Pronominal Forms Research Articles

Precept vs. usage: Pronominal case forms in late modern English

ABSTRACT The English pronominal system has been the matter of heated debate among grammarians for the last 300 years. This is especially the case of the dichotomy nominative-objective pronoun forms I/me; he/him; she/her; we/us; and they/them in a set of linguistic contexts. In present-day English, the phenomenon does not appear to be a matter of correct vs. incorrect language, but one of formal vs. informal language, although a different state of affairs is found in earlier periods of English. Since the eighteenth century, a great concern for language correctness grew, resulting in an upsurge in the publication of grammars as an attempt to regularize the language and ‘enforce a uniformity and conformity to some absolute standard’ (Drake 1977: 1). Usage books, however, reveal a lack of consensus among grammarians on the ‘correct’ use of pronouns, and a look at the evidence demonstrates significant variation on their usage during the late Modern period. The present paper aims to investigate the correlation between prescriptivist norms and actual usage as regards English pronominal forms over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Precepts are studied in view of prescriptive commentary in grammars, whereas quantitative data is retrieved from CLMET3.1 (The corpus of late modern English texts). The purpose of this piece of work is therefore twofold: a) to analyze the historical distribution of pronoun case forms in postverbal position in the period 1710–1920 and b) to evaluate the influence that prescriptive rules may have had upon their actual usage over time. Case variation is thus explored in three different linguistic environments, including the use of pronouns after the linking verb be (e.g. ‘it is I/me’) and after the conjunctions than (e.g. ‘she is taller than I/me’) and as (e.g. ‘she is as tall as I/me’).

On the issue of the development of adjective degree forms in the Western Lithuanian and Latvian dialects

Abstract In the Lithuanian and Latvian languages, forms of adjective degrees do not have a common etymological basis. The New Curonian (Kuresnieku) language which is a relatively new Baltic geolect has preserved a fairly distinct archaic layer of phonetics and grammar, where one can look not only for the archaisms of the western dialects of the Latvian language but also for traces of the substrate of Old Curonian. Although synthetic forms of the degrees of adjectives with the suffix -āk- are used in the current Latvian language area they are almost unknown in New Curonian. The forms of the comparative degree are made with the particle juo and an adjective of the positive degree. Analytical forms with the pronoun visu and the pronominal form of an adjective express the superlative degree. In the western Latvian and Lithuanian dialects and the Livonian language in Latvia, the relics of the analytical forms of the comparative and superlative degree are recorded in written sources and rarely in modern spoken language. Since a large part of the western dialects of the Lithuanian and Latvian languages take up the former territory of the old tribe, it may be assumed that the analytical forms of adjective degrees are possibly a sign of the substrate of Old Curonian.

Resuming topics and foci: Anyi, Baule and microvariation in Kwa languages

Abstract Left peripheral topics and foci often differ with respect to resumption: in languages such as Italian, Tzotzil Maya, and Warlpiri, while fronted topics may be co-indexed with a pronominal form in the corresponding argument position, fronted foci correspond to a gap. However, this contrast does not universally apply. In languages such as Anyi and Baule, two Kwa languages of Côte d’Ivoire, subjects and animate objects must be resumed by a pronoun whenever they appear in the left periphery – independent of information structure. The question is whether this instance of cross-linguistic variation arises through differences in the syntax of left peripheral positions in various languages or in the conditions of resumption. The present study examines data from Kwa languages and concludes that the difference lies in the conditions of resumption, which are orthogonal to the syntactic differences between topics and foci. Resumptives have a dual nature in these languages, serving as anaphoric constants (true resumptives) in topicalization and as bound variables (apparent resumptives) in focus constructions. A survey of the relevant facts in further Kwa languages reveals that resumption is determined by factors that are independent from information structure and relate to the recoverability of empty argument positions.

