"Disagreeing" pronominal reference in Swedish and the interplay between formal and semantic gender
(2010) In Lingua 120(9). p.2095-2120- Abstract
- This paper investigates two types of apparent disagreement phenomena in Swedish: cross-sentential reference when a pronoun and its antecedent seem to disagree in formal gender (and sometimes also in number), and "topic doubling", i.e. when a clause initial noun phrase is doubled by a pronoun that appears to have a different formal gender (and sometimes also number) specification. In order to explain the apparent disagreement, the feature set-up of the four non-plural 3(rd) person pronouns is examined. It is argued that Swedish has two versions of the 3(rd) person pronouns det (it.neut) 'it' and den (it.common) 'it', one referential pronoun (R-pronoun) and one syntactic pronoun (S-pronoun). S-pronouns make reference to linguistic entities,... (More)
- This paper investigates two types of apparent disagreement phenomena in Swedish: cross-sentential reference when a pronoun and its antecedent seem to disagree in formal gender (and sometimes also in number), and "topic doubling", i.e. when a clause initial noun phrase is doubled by a pronoun that appears to have a different formal gender (and sometimes also number) specification. In order to explain the apparent disagreement, the feature set-up of the four non-plural 3(rd) person pronouns is examined. It is argued that Swedish has two versions of the 3(rd) person pronouns det (it.neut) 'it' and den (it.common) 'it', one referential pronoun (R-pronoun) and one syntactic pronoun (S-pronoun). S-pronouns make reference to linguistic entities, whereas R-pronouns link directly to discourse entities. It is also argued that the R-pronoun dot (it.neuter) 'it', which is used in the two "disagreement" constructions, is 'deficient and lacks a number feature. A four-way semantic gender system is proposed, each gender corresponding to a pronoun. It is proposed that formal gender features are not present in the narrow syntax, but added post-syntactically. The role of formal gender is to render visible the presence or absence of other features, in particular number. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1630015
- author
- Josefsson, Gunlög LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2010
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Topic, Anaphoric pronouns, Disagreement, Formal gender, Semantic gender, doubling, Cross-sentential reference
- in
- Lingua
- volume
- 120
- issue
- 9
- pages
- 2095 - 2120
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- wos:000279117600001
- scopus:77953123026
- ISSN
- 0024-3841
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.002
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015. The record was previously connected to the following departments: Swedish (015011001)
- id
- 9004932f-2109-45fa-b2e5-87611d0ddcf1 (old id 1630015)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-01 14:27:02
- date last changed
- 2022-03-14 05:58:44
@article{9004932f-2109-45fa-b2e5-87611d0ddcf1,
abstract = {{This paper investigates two types of apparent disagreement phenomena in Swedish: cross-sentential reference when a pronoun and its antecedent seem to disagree in formal gender (and sometimes also in number), and "topic doubling", i.e. when a clause initial noun phrase is doubled by a pronoun that appears to have a different formal gender (and sometimes also number) specification. In order to explain the apparent disagreement, the feature set-up of the four non-plural 3(rd) person pronouns is examined. It is argued that Swedish has two versions of the 3(rd) person pronouns det (it.neut) 'it' and den (it.common) 'it', one referential pronoun (R-pronoun) and one syntactic pronoun (S-pronoun). S-pronouns make reference to linguistic entities, whereas R-pronouns link directly to discourse entities. It is also argued that the R-pronoun dot (it.neuter) 'it', which is used in the two "disagreement" constructions, is 'deficient and lacks a number feature. A four-way semantic gender system is proposed, each gender corresponding to a pronoun. It is proposed that formal gender features are not present in the narrow syntax, but added post-syntactically. The role of formal gender is to render visible the presence or absence of other features, in particular number. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}},
author = {{Josefsson, Gunlög}},
issn = {{0024-3841}},
keywords = {{Topic; Anaphoric pronouns; Disagreement; Formal gender; Semantic gender; doubling; Cross-sentential reference}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{9}},
pages = {{2095--2120}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Lingua}},
title = {{"Disagreeing" pronominal reference in Swedish and the interplay between formal and semantic gender}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.002}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.lingua.2010.04.002}},
volume = {{120}},
year = {{2010}},
}