Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-07T09:38:33.186Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Pronouns and Sub-personal Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2019

Kate Scott
Affiliation:
Kingston University, London
Get access

Summary

Chapter 5 presents a fully procedural analysis of personal pronouns in English. Pronouns, it is argued encode procedures which operate at a sub-personal level. Features including gender, number and person features function purely syntactically and do not contribute directly to the semantics of the overall message. That is, they are not conceptual. Rather, the cognitive processes triggered by use of a pronoun function to constrain potential referents to a sub-personally identifiable set. The differences in interpretation that arise when a speaker chooses to place contrastive prosodic stress on a pronoun are discussed, along with examples where the choice of pronoun does not play a role in reference resolution but contributes to other aspects of the speaker’s overall meaning. The discussion focuses specifically on the communication of expressive effects and has significance not just for our understanding of pronouns, but for our understanding of procedural meaning more generally.

Type
Chapter
Information
Referring Expressions, Pragmatics, and Style
Reference and Beyond
, pp. 93 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×