Complements and modifiers: Implications for typologies of pronouns

This paper argues for a distinction between two categorially distinct types of personal pronouns in natural language. It demonstrates that overt nominal content surfaces as (i) a complement or (ii) a modifier of a personal pronoun. The distinction in the way nominal content merges is reflected in two types of pronouns. Pronouns taking nominal complements are full-fledged determiners, while pronouns surfacing with nominal modifiers are pronouns proper, i.e., pronominal forms that do not exhibit the determiner syntax. Four novel diagnostics underlying the complement/modifier distinction are introduced: (i) binding, (ii) genericity requirement, (iii) availability of pro-drop, and (iv) size of the pronoun. The paper contributes to a longstanding debate on the representation of nominal content in pronouns and a close connection between pronominal forms and determiners.

Power and solidarity in pronominal forms of address: A case study of Chinese and Russian teacher-student interactions

In the evolving landscape of global education, understanding the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics in academic settings across different linguacultures is paramount for building effective multicultural teaching environments. This study investigates the usage of T/V pronominal forms of address within teacher-student interactions in Chinese and Russian academic contexts. It aims to reveal similarities and differences in the usage of pronominal forms of address in the two linguacultural contexts and unveil the impact of sociocultural factors, namely power and solidarity, on their choice. The data were obtained from a parallel questionnaire survey with the participation of 360 students (260 Chinese mainland students and 100 Russian students) and an interview with 30 students from each country. Employing a comprehensive dual-methodology approach, this study combines quantitative analyses of T/V forms of address frequencies with qualitative insights on their pragmatics, appropriateness, and students’ preferences from interviews. The findings revealed distinct T/V form usage strategies in Chinese and Russian academic discourse. They showed that Chinese teachers predominantly use the T form for students, while students use both V and T forms for teachers. Conversely, Russian settings show a prevalence of the reciprocal V form in teacher-student interactions, with some limited usage of the T form by teachers with students. The results underscore the significance of hierarchical relationships, the demonstration of power distance, and, at the same time, solidarity in the Chinese context, while Russian students and teachers emphasise reciprocal formality in relationships and maintain boundaries. We suggest that different types of interaction between teachers and students in two cultural contexts are due to differences in the sociocultural organisation of society and cultural values. The study provides insights for educators and researchers navigating linguistic and cultural diversity in academic contexts and contributes to effective interaction in a multicultural educational environment.

Nasal Vowels in Solor Dialect of Lamaholot Language and Their Morpho-Syntactic Significance

The Lamaholot language spoken in East Flores and Lembata has several interesting distinctive features, compared to its neighboring languages. One of these features is nasal vowels. Nasal vowels in this language are phonemic, in that they show distinct meanings in contrasted minimal-pair words. Because of this phonemic characteristic, the nasal vowels in the dialect have significant influences on the Lamaholot linguistics. This research will examine the importance of nasal vowels in Solor dialect of Lamaholot morphologically and syntactically. Two research problems this study has tried to answer are (1) what are the morphologic and syntactic significances of the nasal vowels of Solor Dialect of Lamaholot Language, and (2) what meanings do these nasal vowels indicate when they involve in morphological processes? Apart from being an additional linguistic reference for the study of languages in eastern Indonesia in particular, and Austronesian languages at a broader level, this research also contributes to the efforts to maintain regional languages in East Nusa Tenggara. The approach to be used in this study is descriptive. The theory referred to is functional typology with the concepts of Basic Linguistic Theory based on generative structural grammar. References to the theory can be read, among others, in Payne (1997), Dixon (2010a), Comrie (1989) and Sophen (2007a, 2007b, 2007c). Data for this study was collected through recording and elicitation from the native speakers of Solor dialect. The collected corpus in the form of audio data is analyzed and stored electronically with the Praat application, and then transcribed into text form. The text data is sorted, then analyzed and stored electronically with the Toolbox application, which can later be used as additional data for the Solor – Lamaholot dialect dictionary database, which the author is currently working on. The research results show that the presence of nasal vowels in the Solor dialect of the Lamaholot language gives very significant and influential contribution to the communication and speech of speakers of this dialect. This grammatical feature is so important that its presence can give rise to different interpretations by listeners. Morphosyntactically, the nasal vowels in Solor dialect of the Lamaholot language express five functions, namely (1) to express the pronominal form of ownership; (2) to express the form of alienable ownership; (3) to express the enclitic form of third person singular possession in common nouns; (4) to state the participial function derived from the verb; and (5) to express the attributive function of adjectives in the Solor dialect of the Lamaholot language.

