 unit-augmented pronoun this brings the tothl number of people involved to three. (19a) ngakorrbbarrah =
(19b) yarrbbarrah =
(1 + 2 unit aug)
(1 unit-aug)
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of me
I'm thinking of you
I'm not thinking of you
I'm thinking of one other person I'm thinking of one other person I say the same about all these people Notice that the meaning of the 1 unit-aug pronoun incorporates a partial opposition to the 1 + 2. That is, the one other person involved in this case cannot be you, since the combination of 'I plus you' is precisely that covered by the 1 + 2 form. Here we see a weakness of the two-dimensional layout, which cannot show that the 1 unit-aug is opposed not only to the lsg, but also to the 1 +2 min. Interestingly, Conklin (1967) presented his influential analysis in terms of a three-dimensional matrix, but subsequent commentators seem to have disregarded the import of this. As argued by McKay (1990), the above analysis receives additional support from the way that the unit-augmented part of the system works in languages such as Nj6bbana, which distinguish masculine and feminine genders in the third person. In Nj6bbana, the unit-augmented pronouns come in two varieties, according to whether the sex of the 'other person' is male or female. The so-called augmented pronouns call for a slightly different style of explication, since I do not think we can take McKay's characterisation (as 'minimalplus-more-than-one') strictly literally. Since the augmented pronouns potentially apply to a group of any size larger than minimal-plus-one, it seems natural to assign them a lead component I'm thinking o f people, just as we did in relation to plural pronouns. I suggest that the number possibilities for the augmented pronouns arise by opposition to their unit-augmented counterparts, much as the Yankunytjatjara 'plurals' embody an opposition to their dual counterparts. This is illustrated in (20a) and (20b) with the 1 aug and 1 + 2 aug forms.
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(20a) yarru (1 aug) = I'm thinking of me
(20b) ngakorru (1 + 2 aug) = I'm thinking of me
I'm not thinking of you
I'm thinking of you
I'm thinking of other people
I'm thinking of other people
not of one other person
not of one other person I say the same about all these people
This concludes the present review of the paraphrase semantics of pronoun systems. Though there are no doubt person/number combinations of greater complexity and obscurity than those we have addressed, I hope to have established a prima facie case that the NSM metalanguage has the necessary expressive power to model semantic distinctions of pronominal number.
Concluding remarks At the analytical level, this study has shown that the semantic structure of plural pronouns is constituted as a two-part configuration. A referential structure based on the 'personal' elements (I, you, someone, and people), sometimes in combination with quantificational and determiner-like elements (one, two and other), serves to identify the people being referred to. A predicative structure involving the elements the same and a//then effectively unites the referents in an act of 'same-saying', whereby a common predication (either explicit or implied) is attributed to all the referents. Using this substantive approach to semantic analysis has not, however, meant that we have had to forego the traditional insight that there are tightlystructured meaning contrasts and oppositions between the member words of a pronoun paradigm. On the contrary, the method adopted here has enabled us to better articulate and characterize the nature of these meaning relations, especially in relation to the dimension of pronominal number. Though we have excluded from consideration the social components (respect/intimacy, kinship and the like) often found syncretized with the second-person category, there is no reason to believe that these aspects of pronominal meaning could not also be explicated within the present framework (see Wierzbicka, 1989c). Artificial formalisms and quasi-logical notations (feature systems, set notations, etc.) are not necessary for pronominal meanings to be revealingly compared and contrasted across languages. We gain greater clarity and free our analyses from charges of arbitrariness by adopting the NSM principle of using reductive paraphrase in natural language for the purpose of semantic representation. Since the NSM framework is a comprehensive theory, there is a further advantage---explications of the type proposed in this paper can be readily integrated with the NSM semantic description of other aspects of linguistic structure.
