PERSONAL AND REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS Sanda Rîpeanu Reinheimer, Liliane Tasmowski, Andra Vasilescu, Ion Giurgea 1. Introduction 2. Grammatical Features and Paradigm 2.1. The feature composition of personal pronouns 2.2. The forms 3. Syntactic differences between strong and clitic forms 4. Strong Pronouns 5. The Grammatical Functions of Clitic Pronouns 5.1 Common Grammatical Functions of Clitic and Strong Pronouns 5.2. Grammatical functions restricted to clitics 5.3. The Clitic Doubling of Strong Pronouns 5.4. Pronominal clitics vs. Inflection 5.5. Overt and null subject pronouns 6. The Structure of Clitic Clusters 6.1. Linear orders inside the verbal cluster 6.2. Constraints on the verbal host 6.3. Pronominal Clitic Clusters 6.3.1. The Order of Co-occurring Dative and Accusative Clitics 6.3.2. Ethical Datives Co-occurring with Other Pronominal Clitics 7. Clitic Allomorphs 7.1. The Forms 7.2. The Selection of Allomorphs 7.3. The Clitic o 7.4. Verb allomorphs 8. The Semantics of Personal Pronouns (Ion Giurgea) 8.1. Co-reference 8.2.The bound variable interpretation 8.3. The interpretation of Gender 8.4. Pronouns of laziness 8.5. Genderless pronouns 8.6. Pragmatic uses (Andra Vasilescu) 1. Introduction Personal pronouns form a closed class of elements that send to referents via grammatical features (person, number, gender). 1 st and 2 nd person singular pronouns ( eu ‘I’ and tu ‘you’) function as deictic elements that can be defined as respectively referring to the speaker and hearer. The 1 st person plural noi ‘we’ designates the speaker’s group (which may also include the hearer – what is called the inclusive reading – or not – the exclusive reading), and 2nd person plural voi ‘you’ designates a group including the hearer and excluding the speaker. Third person singular and plural pronouns ( el/ea ‘he/she’, ei/ele ‘they m./f.’) can function either as anaphoric elements (taking reference from another DP in the text, which will be referred to as the antecedent ) or as deictic elements. Reflexive pronouns are formally distinguished from personal pronouns only in the 3 rd person. 1 2. Grammatical Features and Paradigm 2.1. The feature composition of personal pronouns Person features are complex features, which can be decomposed into ±Participant, ±Speaker and ±group. The ±Participant feature identifies the referent of the pro-form as participating or not to the dialogue. Among the pronouns marked as [+Participant] we may further distinguish between those pronouns that refer to the Speaker (or the group of the Speaker), which are marked here as [+Speaker] and those that refer to the Hearer (or his group), excluding the speaker, marked here as [-Speaker]. Each of the two classes of pronouns thus separated, namely [+Participant,+Speaker] and [+Participant,-Speaker], can be further distinguished by the Number feature, which in this case is interpreted as [Group] – hence we label it [Group]. By combining these features we obtain Persons 1 and 2 singular, characterized as [+Participant,+Speaker,-group] and [+Participant,-Speaker,-group], respectively. The +group counterparts of these pronouns correspond to Persons 1 and 2 plural. Number (singular/plural) and gender (masculine/feminine, see Table 1) oppositions characterize 3 rd person pronouns only. The following diagram summarizes the feature composition of the Romanian personal pronouns: The personal pronoun [+Participant] [-Participant](Person 3) [+Speaker] [-Speaker] [singular] [plural] (Person 1) (Person 2) [-group] [+group] [-group] [+group] [masc] [fem] [masc] [fem] (sg.) (pl.) (sg.) (pl.) eu noi tu voi el ea ei ele The 3 rd person pronominal forms have masculine/feminine gender features, which correspond either to the gender features of their nominal antecedent, or to the sex (male/female) of their referent. The 3 rd person is also the only person to have special reflexive forms. These forms do not show any gender or number opposition, so we analyze them as [+anaph +3 rd ]. For the other persons the forms of the personal pronouns may also function as reflexive (indicating co-reference inside a minimal domain and as voice markers for inchoatives and middles). We consider therefore that +Participant pronouns are unmarked for the anaph feature . The class of so-called ‘neuter’ nouns trigger masculine agreement in the singular, and feminine agreement in the plural; accordingly, pronouns with a “neuter” nominal antecedent are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural: (i) a. Am pus creionul i pe mas ă. Nu-li găsesc acum 2 Have.1SG put pencil-the.MSG on table. Not CL .3 MSG .ACC find.1SG