On the Internal Structure of Pronouns: From the Perspective of Noun Ellipsis

The widespread pattern of “noun-less” variants of DPs (e.g. two/these [nP/NumPØ] vs. two/these cars) might lead to the expectation that the definite determiner should be able to head DPs with a null complement. The best candidate for representing the structure [Ddef [nP/NumPØ]] are 3rd person personal pronouns (Elbourne, 2005; a.o), an analysis supported by evidence for NP-ellipsis (or N-anaphora) in pronouns. However, equating pronouns with THE+[nP/NumPØ] faces a number of issues: the different behavior of pronouns and other definite descriptions with respect to binding; the differences in syntactic and semantic features between pronouns and DPs headed by THE (e.g. gender); the one-to-many structure-form relationship between the single structure THE+[nP/NumPØ] and different series of pronominal forms (strong and weak forms); and, a gap in the attested combinations of THE and [NØ]. Our account addresses these issues. We propose that the D used in pronouns, which we label Dpron, has the semantics of THE, but THE and Dpron differ in their formal features. We posit that a null NP complement needs to be licensed by features on the determiner the NP merges with, and that Dpron bears such features. Thus, we capture the fact that typical THE does not surface in cases where there is no overt element in the complement of D (i.e. what we call total emptiness) via the absence of these features on THE. Additionally, to further explore the differences between strong and weak forms in Romanian, we present the results of a corpus study on these forms.

Difficulties with pronouns in autism: Experimental results from Thai children with autism

ABSTRACT This paper explores the acquisition of personal reference terms in Thai, a language with a highly complex personal reference system. Two separate studies were conducted for this paper, each featuring two groups of participants: children with typical development (TD) and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In each study, the participants were asked to complete two tasks on personal reference terms: a production task and a comprehension task. Overall, children with ASD performed on par in production, in terms of overall communicative success. However, an important finding was that they demonstrated a tendency toward pronoun avoidance, being less likely than children with TD to use deictic first-person pronominal forms. Instead, they preferred to use fixed referential terms for self-reference, contrasting with the children with TD’s preference for personal pronouns. The performance of children with ASD was significantly poorer in comprehension than that of children with TD. Children with ASD were generally able to detect lexically encoded person features but struggled with the more pragmatic and socially deictic aspects of personal reference terms. The latter also posed some challenges for children with TD, albeit to a lesser extent. In this regard, our results align with previous claims in the literature that lexical presuppositions are acquired earlier than implicated presuppositions. Our findings also add various new insights in terms of both population-specific effects in a language previously unstudied in this regard and the specific ways in which aspects of implicated presuppositions, i.e., the type of content in play, give rise to particular challenges in acquisition in general and for children with ASD in particular.

Gebrauch der Anredeformen im Deutschen als Fremdsprache an der Hochschule in Rumänien

The correct use of nominal and pronominal forms of address is a condition for wellfunctioning communication. Regardless of whether the communicators use a foreign language or a second language, the forms of address are very difficult to learn and are hardly ever dealt with in class. The article deals with Romanian students at the University of Bucharest who transfer the system of Romanian (as a mother tongue) to German (as a foreign language), even though the patterns of formality and informality in the form of address vary greatly between the German and Romanian cultural spheres.

Grammatical impairment in schizophrenia: An exploratory study of the pronominal and sentential domains.

