Imposters and their implications for third-person feature specification

Abstract

AbstractImposters, seemingly third person nouns with speech act participant reference, have been varyingly analyzed as being licensed through an elaborated DP syntax (Collins and Postal. 2008. Imposters. Manuscript. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000640 (accessed 12 May 2017), Collins and Postal. 2012. Imposters: A study of pronominal agreement. Cambridge: MIT Press) or through lexical specification (Kaufman 2014. The syntax of Indonesian imposters. In Chris Collins (ed.), Cross-linguistic studies of imposters and pronominal agreement, 89–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Looking at Korean and Indonesian, two languages that make frequent use of imposters, we show that both can be accounted for without appeal to an elaborated DP syntax and that, in fact, such a structure makes the wrong predictions. Rather, other heads in the clause, in conjunction with differences in lexical specification, can account for both languages. In Indonesian, which freely allows imposters to bind anaphors with person features of the referent, the imposter is lexically specified for those features. In Korean, where such binding is restricted, imposters are underspecified for person and so anaphors only occur when there is another person feature-carrying head to supply the necessary features (Zanuttini et al. 2012. A syntactic analysis of interpretive restrictions on imperative, promissive, and exhortative subjects. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30(4). 1231–1274). Previously left unexplained was why Korean imposters were unable to bind any person-marked anaphors, including third person, under an assumption that person-underspecified DPs get valued with a default third person feature. We argue this is a result of the difference in types of third person, those specified for third person and those that are not (Sigurðsson 2010. On EPP effects. Studia Linguistica 64(2). 159–189).