Talk:Logophoricity

RM Dechaine (talk) 05:56, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Outline

Below are the headings that we intend to use for this article.

1. Definition
2. History/Background
3. Properties
   1. semantic
   2. syntactic
4. Classification
   1. affixes
   2. reflexive pronouns
   3. individual pronouns
   4. other types of logophors (from Cunrow?)
5. Comparison with non-logophoric forms
6. Logophoricity and Binding Theory
   1. challenges to Binding Theory
   2. accounting for logophors using Binding Theory
7. Distribution
   1. West African Languages
   2. Asian languages
   3. European/Germanic languages
   4. Other languages
8. See also
9. References

Atonello (talk) 22:50, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Bibliography

The following are journal articles that will guide us in editing this Wiki in the near future.

Clements, G. N. (1975). The logophoric pronoun in Ewe: Its role in discourse. Journal of West African Languages, 2, 141-177.

Clements presents data from the Ewe language of Ghana which demonstrates the usage of logophoric pronouns. He compares and contrasts these forms with personal pronouns in Ewe, and explains why prior analyses are insufficient in explaining the distinction between direct discourse and indirect (reported) discourse in this language. In addition, Clements draws on data from other languages that do or do not use logophoric pronouns (including Greek, Latin, Japanese, and English) in order to clarify the distinction between logophoric and non-logophoric forms. In this way, he demonstrates the conditions which sanction the usage of logophoric and personal and reflexive pronouns. However, he concedes that those conditions that control the appearance of logophors are not completely understood, and require further analysis. Overall, Clements’ account of logophoricity in Ewe is thorough, and his argumentation is supported by both positive and negative data from this language (as well as data from other languages). Atonello (talk) 06:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Curnow, T. (2002). Three Types of Verbal Logophoricity in African Languages. Studies in African Linguistics, 31(1-2), 1-25.

Curnow looks at logophoric cross-referencing, first person verb marking, and logophoric verbal affixes as three different types of logophoricity demonstrated in various African languages. He then examines their shared features and distinguishing properties, and how they can occur together in the same language. This article moves logophoricity beyond simple systems into non-exclusive types that can overlap and interact. It draws attention to the fact that the current typology of logophoricity allows for large gaps in classification. Cunrow acknowledges potential challenges to his ideas, and addresses them throughout the paper. He is thorough in his examples, and while the paper is not written in layman’s terms, it is still very understandable.

Harley, H. (1997). Logophors, variable binding and the interpretation of have. Lingua, 103, 75-z84.

Harley explores the use of the verb have in situations where its subject is coindexed with a logophor in the complement. She examines the semantic/pragmatic effects of -self (reflexive) pronominals in their application in argument position in order to better understand their logophoric status. The concept of ‘experiencer reading’ and other thematic effects on the verb have is also brought into play in various contexts, exploring locative, causative, and possessive usages. Though it does not focus on logophoricity as the central concept, this well-delineated application of phenomena sheds light onto the intricacies of logophors interacting with their environments in various structures. Kndouglas (talk) 06:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Koopman, H. (1989). Pronouns, logical variables, and logophoricity in abe. Linguistic Inquiry, 20(4), 555-588.

Abe, a Kwa language, has two series of third person pronouns: O-pronouns which behave like pronouns in English, and an n-pronoun which is used as both a referential pronoun and a logophoric pronoun. Koopman argues that the logophoric properties arise from purely syntactic factors, and that there are no logophoric pronouns as such in Abe. This paper is important with its emphasis on a purely syntactical analysis of logophors, whereas some others account for the distribution of logophors with semantics. However, her argument hinges on a feature [+n], which may itself be related to discourse. The article is written with a strong first person POV, but is coherent and clear. Koopman presents her argument in a systematic fashion, providing the background, data, analysis, and complications in that order. Her argument as a whole is very complex but very detailed and well-explained. Cchar94 (talk) 06:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

König, E., & Siemund, P. (1999, published 2000). Locally free self-forms, logophoricity, and intensification in English. English Language and Linguistics, 4(2), pp 183-204.

