The Interactional Structure of Nominals: An Investigation of Paranouns

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dc.contributor.advisorRitter, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.authorMcDonald, Brittany
dc.contributor.committeememberStoroshenko, Dennis Ryan
dc.contributor.committeememberWhaley, Ben
dc.contributor.committeememberRitter, Elizabeth
dc.date2021-11
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-05T18:48:07Z
dc.date.available2021-08-05T18:48:07Z
dc.date.issued2021-07-30
dc.description.abstractPronouns are often thought to be a uniform syntactic class both inside and outside of linguistics. Despite this, comparing languages like Japanese and English reveals striking differences between their pronoun paradigms. English pronouns express contrasting sets of person, number, and gender features (i.e., phi-features), but Japanese pronouns encode far more content like the relative age, gender, and social status of the speaker, addressee, and other referents. Ritter & Wiltschko (2019) propose that the Japanese and Korean so-called pronouns are actually a different type of nominal called paranouns. This thesis takes Ritter & Wiltschko’s conceptual description of paranouns and develops a set of explicit diagnostics for distinguishing pronouns and paranouns and tests a sample of six East and Southeast Asian languages whose so-called pronouns have similar properties to those of Japanese and Korean (namely: Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, and Malay/Indonesian). It also tests the broader syntactic distribution of paranouns in the context of binding theory. This thesis concludes that five of the six languages tested have paranouns rather than pronouns while one language, Malay/Indonesian, appears to be transitioning from having pronouns to having paranouns. It also determines that the binding theoretic properties of paranouns are distinct from those of pronouns.en_US
dc.identifier.citationMcDonald, B. (2021). The Interactional Structure of Nominals: An Investigation of Paranouns (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/39075
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/113709
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisher.facultyArtsen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen
dc.rightsUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.en_US
dc.subjectLinguisticsen_US
dc.subjectSyntaxen_US
dc.subjectPronounsen_US
dc.subjectJapaneseen_US
dc.subjectKoreanen_US
dc.subjectBurmeseen_US
dc.subjectIndonesianen_US
dc.subjectMalayen_US
dc.subjectThaien_US
dc.subjectVietnameseen_US
dc.subjectLaoen_US
dc.subjectNominalsen_US
dc.subjectBinding theoryen_US
dc.subjectParanounsen_US
dc.subject.classificationLinguisticsen_US
dc.titleThe Interactional Structure of Nominals: An Investigation of Paranounsen_US
dc.typemaster thesisen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineLinguisticsen_US
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Calgaryen_US
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts (MA)en_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrueen_US
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