Lecture: Logophoricity in Ewe

The Semantics of Logophoric Pronouns within the Framework of Binding Theory

Logophoricity and the corresponding pronouns represent a relatively uncommon phenomenon across the world’s languages. This presentation investigates the syntactic properties and semantic roles of logophoric pronouns within Ewe, an Atlantic-Congo language spoken in West Africa. By analyzing relevant examples, this talk will illuminate the semantic features and interpretation of these logophoric pronouns and contextualize them within the framework of Binding Theory, which is established in generative grammar. I will provide an overview of the usage and semantic aspects of logophoric pronouns and explore how the concept of logophoricity interacts with Binding Principles A and B. At first sight, logophoric pronouns seem to be an exception to the syntactic constraints of Binding Theory which is why I take a look at the semantics of logophoricity, particularly looking at their role in discourse. While doing so, my focus will be on the semantic interpretation of these pronouns with a look into methods of disambiguation in case of multiple possible referents.

References:
Ameka, Felix K. 2017. ‘Logophoricity’ in The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology. 513-537. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures, 5th edn. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris Publications.
Clark, Alexander, Chris Fox & Shalom Lappin. 2013. The Handbook of Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.
Clements, George N. 1975. ‘The logophoric pronoun in Ewe: Its role in discourse’ in Journal of West African Languages 10(2). 141-177. Ibadan, Nigeria: West African Linguistic Society.
Pearson, Hazel. 2015. ‘The interpretation of the logophoric pronoun in Ewe’ in Natural Language Semantics 23(2). 77-118. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Westermann, Diedrich. 1907. Grammatik der Ewe-Sprache. Hamburg, Germany: Dietrich Reimer.

Info

Day: 2024-11-21
Start time: 11:20
Duration: 00:30
Room: 00A02 CNMS
Track: Theoretical Linguistics
Language: en

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