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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9211-5336

AccessType

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Linguistics

Year Degree Awarded

2023

Month Degree Awarded

September

First Advisor

Kyle Johnson

Second Advisor

Rajesh Bhatt

Third Advisor

James Cathey

Subject Categories

Linguistics | Morphology | Semantics and Pragmatics | Syntax | Typological Linguistics and Linguistic Diversity

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the morpho-syntactic makeup of personful expressions
in natural language; special focus is given to referential uses of personal pronouns. The central thesis guiding the inquiry is that utterance contexts, which serve to fix the semantic values of person indexicals, are specifically a kind of centered situation. This treatment of contexts puts restrictions on what kinds of person features are definable, and the resulting inventory of such features (in conjunction with independently-motivated pragmatic constraints on the use of referential expressions) provides a novel explanation for the typology of person systems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/35971646

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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