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NOTES 1I am grateful to Jean Harkins, Paul Hopper, Bill McGregor, Graham McKay, Anna Wierzbicka, and David Wilkins for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2Contra this, Wiesemann (1986: viii) reports, on a p.c. from D. Everett, that Mura Piraha (Brazil) lacks the number distinction altogether. Classical Chinese (Norman 1988: 120) seemingly lacked a number distinction, though it is possible this impression may be due to the writing system. Kawi (Old Javanese) also reportedly lacked pronominal number (Becker and Oka 1974: 232), though number could be marked by conjoining pronouns or by quantifiers such as many and all. 3 Harr6 (1993) claims to have shown that certain languages lack exponents with the same meaning as English T , referring to data on Wintu, Kawi, and Japanese. In my opinion, however, the standard of evidence in this article falls well short of what would be needed to justify such a far-reaching conclusion. Wintu is an extinct language of northern California. Harr~ cites a mere two sentences from Lee (1950) which show that the 'singular first person indexical' suffix -da may in certain circumstances be used in an extended sense to refer to someone else in addition to the speaker. Harr~ says (p. 234): 'lime-da is rendered as "I am ill", but tuhutum lim-tca-da (which we perforce must render as "My mother is ill"), should run more like "The compound body of mummy and me is where illness resides". The infix -tca- indicates the spatial diffusion of the -da index'. He fails to mention that the bizarre-sounding ~compound body' translation and the interpretation of -tca- as a 'spatial diffusion' suffix is his own, not Lee's. In fact Lee (1950: 540) says that this use of the suffix implies 'involvement', and offers 'my mother got sick on me' as probably the closest English translation. More importantly, Harr~ omits the crucial information that Wintu has a set of independent pronominal words, including ni T and mi 'you', though the former is mentioned in Lee (1950). The entire set appears in Pitkin (1984). As for Kawi or Old Javanese, an ancient language known only through texts, it is questionable whether Becker and Oka's analysis (Becker and Oka, 1974) of the 'intimate' lsg aku into three formatives (a-k-u) can be justified semantically. Certainly, the issue deserves more than the nine lines devoted to it by Harr& A similar observation could be made in respect of the complex pronominal situation in Japanese. Onishi (1994) spends several pages on the issue before concluding that ore and omae (sometimes referred to as 'deprecatory') can be regarded as semantic equivalents of T and 'you', respectively. In any case, as emphasized in Goddard (1991b), testing the translatability of semantic primitives requires dedicated, methodologically informed research before credible conclusions can be reached. 4 By way of a counter-argument it might be said that alternative masculine and feminine reflexives are possible in sentences like someone saw himselJTherself, but that we would not want to recognise homophonous words someone,,,s,, and someonelem. I agree that such a conclusion would be unwarranted, but I do not agree that it follows from the traditional position. The facts in the third person are more complex on account of the changing situation in relation to ~grammatical' as opposed to 'semantic' gender, but the important point is that there is always a way to express a gender-neutral meaning. In older formal English someone saw himself was semantically gender-neutral, as it did not preclude a female referent; today many speakers would express this meaning as either someone saw themself or someone saw themselves. With you, on the other hand, there is no way to express a number-neutral meaning with the reflexive. Also, yourself and yourselves are reflexive forms of yOUsg and youpl, fully parallel with myself and ourselves; but himself and herself are not reflexive forms of someone. 5 It should be noted, however, that there is no such homonymy in many non-standard varieties of English, due to the existence of 2pl forms such as ya'll and youse. 6 McGregor (1989: 443f) and McKay (1990) have recently argued for the inherent singularity of the second person on the grounds that this assumption simplifies the analysis of unusual pronominal systems in the Australian Aboriginal languages Gooniyandi and Ndj6bbana. 7 As highlighted by Mfihlh~iusler and Harr6 (1990) and Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990), pronouns may also have non-referential (or 'impersonal') functions, as for instance, English we does in sentences like Now, how are we feeling today? (doctor to patient) and That was in prehistoric times, when we were still living in caves. Such uses are beyond the scope of the present study.
