The third person gap in adnominal pronoun constructions

Abstract

The lack of third person adnominal pronouns in English-type languages (*they linguists) is argued to be an effect of contextually conditioned allomorphy between the exponents of the definite article and third person pronouns within a pronominal determiner structure. A crosslinguistic survey of 82 languages finds that the third person gap is crosslinguistically relatively rare and may be restricted to Europe and surrounding areas. The survey also suggests a potential interaction between the third person gap and the availability of distinct articles, as expected on the proposed analysis. The paper also discusses issues raised by the third person gap for alternative analyses, including those advocating an NP-analysis.

DP, NP, or neither? Contours of an unresolved debate

“…However, that alone would still not explain why pronouns can -or in the third person: have to -occur on their own, while articles cannot." Höhn (2020) concludes that DP-based approaches fare better in accounting for the observed cross-linguistic pattern.…”

“…The papers in the SC examine seventeen languages including Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Hungarian, Mohawk, Mongolian, Niuean, Polish, Romanian, Shona, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Yupik Eskimo. In addition, the SC contains a typological survey of the adnominal pronoun construction in 81 languages (Höhn 2020), with some overlap with the previously mentioned ones. In addition to cross-linguistic comparison and investigation, the SC presents an inquiry into intra-linguistic variation, by delving into intricacies of determiner and reinforcer system of the German dialect Rhine and Moselle Franconian (Rauth & Speyer 2021).…”

“…The paper addresses the absence of third person in the construction, as shown in (4b), and notes that "the third person gap is crosslinguistically relatively rare and may be restricted to Europe and surrounding areas." Höhn (2020) argues that it arises as an effect of contextually conditioned allomorphy and offers a Distributed Morphology analysis, building on a DP-structure as in ( 5):…”

“…Under the assumption that n underlies articles in some languages, Höhn (2020) notes that the following issues arise:…”

“…In an abstract sense, NC-internal agreement, or nominal concord, is an area addressed in the SC by Höhn (2020) and Iordăchioaia (2020). It is illustrated in the German example (39) where the article covaries in morphological case, gender and number with the head noun, which itself bears these features inherently:…”