Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 16:39:56 +0000 (GMT)
From: Yan Huang <llshuang@reading.ac.uk>
To: linconf@tamvm1.tamu.edu
Subject: Yan Huang commenting on Tenny and others re logophoricity
Message-Id: <Pine.SOL.3.95.961030154500.8115A-100000@suma3.reading.ac.uk>
A number of papers presented so far mention/discuss the notion of
logophoricity, which was introduced in studies of African languages (I
think) by Hagege. Naturally, most of these papers refer (rather
uncritically) to the influential work by Reinhart and Reuland. But I
feel that RR's use of this notion is too liberal. Whenever there is a
counterexample to structural binding theory, it is attributed to the
factor of logophoricity. This will eventually lead to making it
impossible to permit the recognition of any real counterexample and
falsify any theory. Unless the notion of logophricity can be clearly
defined so that we know what constitutes a clear set of counterexamples
to it, the concept is of no great use (apart from the fact that it may
be used as an escaping route).
One way to tighten the notion might be to return to its original use
in African lanugages and to maintain the position that a logophoric
domain has to be triggered by a logocentric predicate (provided that
the logophor and its antecedent are not the co-arguments of the
predicate). These logocentric predicates are commonly thought to form
an implicational scale: speech predicates > epistemic predicates >
psychological predicates > perceptive predicates. (see e.g. Stirling
93, Huang 94, Culy 94). To this we might add 'deictically oriented
predicates' such as 'come' in languages like Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean.
With these points in mind, I am not sure on what basis Tenny (and
RR) take examples of the following kind (her (3) and (9)) as logophoric;
the predicates in these examples do not seem to be logocentric.
Timothy put/placed/set/the book close by him
References:
Culy, C. (94). Aspects of logophoric marking. Linguistics 32.
Huang, Y. (94). The Syntax and Pragmatics of Anaphora: A Study with
Special Reference to Chinese. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics).
Cambridge University Press.
Huang, Y. (96). Logophoricity: logophoric pronouns in African languages
and long-distance reflexives in East Asain languages. MS
Stirling, L. (93). Switch-reference and discourse representation. CUP.
--Yan Huang