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a severe mental disorder associated with a variety of linguistic deficits, and recently it has been suggested that these deficits are caused by an underlying impairment in the ability to build complex syntactic structures and complex semantic relations. Aiming at contributing to determining the specific linguistic profile of SZ, we investigated the usage of pronominal subjects and sentence types in two corpora of oral dream and waking reports produced by speakers with SZ and participants without SZ (NSZ), both native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Narratives of 40 adult participants (20 SZ, and 20 NSZ-sample 1), and narratives of 31 teenage participants (11 SZ undergoing first psychotic episode, and 20 NSZ-sample 2) were annotated and statistically analyzed. Overall, narratives of speakers with SZ presented significantly higher rates of matrix sentences, null pronouns-particularly null 3Person referential pronouns-and lower rates of non-anomalous truncated sentences. The high rate of matrix sentences correlated significantly with the total PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of simple sentences and SZ symptoms in general. In contrast, the high rate of null pronouns correlated significantly with positive PANSS scores, suggesting an association between the overuse of null pronominal forms and the positive symptoms of SZ. Finally, a cross-group analysis between samples 1 and 2 indicated a higher degree of grammatical impairment in speakers with multiple psychotic episodes. Altogether, the results strengthen the notion that deficits at the pronominal and sentential levels constitute a cross-cultural linguistic marker of SZ.

Same or different? Subject realization in the majority and the heritage language of Polish-German bilingual children

Abstract The paper examines the extent to which bilingual children select lexical noun phrases and null and overt pronouns as referring expressions in their majority language German and their heritage language Polish. Both languages are similar regarding the availability of lexical noun phrases but differ in terms of the distribution of null and overt pronominal forms. Our focus lies on discourse contexts with a subject antecedent in the preceding clause, which require only light processing for both speaker and hearer due to the high accessibility of the intended subject referent. Drawing on experimental data from a picture story retelling task (MAIN) to investigate the distribution of referring expressions in the two languages compared to age-matched monolingual control groups, our results reveal that bilingual children are sensitive to crosslinguistic differences in the syntactic and discourse-pragmatic constraints that regulate the distribution of null and overt subjects in Polish and German, depending on the mode of speech (narrative or dialogic). Furthermore, there are no significant differences between the bilingual and monolingual children, irrespective of language and age group. Thus, our study cannot confirm findings of previous studies concerning the tendency of bilingual children to be either overspecific or underspecific in subject reference production.

Мястото на местоименията сред частите на речта и особеностите на категорията лице при тях

The article aims at tracing the development of pronouns as a part of speech, as well as the trends in the way they are defined in contemporary linguistics. The focus will be on those features that have led to the pronouns’ unification into a single class of words despite the diversity of forms included in it. I will consider the questions related to the grounds for the placing of the heterogeneous pronominal forms under a common denominator and the rethinking of their current status. Among the important issues requiring attention are: the selection of criteria responsible for the classification of the different groups of pronominal forms and for their positioning among the other parts of speech, and the study of the features of the category of person expressed by the lexemes under consideration, among others.

Местоименните клитики като частици

In the course of the historical development of Bulgarian the short pronominal forms (clitics) have undergone various morphological transformations and have expanded their use. As a result, they may have a different morphological status: pronouns (personal or possessive) and particles with different functions. The objective of the paper is to present the functional spectrum of pronominal clitics functioning as particles. Due to the existing homonymy, the study aims at solving two key issues. The first one is related to distinguishing the morphological status of clitics in their different uses, i.e. whether they function as pronouns or as particles. The second refers to identifying and representing the different functions of clitics as particles: wordforming, formforming, emotive, modal or intensifying.

Early grammar-building in French-speaking deaf children with cochlear implants: A follow-up corpus study.

