Abstract
In this paper we take a close look at the behaviour of German demonstrative pronouns (DPros) in the complement clauses of propositional attitude verbs. Building on and partially revising Hinterwimmer and Bosch (Demonstrative pronouns and perspective. In: Patel P, Patel-Grosz P (eds) The impact of pronominal form on interpretation, Studies in generative grammar. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2016), we show that DPros are anti-logophoric pronouns whose behaviour is similar (though not identical) to that of epithets (Dubinsky and Hamilton, Ling Inq 29:685–693, 1998; Schlenker, Proc SuB 9:385–416, 2005; Patel-Grosz, Epithets as De re pronouns. In: Piñón C (ed) Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 2014). In particular, we argue that while Hinterwimmer and Bosch (Demonstrative pronouns and perspective. In: Patel P, Patel-Grosz P (eds) The impact of pronominal form on interpretation, Studies in generative grammar. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2016) were right in assuming that DPros are prohibited from being bound by or co-referring with the currently most prominent perspective holder, they were wrong in assuming that the subjects of propositional attitude verbs are necessarily the most prominent perspective holders with respect to the DPros contained in their complement clauses. Evidence for this comes from two sources: First, in cases where a sentence with a propositional attitude verb is the complement of another propositional attitude verb in the matrix clause, a DPro contained in the complement clause of the lower propositional attitude verb can be bound by the subject of that verb, but not by the subject of the higher one. Secondly, if the speaker makes her own perspective particularly prominent by using an evaluative expression in referring to (the individual denoted by) the subject of a propositional attitude verb α, a DPro contained in the complement clause of α can at least for some speakers be interpreted as bound by the subject of α. We therefore now propose a pragmatic strategy that determines the most prominent perspective holder not only for the novel data discussed in this paper, but also for the data discussed in Hinterwimmer and Bosch (Demonstrative pronouns and perspective. In: Patel P, Patel-Grosz P (eds) The impact of pronominal form on interpretation, Studies in generative grammar. De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2016). Finally, we argue that the allergy of DPros against (maximally prominent) perspective holders is related to their status as demonstrative items which as such require an external reference point.
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- 1.
Hinterwimmer and Brocher (to appear) report the results of a self-paced reading study where subjects had to read sentences (word by word) that contained the possessive versions of either PPros or DPros that (due to the respective gender features) could only be interpreted as either bound by the subject or the (direct or indirect) object. The reading times for sentences where the binders were (direct or indirect) objects were almost identical for the versions with the PPros and DPros, while for sentences where the binders were subjects the versions with the DPros were read significantly slower than the versions with the PPros (cf. also Footnote 4).
- 2.
We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for urging us to make a connection between our analysis and the general properties of demonstratives in the paper and for offering suggestions as to how it could be stated.
- 3.
It is a simplification to speak of a “male” individual, correct only when the referent is conceptualized as a human or at least an animate. Properly speaking, pronoun gender in German is determined by the gender of the relevant (possibly not explicitly mentioned) descriptive noun. Also in the case of inanimate referents, the relevant noun may be of masculine or feminine gender – Tisch (table) is masculine, for example, and a definite DP such as der Tisch (the table) can thus only be picked up by a masculine pronoun (not by a neuter or feminine one), although the relevant referent is certainly neither male nor in any sense conceptualized as male. We permit ourselves this simplification throughout this paper because all data considered are limited to referents that are humans.
- 4.
Hinterwimmer and Brocher (to appear) report a self-paced reading study where the reading times of sentences like (7) are compared with those of sentences like (9). For cases like (7), there is no big difference between the versions with the DPro and the ones with the PPro, while for cases like (9) the versions with the DPro are read slower than the ones with the PPro.
- 5.
- 6.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that exactly the same contrast as in (15) holds in Russian between the personal pronoun “on” and the demonstrative “tot”:
(i)
Pashai
hotel
pojti
begat’
s
Petejj
no
u
{negoi,j/togoj}
Paul
wanted
go
run
with
Peter.gen
but
at
{PPro/DPro}gen
byla
prostuda.
was
cold
- 7.
As pointed out to us by an anonymous reviewer, this analysis runs into problems when it is applied to sentences like (i), since it can not account for the observation that such sentences allow for de se readings on which the (individual denoted by the) subject of the propositional attitude verb does not have a contradictory belief.
(i)
Peter believe that he is not Peter.
We tentatively suggest that in such cases the free predicate variable contained in the PPro is resolved to some alternatve property the (individual denoted by the) subject of the propositional attitude verb can plausibly be assumed to ascribe to himself in the respective context.
- 8.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting a reformulation of the modified lexical entry we originally proposed along these lines.
- 9.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point. The reviewer also mentions that the analysis proposed in this section would allow establishing a connection with the “anti-uniqueness” effect observed with complex demonstratives – they cannot be used unless there exists at least one other individual satisfying the NP description (cf. ?“I will feed this dog”, uttered in a situation where there is only one dog in the house). Interestingly, this anti-uniqueness effect can be overwritten if the sentence containing the complex demonstrative expresses a clear positive or negative evaluation of the individual to which the demonstrative refers (cf. “I love/hate this dog”, uttered in a situation where there is only one dog in the house), cf. Lakoff (1974), Wolter (2006), and Acton and Potts (2014). We leave a further exploration of the connections between our analysis of DPros and these observations concerning complex demonstratives as a topic for future research.
- 10.
Concerning the question of why full definite descriptions contained in the complement clauses of propositional attitude verbs can never (i.e. also in the cases discussed in this paper where DPros do receive bound readings) be interpreted as bound by the subjects of these verbs, additional assumptions need to be made – for example, a pragmatic reconstruction of Principle C along the lines of Schlenker 2005. Another open question is why PPros in contrast to definite descriptions (and DPros, of course) can denote perspective holders in FID if they are the spell-out of a definite description with an empty NP-complement that is headed by the weak definite determiner. But that problem is not specific to our proposal – it is an open question for Patel-Grosz and Grosz (2017) as well.
- 11.
The judgement as “?OK” is Patel-Grosz’s and may not be universally shared by English native speakers.
- 12.
We are changing “a man” to “a woman” here, thus introducing a gender difference, in order to remove an irrelevant potential ambiguity that might influence semantic judgements.
- 13.
The two authors of this paper also have different intuitions concerning the German version in (52b).
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Acknowledgement
We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, which we have gladly taken into account. We would also like to thank the following colleagues for helpful comments and suggestions: Umesh Patil, Andreas Brocher, Petra B. Schumacher, Klaus von Heusinger and Carla Umbach. The research reported in this paper was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project No. B0 2142/1-1).
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Hinterwimmer, S., Bosch, P. (2018). Demonstrative Pronouns and Propositional Attitudes. In: Patel-Grosz, P., Grosz, P., Zobel, S. (eds) Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56706-8_4
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