Within this article is a presentation and comparison of three different analyses of ‘locally free self- forms’ in English, separated into ‘untriggered reflexives’, ‘viewpoint reflexives’, and ‘perspective logophors’. König and Siemund explore different trains of thought from Zribi-Hertz’s idea (1989) that self-forms are “bound by a minimal consciousness within a discourse” (i.e. emphasize the perspective of their antecedent); through Reinhart and Reuland’s (1993) examination of their distribution as compared to pronouns in a kind of allomorphic relationship, via the use of, e.g., him vs himself in a given context; and finally to Baker’s (1995) assessment of self-forms as intensifiers without pronominal heads. After stating the insufficiency of Binding Theory to present a compelling explanation for such occurrences in English, they conclude that Baker’s argument is the most sound and comprehensive, given an appropriate analytical structure. A wealth of grammatical and ungrammatical examples are provided in support of each step in König and Siemund’s reasoning. The particular examination of English, the different viewpoints discussed, and the subject’s relevance in relation to Binding Theory make it a useful resource for our project. Kndouglas (talk) 06:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Kuno, S. (1972). Pronominalization, Reflexivization, and Direct Discourse. Linguistic Inquiry, 3(2), 161-195.

Kuno compares English pronouns to the Japanese reflexive zibun. He argues that in both languages, the behaviour of these two forms is contingent on whether the subject of a matrix sentence is aware of, or directly felt, what is being represented in the content of an embedded clause (or the entire sentence). Of particular interest is the reflexive zibun, which is only coreferential with the sentential subject when it occurs in embedded clauses in which the subject’s internal feeling or awareness is represented. As such, Kuno argues that the usage of this reflexive is controlled by semantic factors. This is in contrast with English, in which the expression of a subject’s internal feeling or awareness is determined by the syntax - i.e., it is a feature of particular verbs. Kuno does caution, however, that the use of the sentential subject’s “direct feeling representation” (p. 194) is an oversimplification, and that further research is required to determine the common mechanism underlying the behaviour of English pronouns and the Japanese reflexive zibun. Despite this limitation, Kuno’s work is very detailed, with many examples of both grammatical and ungrammatical utterances in English and Japanese. (Note: the author does not explicitly use the term “logophor”, as this term was coined in: Hagège, C. (1974). Les pronoms logophoriques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 69(1), 287-310.) Atonello (talk) 06:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Liu, L., & He, N. (2012). Logophoricity, highlighting and contrasting: A pragmatic study of third-person reflexives in chinese discourse. English Language and Literature Studies, 2(1), 69-84.

Liu and He use their pragmatic principle to look at the two types of third-person reflexives in Chinese, simplex (which act as logophors) and complex (used to emphasize pronouns), and to determine the distribution and function of them in Chinese discourse. All of their data comes from Chinese news articles, Chinese novels, and English-Chinese translations of novels. Their formulation of the pragmatic principle used for analysis consists of an Interpretation Maxim (how a reflexive is deemed to be logophoric) and a Production Maxim (when a type of reflexive is used). Using their pragmatic principle, they argue that there are two constructions in which anaphors are used in Chinese discourse: single-fold anaphora and multifold anaphora. The way the data is presented can be difficult to follow, but the explanations following them summarize them well. DzhouLING300 (talk) 06:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Maling, J. (1984). Non-clause-bounded reflexives in modern icelandic. Linguistics and Philosophy, 7(3), 211-241.

In modern Icelandic, the distribution of non-clause-bounded reflexives (NCBR) presents implications for the Binding Theory. Maling argues that the reflexive pronouns have two distinct roles: a regular anaphor adhering to Principle A, and a more semantic role which resemble the logophoric pronouns. She outlines the distribution of NCBR in embedded clauses of subjunctive mood, giving rise to a semantic interpretation. This paper contributes a European language exhibiting properties of logophoricity which is usually associated with West African languages. Through mostly a neutral third person POV, Maling provides many data and some trees, but I feel more negative data would help in comprehending her points. In addition, I feel like the argument was not presented in a linear fashion which makes it hard to follow, in addition to the heavy use of jargon. Cchar94 (talk) 06:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Minkoff, S. (2004). Consciousness, Backward Coreference, and Logophoricity. Linguistic Inquiry, 35(3), 485-494.

Minkoff proposes a new co-reference requirement, Principle E, in addition to binding theory in order to explain certain linguistic contrasts. Principle E dictates that a free self-anaphor must co-refer with, and be in the backward co-reference domain of, and expression whose co-referent typically posses consciousness. This principle broadens the notion of logophoricity, as the dependencies it requires do not fit into previously accepted syntactic taxonomies. It also has implications for cross-linguistic notions of logophoricity. Minkoff allows that his suggested Principle may not involve logophoricity, but does not address the impact this would have on his conclusions. The article is brief and uses multiple examples to demonstrate the point the author is trying to make.

Nikitina, T. (2012). Logophoric discourse and first person reporting in wan (west africa). Anthropological Linguistics, 54(3), 280-301.