One of the most consistent findings reported in the paediatric cochlear implant (CI) literature is the heterogeneity of language performance observed more in grammatical morphology than in lexicon or pragmatics. As most of the corpus studies addressing these issues have been conducted in English, it is unclear whether their results can be generalized to other languages. In particular, little is known about languages known for their grammatical complexity, such as French. The aim of this corpus study was to compare the productive use of function words (FWs) and some agreement features (AGRs) in children with CIs and children with typical development (TD) matched for mean length of utterance in words (MLUwords ), a general index of grammatical complexity, and auditory experience, as measured by hearing age (HA) and chronological age (CA), respectively. Natural speech samples from 116 monolingual French-speaking children, including 40 children with CIs followed longitudinally and 76 TD children, were collected. FWs and AGRs were analysed using a Part of Speech Tagger (POS-T) from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). The two groups differed by 3 years for HA and CA. No effect of family socio-economic status (SES) was found in the CI group. Stepwise regression analyses showed that the two groups did not share the same predictors of MLUwords : plurals and determiners predicted MLUwords in children with CIs, at 2 and 3 years of HA, whereas feminine markers and subject-pronouns were found to best predict MLUwords in TD children at 2 and 3 years of CA. Structural equation models (SEMs), a combination of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis, yielded a different hierarchical structure of grammatical relations (GRs). Selective difficulties affecting verbal clitics and other pronominal forms were found specifically in the CI group (object-pronouns, reflexive, relative and past participles). Dependency grammar analysis confirmed these contrasting developmental profiles in multiword utterances, such as preposition/nouns, subject/verbs, and verb/determiner/nouns. Atypical grammatical patterns in children with CIs reflect a specific architecture of syntactic dependencies of FWs underpinning morphological complexity and syntactic connectivity. Clinical implications are discussed for assessment and intervention planning. What is already known on this subject The productive use of FWs has been identified as a particular area of weakness in children with CIs compared with TD children. In addition, heterogenous grammatical performance has often been found after 1-3 years of CI use, regardless of demographic factors such as age at implantation, duration of deafness or SES. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Assessing the early building of FWs and AGRs in children with CIs helps to understand the syntactic complexity and hierarchical structure of their language. Since most corpus studies on grammatical morphology have been conducted in English, it is not clear whether their difficulties can be generalized to other languages. The French language has a system of FWs and inflections that determine the morphophonological properties of nominal and verbal forms. Early grammar learning in children with CIs born with profound deafness were compared with the two groups of TD children matched both for duration of auditory experience (i.e., HA of CI children, CA of TD children) and for MLUwords . We found a similar profile between groups at 2 years but not at 3 years for HA and CA. The two groups do not share the same predictors of MLUwords : namely, plurals and determiners for CI children versus feminine markers and subject pronouns for TD children. They show a different syntactic organization of GRs. Children with CIs struggle with selective difficulties affecting verbal clitics and pronominal forms (object-pronouns, reflexive, relative and past participles). Consistent with theories of morphophonological richness and syntactic connectivity, our results support the distributional learning hypothesis of language acquisition that infants and toddlers are sensitive to FWs and AGRs at an early age. Specific components of syntactic organization are disrupted in children with CIs. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? This work has potential clinical implications because it unravels the limitations of morphophonological processing in children with CIs. Its results highlight a specific difficulty in learning FWs and AGRs in a verbal inflectional morphology context.

The Origins of the Category of prichastodetie (Gerundivum) in the Slavonic Grammar of Meletius Smotritsky (1619–1648)