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s It is not uncommon to read in the secondary literature of languages whose 1st and 2nd person plural pronouns consist of the singular form suffixed with a 'plural' marker. But on closer inspection, it often turns out that the plural marker in question has a highly restricted distribution, and in some cases a rather specialised type of meaning. For instance, Japanese watasitati 'we' is based on watasi T ; suffix -tati occurs optionally on nouns (including personal names) denoting humans with the semantic effect of indicating a 'grouping' with a particular person at its centre (Hinds, 1986). For example, itoko-tati (from itoko 'cousin') signifies a group of which a particular person's cousin is the focal point, without implying that anyone else in the group is a cousin to anyone. 9 In general, just because a given pronoun may refer only to two people it does not follow that its meaning necessarily contains the element two. Greenberg (1988) highlights the possibility that some apparent 1st person dual inclusives may be semantically 1 +2 minimals. McKay (1990) even suggests that the semantics of 'augmentation', which does not involve semantic 'two-ness', may underlie all so-called dual pronouns, but in my opinion this is going too far. For languages like Yankunytjatjara and Palaung, where (a) the dual extends across all person categories, including third person, and (b) plurals are not applicable to groups of two, we can assume that 'twoness' is a semantic dimension of the paradigm. 10 The tables in Dixon (1980) were presented in a modified IPA orthography. I have altered this to the practical orthography now being used for Rembarrnga. The digraph ng represents the velar nasal, h represents glottal stop, and the barred vowel u represents schwa. REFERENCES AMEKA, F. 1987 A comparative analysis of linguistic routines in two languages Ewe and English. Journal of Pragmatics 11(3), 299-326. AMEKA, F. 1992 Special edition on Interjections. Journal of Pragmatics 18. BECKER, A. L. and OKA, I. G. N. 1974 Person in Kawi: Exploration of an elementary semantic dimension. Oceanic Linguisics XlII, 229-255. BENVENISTE, E. 1971 [1946] Relationships of person in the verb. In Problems in General Linguistics, pp. 195-204. University of Miami Press, Coral Gables, Florida. BLOMFIELD, L. 1993 Language. Allen and Unwin, London. BURLING, R. 1970. Man's Many Voices. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. CHAPPELL, H. 1986a Formal and colloquial adversity passives in standard Chinese. Linguistics 24, 1025-1052. CHAPPELL, H. 1986b The passive of bodily effect in standard Chinese. Studies in Language 10(2), 271-296. CHAPPELL, H. 1991 Causativity and the ba construction in Chinese. In Seiler, H. and Premper, W. (eds), Partizipation: Das sprachliche Erfassen yon Sachverhalten, pp. 563-584, Gunter Narr Verlag, Tiibingen. CHAPPELL, H. (in press) Inalienability and the personal domain in Mandarin Chinese discourse. In Chappell, H. and McGregor, W. B. (eds), The grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body parts and the part-whole relation. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. CONKLIN, H. C. 1967 Lexicographical treatment of folk taxonomies. In Householder F. W. and Saporta, S. (eds), Problems in lexicography, pp. 119-142, Indiana Press, Bloomington. CROFT, W. 1990 Typology and universals. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. DIXON, R. M. W. 1980 The languages of Australia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. DOWTY, D. 1972 On the syntax and semantics of the atomic predicate CAUSE. Papers from the Eighth Annual Conference, Chicago Linguistics Society, pp. 62-75. FAWCETT, R. P. 1988 The English personal pronouns: an exercise in linguistic theory. In Benson, J. D., Cummings, M. J. and Greaves, W. S. (eds), Linguistics in a Systemic Perspective, pp. 185220, Benjamins, Amsterdam. FORCHHEIMER, P. 1953 The category of person in language. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin. GODDARD, C. 1979 Particles and illocutionary semantics. Papers in Linguistics 12(1/2), 185-230.
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