A pronominal analysis of tense goes back to Partee (1973), motivated by a series of proposed parallels between the interpretation of tenses and that of pronouns. This article revisits Partee's interpretive parallels, as well as two more identified in Kratzer (1998), in light of subsequent developments in work on both temporal relations and on pronouns. The goal of this article is not to argue for or against a pronominal analysis of tense, but instead to make clearer the syntactic and semantic space within which such an analysis is situated, especially given that pronouns have been given increasingly complex syntactic representations even as tense has remained syntactically simplex.

This article explores the realization of definiteness in Chuj, an underdocumented Mayan language. I show that Chuj provides support for recent theories that distinguish between weak and strong definite descriptions (e.g., Schwarz 2009, 2013; Arkoh and Matthewson 2013; Hanink 2018; Jenks 2018). A set of morphemes called “noun classifiers” contribute a uniqueness presupposition, composing directly with nominals to form weak definites. To form strong definites, I show that two pieces are required: (i) the noun classifier, which again contributes a uniqueness presupposition, and (ii) extra morphology that contributes an anaphoricity presupposition. Chuj strong definites thus provide explicit evidence for a decompositional account of weak and strong definites, as also advocated in Hanink 2018. I then extend this analysis to third person pronouns, which are realized in Chuj with bare classifiers, and which I propose come in two guises depending on their use. On the one hand, based on previous work (Postal 1966, Cooper 1979, Heim 1990), I argue that classifier pronouns can sometimes be E-type pronouns: weak definite determiners which combine with a covert index-introducing predicate. In such cases, classifier pronouns represent a strong definite description. On the other hand, I argue, based on diagnostics established in Bi and Jenks 2019, that Chuj classifier pronouns sometimes arise as a result of NP ellipsis (Elbourne 2001, 2005). In such cases, classifier pronouns reflect a weak definite description.

Various proposals have been made in the literature, arguing that bound pronouns are, in some sense, deficient. This article tests this hypothesis with Malagasy pronouns, specifically in the context of Zribi-Hertz and Mbolatianavalona's (1999) claim that Malagasy pronouns may be bound only when they are missing the NumP layer of DP. Zribi-Hertz and Mbolatianavalona show further that other syntactic properties are also attached to the lack of NumP. The variety of Malagasy investigated here (Malagasy2), behaves differently from the one described by Zribi-Hertz and Mbolatianavalona (Malagasy1), and these differences lead to two conclusions. First, there are no syntactically deficient pronouns in Malagasy2, yet these syntactically complete pronouns may, in fact, be bound. Second, Zribi-Hertz and Mbolatianavalona are nevertheless correct that the lack of NumP accounts for a cluster of properties, since none of these distinctions between pronouns that they describe are found in Malagasy2. More broadly, we conclude that pronominal binding does not require syntactic deficiency.

We discuss an empirical study that suggests a finer categorization of pronouns versus lexical noun phrases in terms of their feature valuation. We argue that not all lexical noun phrases have their ϕ-features valued from the lexicon. By investigating Polish politeness markers, we demonstrate that certain noun phrases can have their features (specifically, the person feature) valued in a manner parallel to feature valuation in free pronouns. The proposal thus refines our understanding of the categorial distinction between different types of nominals, and suggests that in addition to known morphological and syntactic variation in the domain of pronouns and lexical noun phrases, there is a more fine-tuned classification of feature valuation types.

This article presents a Minimalist syntactic analysis of sociopragmatically conditioned gender features on pronouns. To account for inter- and intra-speaker variation, I locate the parameter for social gender in the presence or absence of an unvalued gender feature on the phase head D. Supporting this analysis, I show that variation in English speakers’ acceptability and use of definite, specific singular they, as in (i), is sensitive to reference; this sensitivity is robustly explained by the location of gender features on D.

(i) Taylori is writing theiri own autobiography.

For speakers who report (i) as ungrammatical, a crash results from the uGender feature on D remaining unvalued. For innovative speakers, uGender is not present on D and no crash results from a lack of gender features. This analysis explains why a pragmatic feature like social gender can cause true syntactic ungrammaticality, since the narrow syntax encodes certain pragmatic features as obligatory.

This article analyzes Marshallese pronouns and demonstratives, arguing that both privative and binary morphosemantic features are necessary, and that the two types coexist in a single domain. Marshallese encodes number with atomic, and person with [$\pm$author] and [$\pm$participant]. In the complex system of Marshallese demonstratives, atomic and [$\pm$human] map to the same head, subject to a constraint that only one feature appears at a time. The element $\chi$, which derives person orientation in demonstratives and pronouns, does not universally map to the same syntactic position. While in Heiltsuk $\chi$ is a dependent of the person head, in Marshallese it heads a projection above the person head. And while in Heiltsuk the person features occupy the same position in both pronouns and demonstratives, Marshallese pronouns have a different structure, with person and number features mapping to a single syntactic head. The contribution of UG is thus not a set of specific features or specific structures, but a set of more abstract principles.

Harbour (2016) argues for a parsimonious universal set of features for grammatical person distinctions, and suggests (ch. 7) that the same features may also form the basis for systems of deixis. We apply this proposal to an analysis of Heiltsuk, a Wakashan language with a particularly rich set of person-based deictic contrasts (Rath 1981). Heiltsuk demonstratives and third-person pronominal enclitics distinguish proximal-to-speaker, proximal-to-addressee, and distal (in addition to an orthogonal visibility contrast). There are no forms marking proximity to third persons (e.g., ‘near them’) or identifying the location of discourse participants (e.g., ‘you near me’ vs. ‘you over there’), nor does the deictic system make use of the clusivity contrast that appears in the pronoun paradigm (e.g., ‘this near you and me’ vs. ‘this near me and others’). We account for the pattern by implementing Harbour's spatial element χ as a function that yields proximity to its first- or second-person argument.

This article presents an analysis of a Montreal French corpus of text messages and considers the link between text messaging, and both spoken and written language. This corpus is part of a larger corpus of text messages sent by mobile phone (Texto4-Science). Our study focuses on two morphosyntactic variables for which an important sociostylistic variation has been reported in Montreal French: the alternation between the strong pronouns nous/nous autres ‘we/us’ (as non clitics), and between the subject clitics on/nous ‘we’. Their comparison in the text messages corpus and in spoken corpora shows that while text messages tend to approximate spoken language, they are not a perfect reflection of it. Generally, the hybridity of text messages can be conceived in the following manner: text messages obey a double standard (spoken and orthographic) and allow for occasional transgressions (formal markers associated with the written language and nonstandard spelling reflecting the spoken language).

This paper focuses on genitive interrogatives in Iraqi Arabic. I argue that these constructions are inherently D-linked (Discourse-Linked). Similarly to D-linked interrogatives, when genitive interrogatives appear in content questions in which both the resumptive strategy and the gap strategy are possible, the genitive interrogatives have a D-N structure when the gap strategy is employed and a D-φ-N structure when the resumptive strategy is employed. I then propose the following hypothesis: what defines D-linking is the presence of a domain restriction in the form of an overt noun.