This paper aims to determine the status of the category of “prichastodetie” (Gerundivum) proposed by M. Smotritsky in his “Slavonic Grammar” relying on both the data of the history of linguistic theories and the data of the historical grammar of the Russian literary language. For this purpose, the grammars and the elements of their content which served as sources of Smotritsky's Grammar are identified, the real linguistic basis of the description of the Slavonic “gerundives” is determined; the most acceptable hypothesis of the formation of the complex simplified suffix -tel’n- is developed; the formation of verbal derivatives in -tel’n- is shown. Of the three types of meaning of the formations with the suffix -teln, identified by V. V. Vinogradov, in texts the most productive is not the passive, but the active type of meaning, the relative type retains better than the others close links with the verb and prevents the passage of Slavonic “gerundives” to the rank of qualitative adjectives. Lexicography describes lexicalized cases and obscures the primary meaning of the prichastodeties, which coincides with the meaning of the verb from which they are derived. Genetically, the initial morphological form of the prichastodetie is the form in -tel’no, from which the pronominal forms of the prichastodetie are formed, capable of passing into qualitative adjectives in -tel’nyi, and it itself gravitates towards the category of state and the attributive adverb, but does not merge with it as long as it continues to express a secondary verb action. The growth of prichastodeties occurs since the 14th century to our time, first in church texts and translations, then in original secular texts. Best of all the prichastodetie is represented in the “Hellenic-Slavonic” style. Smotritsky can rightfully be called the main figure in the prehistory of the discovery of the category of state in the twentieth century.

Preferred argument structure in the oral narratives of adolescents with and without SLI

ABSTRACT According to the theory of ‘Preferred Argument Structure’ (PAS), the realisation and distribution of core arguments including the subject of a transitive verb (A), the direct object of a transitive verb (O) or the subject of an intransitive verb (S) in spoken discourse are subject to both grammatical and pragmatic constraints. However, previous studies on the formulation of argument structure have largely focused on the syntactic difficulties of children with SLI. In addition, little is known about the developmental outcomes in argument structure for adolescents with SLI. In this study, we compared PAS in the narratives of 19 adolescents with SLI (Mean age = 14.3; SD = 0.64) and 19 adolescents with typical language development (TLD; Mean age = 14.5; SD = 0.84). The core arguments of the predicate in each narrative based on the wordless picture storybook ‘Frog, where are you?’ were coded for grammatical roles (A, O and S), referential forms (lexical forms and non-lexical form including null and pronominal forms) and information status (given, accessible and new information). The data were then analysed for conformity to the grammatical and pragmatic constraints of the PAS theory. The two groups were found to be similar in their conformity to the pragmatic constraints but differed in how they conform to the syntactic constraints. In particular, the adolescents with SLI were more likely to produce clauses with two lexical arguments, and the lexical arguments occurred significantly more frequently at the subject role of a transitive verb than the TLD groups. Our results provide further evidence that it is a persistent grammatical deficit, rather than a pragmatic deficit, which poses a special challenge for adolescents with SLI in their formulation of argument structure in narratives.

Étude de l’agentivité dans le discours de femmes souffrant de trouble de stress post-traumatique dans les suites de violences conjugales

