09/02/2015

Speaker: Ans van Kemenade

Title: The syntax and information structuring function of demonstrative pronouns, and the consequences of their loss in the history of English

Abstract: I discuss the role of demonstrative pronouns such as Dutch die, German die, der (and inflected forms), and the Old English se paradigm at the interface between syntax and information structure (IS), exploring the relation between their position and their IS function of topic marking and interclausal referent tracking.

I will compare the role of personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns as two distinct strategies of pronominal reference, reviewing the relevant psycholinguistic literature and presenting some initial experimental results of my own which show that the choice of pronominal strategy is closely intertwined with types of discourse relation and interacts with verb semantics. The crucial distinction between the two types of pronoun shows up when they are in clause-initial position. Clause-initial personal pronouns typically mark topic continuity, whereas demonstrative pronouns typically mark topic switch. We show that the topic switch function characteristic of demonstratives is strongly associated with the (multifunctional) Spec, CP position, and it is this property that gives demonstrative pronouns an important syntactic status as a discourse-linking element in main clauses and as a clause-linking element in subclauses (prominently relative clauses), as well as giving them a firm syntactic niche in V2 languages such as Dutch and English.

I will also discuss the loss of demonstrative pronouns and their functionality in the transition from Old English to Middle English. The fact that demonstrative pronouns (and other deictic expressions such as demonstrative adverbs) were firmly entrenched syntactically, meant that their loss in the transition to Middle English necessitated a fundamental switch in the marking of clause linking and interclausal referent tracking. I also propose that the loss of demonstratives, occurring as they did in the first position (Spec,CP) of main clauses, contributed substantially to the loss of Verb Second, which had arisen in early (West-) Germanic as a clause-typing and discourse-linking strategy, but which in English was lost.

Where? Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, room 0.06 (Stijlkamer)

When? Monday, February 9, 15:30 – 17:00