Georg-August-Universit¨at G¨ottingen Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar Impersonally Interpreted Personal Pronouns Dissertation zur Erlangung des philosophischen Doktorgrades an der Philosophischen Fakult¨at der Georg-August-Universit¨at G¨ottingen vorgelegt von Sarah Zobel aus Salzburg, Osterreich¨ G¨ottingen 2012 Uberarbeitung,¨ Tubingen¨ 2014 Acknowledgements Ich muss doch als Eltern bittsch¨on auch ohne Farb¨anderung erkennen, ob mein Kind erh¨ohte Temperatur hat.1 Writing this dissertation at the University of G¨ottingen has been an interesting experience for two reasons. First, I thought I would write a short, very technical dissertation about a well- delineated topic, preferably involving modality. The thesis I actually wrote definitely involves modality, and one might say that it is somewhat technical. What cannot be said about my thesis, not even charitably, is that it is short, and that its topic is well- delineated. Nevertheless|and that was quite a surprise for me|I had a lot of fun working on a topic which started with one natural language example read to me by Viola Schmitt on some afternoon in our \office" in Vienna, but which over the years more or less spun out of control the more data and insights on the data I gathered. Most of the data that I collected over the years has found its way into this thesis, and it is one of my favourite parts of this work. The second reason is that I never actively considered moving to Germany, let alone G¨ottingen. Frankly, I first learned the approximate geographic location of G¨ottingen six months after moving there, and it's fair to say that I didn't like the town at all at first. But G¨ottingen very slowly creeps up on you, and suddenly you don't mind sitting in a smallish university town somewhere in the middle of Germany since, actually, it's not about where you are, but who is there with you. The people I met in the last three years, both colleagues from G¨ottingen and guests from all over the world, made G¨ottingen a good place to live and work in. These people contributed either indirectly or directly to this work and I want to thank them for that. I want to thank my advisor Magda Kaufmann for asking me to come to G¨ottingen, and for allowing me the freedom to explore the data at my pace while being a very strict and critical reviewer of my work. I learned a lot from her, and while it was not always pain-free, it helped me find my way of working on a problem. Thanks also go to Cleo Condoravdi for interesting conversations at various stages of my research 1http://www.best-practice-business.de/blog/?p=12309 III and Regine Eckardt, who also agreed to be on my committee. I'm very much looking forward to defending this work in front of these exceptional researchers. For interesting discussions on the data, I thank Jerra Busch, Eva Csipak, Michael Job, Stefanie Simon, and Thomas Weskott. Additional, special thanks go to Thomas Weskott for reading and commenting on the better part of this thesis (in both senses of this expression). All remaining typos and mistakes are my own. Over the years, I've also profited from discussions with Nicholas Asher, Rajesh Bhatt, Fabrizio Cariani, Brady Clark, Irene Heim, Angelika Kratzer, Friederike Moltmann, E. Allyn Smith, Malte Willer, and the audiences at various talks and workshops where I presented stages of my work. For moral support and a great learning experience, I also thank the girls and guys of the semantics reading groups|most notably the \Kekslesegruppe"|that I regrettably had to stop attending during the last two months of writing this thesis. Now that it's over, I'm looking forward to joining in again, and not just for the cookies. Apart from various reading groups, I also had a great time at work-related, and not-so-work-related events in the linguistics department, the German department, the English department, and the Courant Research Center in G¨ottingen. These events made my stay in G¨ottingen enjoyable not only professionally, but also personally. As always, I want to thank my parents for the love and support, and for routinely checking up on me every three weeks to see whether I'm still alive during the last six months of writing. Thanks also go to my brother for being interested in the progress of my \Diplomarbeit" (= MA Thesis), and for being sure that I will get an \Einser" (= A). It is great to be part of such a supportive family who believe in your success. I hope they are right. Unfortunately, Chester the hamster, who is also featured in some of the examples in this thesis, didn't live to see his name in print. I hope I'm not misrepresenting him in any way. G¨ottingen, July 19, 2012 Now that the work I defended in 2012 has been revised, additional thanks are in order. The last two years have been a very busy period for me, not only because of moving to Tubingen¨ to work at another great university in an even more smallish university town. Needless