IntroductionIn the absence of appropriate care, psychotraumatic consequences (revival, hyperarousal, avoidance strategies, dissociation and other clinical forms of post traumatic symptoms) can take control of a large part of the subject's existence (psychological, physical, social) and affect the ability of the victim to regain ground on the intrusions that harass, and to take up new life projects. More objective than the current semiological and psychometric approaches, and in the absence of biomarkers that may be used in clinical practice, psycholinguistics opens up an epistemological renewal of the conception of trauma and its clinical consequences, in particular through the definition of the Psycho Linguistic Traumatic Syndrome (SPLIT). If such conceptions have been developed based on the analysis of traumatic accounts of subjects injured in war and attacks, other forms of psychotraumatic confrontations also deserve to be considered. In this paper, our objective was to better characterize the pronominal forms of agency in the traumatic and non-traumatic narratives produced by women victims of domestic and/or sexual violence. MethodsNineteen women aged 20 to 60 victims of domestic violence and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview) as well as a matched control group participated in the study. The subjects completed the French versions of Post Traumatic Checklist (PCL-5), Dissociative Experience Scale (DES) and Hospital and Anxiety Depression Scale (HAD). Traumatic and non-traumatic narratives were linguistically coded and scored on the SPLIT-10 scale. ResultsTraumatic narratives contained significantly more first person singular pronouns than the non-traumatic narratives of controls or the non-traumatic narratives of psychically injured people. Traumatic narratives contained significantly more of the direct object pronoun “me” as well as indirect object pronouns. In traumatic narratives, the frequency of use of the subject pronoun “I” tended to correlate negatively with the HAD-A, HAD-D and SPLIT-10, while the frequency of use of the direct object pronoun “me” tended to correlate positively with DES, HAD-A, HAD-D as well as SPLIT-10. Finally, traumatic narratives contained significantly more verbs in the passive voice than non-traumatic narratives. DiscussionThere was a gradient in the use of the first person singular pronoun that was inversely correlated to the degree of traumatic valence of the narratives: the control group used “I” less often than the psychically injured people who appeared to use this pronoun all the more as their narratives had a traumatic valence. In other words, even in the so-called “non-traumatic” narratives produced by subjects suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the trauma seemed to be inscribed in the discourse, testimony to dissociation, as the seen in the correlation of this pronominal expression dimension of “I” with the SPLIT-10 scale. The use of the direct object complement was correlated with greater psycho-traumatic morbidity (dissociative, depressive and anxious) than the use of the “I”, the latter remaining however a pathological mark instead of the use of the pronouns “we” or “one”. Saying “I” translated less symptomatology than saying “me”, but it was when the subject said “we” or “one” that he appeared to have returned to a normal discourse, no longer suffering from the torments of reliving or pathological dissociation. The identification of linguistic markers deserves to be pursued in order to better objectively describe post-traumatic psychiatric disorders, to better identify them in clinical practice in the field and to monitor the efficiency of the recommended psychotherapies. More generally, we may put forward the hypothesis that the direct modification of the patient's language, thanks to the intervention of the practitioner, from a speech composed of linguistic markers testifying to the trauma towards a normalized speech could help to treat post-traumatic symptoms.

Are palm reversals the pronoun reversals of sign language? Evidence from a fingerspelling task.

Acquisition of pronominal forms by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continues to garner significant attention due to the unusual ways that such children produce and comprehend them. In particular, pronoun reversal errors (e.g., using the 2nd-person pronoun “you” to refer to oneself) have been noted in the speech of children with ASD since the very first report of the disorder. In more recent years, investigations of the signing of deaf children with ASD have documented a different phenomenon: palm orientation reversals, such that signs typically produced with an outward-facing palm are produced with the palm towards the signer, or vice versa. At the same time, true pronoun reversals have yet to be documented in the signing of deaf children on the autism spectrum. These two curious facts have led us to ask if there is evidence that palm orientation reversals in signed languages and pronoun reversals in spoken languages could be surface manifestations of the same underlying differences present in ASD. In this paper we seek to establish whether there is evidence for such an analogy, by comparing the ages at which the two phenomena appear in both typically-developing (TD) children and those with ASD, the frequency and consistency with which they appear, and their relationships with other linguistic and cognitive skills. Data are presented from a fingerspelling task given to a sample of 17 native-signing children with ASD and 24 native-signing TD children. We conclude that there are provocative parallels between pronoun reversals in spoken languages and palm reversals in signed languages, though more research is needed to definitively answer these questions.

Mo, do, so, da – duortnussámi dovdomearkan?

In this article, I examine the dialect forms of a set of North Saami pronouns – mo, do, so, da (‘I, you, he/she, it’; standardized forms: mon, don, son, dan). More specifically, I investigate where the forms are in use and how the forms have developed. The material shows that the final -n has changed in a number of stages before it disappeared completely. I suggest that these pronominal forms are a dialect mark of the Torne Saami dialect group (named after the Torne river valley on the border between Sweden and Finland). The pronominal forms are used throughout this dialect area, and the use continues north to Kvænangen in Norway, which in turn belongs to the Sea Sami dialect group. In the Kvænangen dialect there are also a couple of other characteristics that are typical for some of the Torne Saami dialects.

Étude des références pronominales à soi dans les témoignages d’événements traumatiques de guerre et d’attentats

Étude des références pronominales à soi dans les témoignages d’événements traumatiques de guerre et d’attentats