Nikitina analyzes how logophoric forms are used in reporting speech in the West African language of Wan. She looks at how logophors are used in reporting discourse and how it contrasts with first person reporting. She argues that because Wan has a distinction in indirect and direct reporting speech, it may help explain how logophors do not include the current speaker from being a referent of the logophors they use, and it supports the idea that different languages use different methods of conveying thoughts, experiences, and knowledge. In this article, Nikitina comes to her conclusions based on the comparisons of various contexts and sentences that would be used by native speakers of Wan in those contexts. Although this article assumes a certain amount of knowledge of the reader, it provides an interesting discussion about uses of logophors between languages. DzhouLING300 (talk) 06:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Language Examples

Does anybody else have further information on Ewe? The paper I'm using only refers to cases in which an affix cliticizes, not the independent pronoun system. At the very least this seems to imply that Ewe will end up under two different sub-headings. Thoughts? FionaJEd (talk) 22:27, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions

Overall, the article explains Logophoricity quite clearly, and is generally accessible to those without an extensive Linguistics background. Logophoricity seems to be something that is most clearly conveyed through examples, so a particular strength of this article so far is the extensive list of examples. There are some formatting issues, particularly with the text boxes, as well as some inconsistencies with citations (Harvard style seems to be mixed with Wikipedia’s style).

The beginning section seems a bit long, and goes into a bit too much detail for a beginning section. Perhaps some of it could be put into a new introduction or properties section. LewisHaas (talk)

Great article! Could definitely use some consistency in citation linking and applying citations. Specifically in the introduction you cited Hagège, but did not link him to your references section. The article could also use more links to other Wikipedia articles, however you should not link one article multiple times. A “Also see” section is not good enough. There should be a lot more links to other articles, especially for an article that is very technical.Gelainamah (talk) 04:09, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

We have since added more links to Wikipedia pages on related concepts, including Discourse Representation Theory, Anaphora (Linguistics), Government and Binding Theory, Binding (Linguistics), Antecedent (grammar). Hopefully this makes up a more detailed and helpful "See Also" section. --Cchar94 (talk) 07:34, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Overall, I think you have a great article! I think that the style is a bit too much like a scientific paper than a Wikipedia article though, so you could try rewording it a bit, and changing the type of citations you have, so that it reads more like and encyclopedia, and less like a scholarly article. Consider removing the direct reference from the text body, and changing them to the provided Wikipedia citation style. In examples, and when referring to parts of examples, consider bolding the key words, instead of italicizing them, as this makes them stand out more. And when say something like “in (1a)” make sure you say where (1a) is located- above/below, etc. Also, consider rewording this sentence (in the Logophoric Affixes section): “The language generally used to demonstrate logophoric verbal affixes is Gokana.” In an essay, this would be good leading into the next paragraph, but try something like: “Gokana, seen below...” OR “The following language, Gokana...”

Wherever possible, we used wording so that the article read more like an encyclopedia and less like an scientific paper (such as, “see example ... below/above”). In addition, we bolded relevant words (logophors and antecedents) in textboxes, as well as terminology in the explanations so that it is easier to read overall. --Cchar94 (talk) 07:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It’s great that you have tree diagrams of some of your examples! If you could do some more for other examples, that would be even better. Also, add as many links to as many linguistics terms as you can, so that people who aren’t studying linguistics and find out what they mean by visiting these other pages. In the Abe examples, adding the full translation as the third line in your examples would make them just that much better.ChristianEpp (talk) 01:43, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

English glosses are now added for Abe examples for clarification and consistency across all datasets. --Cchar94 (talk) 07:28, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The first section of Logophoric Typology is well cited the following sections are lacking citations. I've added citation needed tags where I think citations would be helpful, it's possible that adding certain citations will satisfy more than one citation needed tag. Jaxsun (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I believe the section on Logophoric Affixes could be reworked to be more clear. Currently you have the Akɔɔse data in the lead section and separate section for Gokana section, I think it would read better if both languages had their own section. Additionally you appear to begin by talking about affixes for pronouns, then you proceed to attempt to contrast with affixes for verbs. However all the data use verbal affixing, which I found confusing as you try to point out contrasts which don't seem to appear in the data. Jaxsun (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

