Variation in Gizey third-person subjects and the emergence of antilogophoricity.
This paper is concerned with how grammatical functions emerge in natural languages. Specifically, it provides insights into the emergence of antilogophoricity, viz., the special coding of participants other than those whose speech or thoughts are being reported. The study is based on Gizey (Masa < C...
| Published in: | Linguistics Vol. 64; no. 3; pp. 473 - 501 |
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| Format: | Article |
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De Gruyter
May2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=194577589&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 194577589 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00243949 0FR jtl: Linguistics issn: 00243949 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2026 vid: 64 iid: 3 pid: 1734 pub: De Gruyter artinfo: ui: 194577589 10.1515/ling-2024-0002 ppf: 473 ppct: 28 formats: tig: atl: Variation in Gizey third-person subjects and the emergence of antilogophoricity. aug: au: Guitang, Guillaume affil: Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, Jesus College, Oxford University, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JF, Oxford, UK Faculté de Lettres, Traduction et Communication, Campus du Solbosch – CP 175, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium su: Pronouns Linguistic change Language & languages Morphosyntax Speech sug: subj: Pronouns Linguistic change Language & languages Morphosyntax Speech keyword: antilogophoricity logophoricity Masa pronominal subjects variation ab: This paper is concerned with how grammatical functions emerge in natural languages. Specifically, it provides insights into the emergence of antilogophoricity, viz., the special coding of participants other than those whose speech or thoughts are being reported. The study is based on Gizey (Masa < Chadic). In Gizey, nonzero third-person subjects can be expressed with the Set A pronouns nàmSG.M, nàʔ SG.F and síPL, or the Set B pronouns mìSG.M, tìSG.F and àsíPL. In reported speech, the Set A pronouns are used logophorically. They mark coreference with the entity whose speech or thoughts are reported. The Set B pronouns, for their part, track non-perspectival participants. Outside reported speech, the Set A and Set B pronouns can be used interchangeably, but the Set B pronouns occur less frequently than their Set A counterparts, and they are disallowed in the topic and focus positions. In this paper, I surmise that Set A and Set B pronouns are the remnants of an erstwhile functionally determined variation, not originally related to logophoricity or antilogophoricity. I argue that the Set B pronouns show signs of specialization as antilogophors. This paper presents the first documented observation of pronouns potentially evolving into antilogophoric pronouns. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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