Docs / Studies / Studies.PatelGroszGrosz2017
Patel-Grosz, P. & Grosz, P. G. (2017). Linguistic Inquiry, 48(2), 259–297
This file formalizes the account in Patel-Grosz & Grosz 2017 of the German personal pronouns
er, sie, es and the so-called demonstrative pronouns der, die, das. Both series
are definite determiners over a null noun phrase; the demonstratives add a DP shell hosting
an anaphoric index, so they are the strong article of Schwarz 2009 and the personal
pronouns the weak one, and nothing genuinely demonstrative distinguishes them
(PronounSystem, german). Corpus and experimental data on gender mismatch, equally
available to both series, support the shared null noun phrase, and the two-series languages
are those with two article forms (german_weakAndStrong). Where the two articles diverge,
the demonstrative is anaphoric in a way the personal pronoun is not (der_er_can_diverge).
The distribution follows from structural economy, Minimize DP!, which prefers the structure
with fewer DP shells unless the added index does pragmatic work: emotivity, disambiguation
away from the most prominent antecedent, or colloquial register (DEMLicensingContext,
Series.Optimal, optimal_iff).
The German forms are typed as PersonalPronoun, article strength being a property of the
series; deixis is the separate DemonstrativePronoun of the pronoun substrate, which der
lacks. The divergence is the weak and strong contrast of the Schwarz study, and Minimize DP! is
a comparison of shell counts among the structures that achieve the intended interpretation; the
gender-mismatch corpus counts are described in prose.
The pragmatic effects that license the strong-article series (§5): the speaker's emotional engagement with the referent, disambiguation away from the most prominent antecedent, and colloquial or dialectal register.
Derives DecidableEq.
Used by PronounSystem
Er belongs to the weak series.
Sie belongs to the weak series.
Es belongs to the weak series.
Der belongs to the strong series, the core of er plus the anaphoric index.
Die belongs to the strong series.
Das belongs to the strong series.
A language's third-person pronoun system: the weak and strong series, the article inventory, and the pragmatic effects that license the strong series.
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Used by german
German has the weak series er, sie, es, the strong series der, die, das, the weak and strong articles, and all three licensing effects.
The definition is too large to print here; read it in the source.
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Used by german_weakAndStrong
German has two article forms, read off the determiner inventory, matching its two pronoun series (§4).
Built from
As structures, the weak series is a single DP and the strong series adds a shell hosting the anaphoric index.
Derives DecidableEq.
Used by Series.shells, Series.HasIndex, Series.Achieves, Series.Optimal, optimal_iff
Whether the series carries an anaphoric index.
Built from
Used by Series.Achieves
A series achieves an interpretation if it carries an index whenever the interpretation requires one.
Built from ,
Minimize DP! selects, among the series that achieve the interpretation, the one with the fewest DP shells.
The definition is too large to print here; read it in the source.
Built from
Used by optimal_iff
Built from ,