to say, the experiences in these two years have shaped this revised version considerably. I want to thank my colleagues at the German Department of the University of Tubin-¨ gen for providing a comfortable and genial work environment. My esteemed colleagues Sebastian Bucking¨ and Patrick Grosz deserve additional thanks for finding time in their busy schedules to discuss data and theoretical issues with me. This work profited considerably from their expertise. I'm also indepted to my advisors Magdalena Kaufmann, Cleo Condoravdi, and Regine Eckardt for their continued advice and support. Further thanks go to people who continued to provide technical and moral support, as well as great friendship over the years. Jerra Busch, Dirk Buschbon, Eva Csipak, and Dolf Rami|you are the best! Big thanks also go to Thomas Weskott, who again excelled at the hard task of the spontaneous proof-reader. In my most impartial opin- ion, however, Thomas, you deserve the biggest thanks and a cornucopia of everything that is good just for being the way you are! And lastly, of course, I want to thank my brother and my parents|especially for not caring that it took nearly two more years until this thing was done. Tubingen,¨ October 24, 2014 Contents Introduction1 1 Data discussion and preliminary issues 15 1.1 Introduction................................. 15 1.2 Data discussion { part I: The semantics of the impersonal use..... 17 1.2.1 The impersonal use and its connection to genericity....... 17 1.2.2 Truth-conditional equivalence and impersonal pronouns..... 22 1.2.3 Impersonally vs. referentially used ich and du .......... 27 1.2.4 A note on non-declarative sentences................ 30 1.3 Data discussion { part II: Co-occurring linguistic material....... 31 1.3.1 The effect of co-occurring linguistic material........... 31 1.3.2 Spatial and temporal adverbials (and context).......... 34 1.3.3 Co-occurring referentially interpreted personal pronouns.... 37 1.3.4 Perfect tense and subjunctive marking on the verb....... 41 1.3.5 Stressed ich and du ......................... 44 1.3.6 A restriction on possible argument positions for ich ....... 45 1.4 Data discussion { part III: Pragmatic preferences and effects...... 48 1.4.1 A preliminary note......................... 48 1.4.2 Preferences on discourse contexts................. 48 1.4.3 Participant-oriented pragmatic effects............... 53 1.5 The semantics of personal pronouns.................... 59 1.5.1 Introductory remarks........................ 59 1.5.2 1st/2nd vs. 3rd { syntactic and semantic properties....... 59 1.5.3 \Standard" accounts of pronominal semantics........... 65 1.5.4 Kratzer (2009)........................... 70 1.5.5 Problems: the impersonal use and deferred ostension...... 73 1.6 Arguments against a counterfactual analysis............... 75 1.7 Summary and outlook........................... 81 2 Ich and du { a first try 83 2.1 Introduction................................. 83 VII 2.2 The semantics of impersonal pronouns.................. 84 2.2.1 Syntactic and semantic properties of impersonal pronouns... 84 2.2.2 Previous semantic analyses of impersonal pronouns....... 89 2.2.3 Impersonal pronouns and existential indefinite pronouns.... 99 2.3 Impersonally interpreted personal pronouns............... 104 2.3.1 The relevant semantic properties and their consequences.... 104 2.3.2 Malamud (2006, 2007)....................... 108 2.3.3 Alonso-Ovalle (2000, 2002)..................... 112 2.4 Interlude { the (in)definiteness problem.................. 115 2.4.1 The problem: Conflicting requirements.............. 115 2.4.2 Definiteness and indefiniteness................... 116 2.4.3 (In)definiteness and quantificational variability.......... 124 2.5 An alternative proposal for a unified account............... 128 2.5.1 A return to Nunberg (1993).................... 128 2.5.2 A formal account inspired by Nunberg (1993).......... 135 2.5.3 A unified account of personal pronouns as indefinites...... 138 2.6 A critical evaluation of the proposal in 2.5.3............... 145 2.7 Summary.................................. 151 3 The impersonal use, modals, and generic sentences 153 3.1 Introduction................................. 153 3.2 A possible worlds semantics for modality................. 154 3.2.1 The linguistic category of modality................ 154 3.2.2 A semantic account for modals.................. 156 3.3 Modal accounts of genericity........................ 163 3.3.1 Preliminaries on genericity and generic sentences........ 163 3.3.2 Krifka et al. (1995)......................... 170 3.3.3 Drewery (1998)........................... 178 3.3.4 Greenberg (2007).......................... 185 3.3.5 Choosing a modal account for Gen ................ 194 3.4 Modals as binders?............................. 195 3.4.1 Initial considerations........................ 195 3.4.2 Identifying the overt modals found with impersonal uses...