now ‘I put the pencil on the table. I cannot find it now’ b. Am pus creioanele i pe mas ă. Nu le i, găsesc acum have.1 SG put pencils-the.FPL on table. Not CL .3 FPL .ACC find.1SG now ‘I put the pencils on the table. I cannot find them now’ Romanian does not have a special form for reference to the content of a proposition/a state of affairs. Sometimes the feminine accusative weak pronoun o is used with this meaning (see (118)-(121)), but the most common forms that fulfill this function belong to the demonstrative paradigm ( asta, aia, see Chapter 3): (i) a. Am spus -o! have.1SG said-CL .3 FSG .ACC ‘I said it’ b. O s -o fac cu siguran Ńă will SUBJ -CL .3 FSG .ACC do with surety ‘I’ll surely do it’ No personal pronoun (clitic or strong) can stand for a predicate in Romanian (compare French, where le can function as an AdjP substitute): (ii) sunt fericit ă/ *o sunt am happy/* CL .3 FSG .ACC am I am happy/*I am it (cf. Fr. Je suis heureuse/Je le suis) The reflexive clitic appears not only as a pronoun wtih a reflexive interpretation, but also as a non-pronominal marker of a verbal form that has various interpretations, e.g., inchoative, middle, passive. These non-pronominal uses of SE will be examined in the second Volume. 2.2. The forms Romanian personal pronouns have two series of forms – strong/non-clitic forms and weak/ clitic forms – which differ regarding their phonologic, morphologic, syntactic and semantic- pragmatic behaviour. Romanian personal pronouns are presented in the table below: 1 STRONG FORMS CLITIC FORMS N Ac D G A (G)D 1sg eu mine mie - m( ă) [î]mi 2sg tu tine Ńie - te [î] Ńi 1pl noi noi nou ă - ne ne, ni 2pl voi voi vou ă - v( ă) v( ă), vi 3 M. el el lui lui [î]l [î]i sg F. ea ea ei ei o [î]i 3pl M. ei ei lor lor [î]i le, li F ele ele lor lor le le, li 3 Reflexive sine sie, sie şi - se [î] şi Table 1. The forms of personal and reflexive pronouns The alternative forms of clitics indicated by brackets are allomorphs, which will be discussed in section 7. The forms of personal pronouns of persons 1 and 2 lack Genitive forms, with the exception of clitic forms, in the singular (which are for the most part archaic, see 3 below). These morphological gaps are filled by possessive adjectives. On the alternation between 1 For the use of certain Nominative pronouns as Vocatives, see Chapter *+*. Reflexive pronouns, which are included in Table 1 for completeness, will be presented in Section *+* of this chapter. 3 possessive adjectives (for Persons 1, 2) and genitive-marked possessive pronouns (for Person 3 sg. and pl.), see Chapter 5, section 5. As can be seen from Table 1, the paradigm of pronouns has some instances of syncretism for both strong and clitic forms: (i) the genitive forms of 3 rd pers. sg. and pl. are homonymous with the dative forms of 3 rd pers. sg. and pl., on a par with the genitive and dative forms of nouns ; (ii) the 3 rd plural dative and genitive have identical feminine and masculine forms. In the paradigm of strong pronouns, 3 rd person pronouns have identical strong forms for the nominative and the accusative. In the clitic paradigm, there are some instances of homonymy: (î)i is both 3 rd person singular dative and 3 rd person plural masculine accusative; le is 3 rd person plural feminine accusative and also an allomorph of the 3 rd plural dative; ne, v ă are 1st /2 nd person plural accusative and allomorphs of the 1st /2nd plural person dative. There are no nominative clitics. Rich agreement suffixes on the finite verb play the role of weak/clitic forms for nominative pronouns, see section 5.5. 3. Syntactic differences between strong and clitic forms Strong pronouns can appear in all positions where DPs can appear, namely as subjects, complements of verbs, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, nouns or interjections: (1) a venit Gheorghe/el has come Gheorghe/he ‘Gheorghe/He came’ (2) a. l- am văzut pe Gheorghe/pe el CL .3MSG .ACC have.1SG seen DOM Gheorghe/ DOM him ‘I saw Gheorghe/him’ b. i- am dat lui Gheorghe/lui CL .3SG .DAT have.1 SG given DAT Gheorghe/him.DAT ‘I gave to Gheorghe/him’ c. acordate studen Ńilor/ lor awarded students-the. DAT /them.DAT ‘awarded to the students/to them’ d. de adus copiilor/ lor of bring.SUP kids-the. DAT /them.DAT ‘to bring to the kids/to them’ (3) a. a venit cu so Ńia/ cu mine has come with wife-the /with me ‘he came with his wife/with me’ b. mul Ńumit ă ei thanks her.DAT ‘thanks to her’ c. în fa Ńa ei in face-the her.GEN ‘in front of her’ (4) a. tr ăsăturile specifice limbii române/ ei traits-the specific language-the.DAT Romanian/3FSG .DAT ‘the traits specific to the Romanian language/to it’ b.