We cleaned up the logophoric affixes section, so hopefully this section is more clear. We added some extra content to explain the examples. Trees were also added to help show certain points visually. FionaJEd (talk) 07:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Akɔɔse and Gokana have now been separated into their own sub-subsections.DzhouLING300 (talk) 07:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Several portions of the Logophoric typology section discuss how logophoricity can introduce ambiguity. However there is no isolated or dedicated discussion of logophoric ambiguity. I feel that gathering all the discussion of logophoric ambiguity into a single section would help strengthen the article. Jaxsun (talk) 21:49, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

The ambiguities that arise from the various logophoric forms were not amassed into their own subsection, as the information felt more coherent and easy to follow if they stayed in their respective languages.DzhouLING300 (talk) 07:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Some of the data/grey boxes in the binding theory section spill off the page. I fixed this by closing the br tags.Jaxsun (talk) 22:24, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

At several points throughout the article (nearly in every section) you redefine what it means to be a logophor (coreferent outside of discourse context/outside of sentence) I think it would be good to define it once and then reference it when you need to. Otherwise having subtly different definitions spread throughout the article can cause confusion. Jaxsun (talk) 22:24, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

For the sake of transparency I will post my collected thoughts as submitted to the course below:

The article provides a strong empirical explanation of Logophoricity in a variety of languages and the brief historical introduction is appreciated. However I found certain parts of the article to be inconsistent and confusing, and several significant topics, such as the discussion of ambiguity, are spread throughout the article, I feel that centralizing these discussions would help with the readability of the article.

Although I believe that the majority of the analysis is not original research the article is often cited improperly. The lead section and the first section on Logophoric Typology is reasonably cited, however the sections which follow are almost universally uncited except for the data.

I believe the section on Logophoric Affixes could be reworked to be more clear. Currently the Akɔɔse data is in the lead section and there is a separate section for Gokana data, I think it would read better if both languages had their own sections. Additionally it begins by talking about affixes for pronouns, then proceeds to contrast with affixes for verbs. However all the data uses verbal affixing which I found confusing as the article attempts to point out contrasts which don't seem to appear in the data.

Several portions of the Logophoric typology section discuss how logophoricity can introduce ambiguity. However there is no isolated or dedicated discussion of logophoric ambiguity. I feel that gathering all the discussion of logophoric ambiguity into a single section would help strengthen the article.

At several points throughout the article (nearly in every section) it redefines what it means to be a logophor (eg. coreferent outside of discourse context/outside of sentence). I think it would be good to define it once and then reference it when you need to. Otherwise having subtly different definitions spread throughout the article can cause confusion.

Jaxsun (talk) 01:18, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Additional Edits

I've been through and made some changes for clarity, and inserted some citations. Hopefully most of the "citation needed" tags are satisfied, especially with supporting links to other articles for more clarification. Kndouglas (talk) 02:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

There was a general revision in formatting so that examples are consistent in numbering and form. General editing has also improved readability, grammaticality, and consistency.FionaJEd (talk) 07:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Clements 1972 citation missing

The text has a number of Harvard references to Clements 1972, but the References section has only Clements 1975. Is this the wrong year, or is the intention to cite two works by Clements? --Boson (talk) 22:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

PS: The page numbers are consistent with the 1975 work, but there does appear to be a 1972 dissertation by Clements:

• Clements, George N. (1972), The verbal syntax of Ewe (doctoral dissertation), University of London

So it's possible that an additional citation got removed by mistake. The references seems to have been added by User:Atonello in a class project supervised by User talk:RM Dechaine, so perhaps one of them would like to comment. --Boson (talk) 13:41, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Editing & Expansion

We will soon be editing the existing article, as well as adding one additional language example and one additional analysis. Details to come later. For editing, we will focus on:

1. Making the article clearer/easier to read by fixing sentence structure.
2. Adding any missing links (to technical terms)/citations.
3. Organizing references so that they are consistent and easier to find.
4. Rearranging the structure of the article for better flow.

More to come later. Group0730018 (talk) 18:20, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Added material to 'Logophoric representation in languages' section

We will be providing structural edits and adding new content to this page focused on Logophoricity, specifically the logophoric pronoun section. This is part of a course-based activity of a 3rd-year syntax course, and we anticipate having completed our edits by the end of December. We would appreciate any and all constructive comments and suggestions about how to improve the overall quality of this article. We will be adding material from French and the Northeast Caucasian language Avar as well as adding other content as needed. Content from Avar will be added to section 3.2.1 and French content will be added to a new section, 3.2.2, entitled Silent Logophoric Pronouns in French. If you have any issues, comments or suggestions please let us know. — Preceding JD+MP comment added by 23.16.171.171 (talk) 03:11, 13 December 2021 (UTC)