PERSON AND NUMBER IN PRONOUNS: A FEATURE-GEOMETRIC
ANALYSIS
HEIDI HARLEY ELIZABETH RITTER
University of Arizona University of Calgary
The set of person and number features necessary to characterize the pronominal paradigms of
the world’s languages is highly constrained, and their interaction is demonstrably systematic.
We develop a geometric representation of morphosyntactic features which provides a principled
explanation for the observed restrictions on these paradigms. The organization of this geometry
represents the grammaticalization of fundamental cognitive categories, such as reference, plurality,
and taxonomy. We motivate the geometry through the analysis of pronoun paradigms in a broad
range of genetically distinct languages.*
INTRODUCTION. It is generally accepted that syntactic and phonological representa-
tions are formal in nature and highly structured. Morphology, however, is often seen
as a gray area in which amorphous bundles of features connect phonology with syntax
via a series of ad hoc correspondence rules. Yet it is clear from the pronoun and
agreement paradigms of the world’s languages that Universal Grammar provides a
highly constrained set of morphological features, and moreover that these features are
systematically and hierarchically organized.
1
In this article we develop a structured
representation of person and number features intended to predict the range and types
of interactions among them. More specifically, we will motivate the claims in 1.
(1) Claims
a. The language faculty represents pronominal elements with a geometry
of morphological features.
b. The organization of this geometry is constrained and motivated by con-
ceptual considerations.
c. Crosslinguistic variation and paradigm-internal gaps and syncretisms are
constrained by the hierarchical organization of features in the universal
geometry.
* We would like to acknowledge our great debt to the fieldwork done by many linguists that gave us
access to the paradigms of a wide range of endangered languages. A number of the languages we cite have
fewer than twenty speakers. For extensive comments on earlier versions of this work, thanks especially to
Hotze Rullmann, Heike Weise and Horst Simon, Brian Joseph, and two anonymous referees. For other help
with the development of these ideas, thanks to Diana Archangeli, Hagit Borer, Andrew Carnie, Eugene Chan,
Michael Cysouw, Dan Everett, John Frampton, Diana Green, Ken Hale, Morris Halle, Riny Huybregts, Eloise
Jelinek, Kyle Johnson, Mary Laughren, Alec Marantz, Rolf Noyer, Phoevos Panagiotidis, Frans Plank, Harold
Popovich, Keren Rice, Leslie Saxon, Margaret Speas, and audiences at the University of Victoria, Ben Gurion
University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University, the University of Toronto, the 1997 Annual Meeting of the
Canadian Linguistics Association, GLOW 98, and the special session on pronouns at the DGfS 2000 meeting
in Marburg. Thanks as well to the research assistants on the University of Calgary Pronoun Database project:
Rebecca Hanson, Heather Bliss, Jen Abel, and Sheena van der Mark. The material in §§1, 3, and 4 represents
a significantly expanded and revised version of ideas presented in Harley & Ritter 2002. This research was
supported by SSHRCC grant #410-98-0328 to Ritter and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to Harley. The
ordering of the authors’ names is alphabetical; this work represents equal effort on the part of both authors.
1
Since agreement markers are realizations of the same morphological features, we assume that this set
of morphemes will also lend itself to a geometric representation. There are, however, a number of issues to
be sorted out before our proposal can be extended to this domain. Notably, we need a better understanding
of the nature of the grammatical mechanism involved in agreement (copying vs. checking, for example), as
well as a reliable diagnostic for distinguishing between pronominal clitics and verb agreement.
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PERSON AND NUMBER IN PRONOUNS: A FEATURE-GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS 483
d. The interpretation of subtrees of the geometry may be relativized in tightly
constrained ways so that language-specific interpretation of a given fea-
ture will depend in part upon the contrasts available within that language.
In order to substantiate these claims we demonstrate that a geometric analysis can
shed light on children’s acquisition of pronouns and on paradigms that manifest a range
of unusual properties. In the course of this demonstration we draw on our own database
of 110 languages, as well as descriptions of other exceptional languages discussed in
the literature.
1. FEATURE GEOMETRIES. Linguists agree that there are natural classes of morpholog-
ical features. This is reflected in the universal classificatory use of the terms PERSON,
NUMBER,andGENDER, as well as other classes of features not discussed here. At least
this much organization is unconditionally assumed, and further organized relationships
among these classes of features have often been noted, although not often treated
theoretically. For instance, Greenberg (1963) observed a number of crosslinguistic
generalizations about the clustering of features, describing, for example, the dependence
of gender on number (Universal 32: ‘Whenever a verb agrees with a nominal subject
or object in gender it also agrees in number.’) and the dependence of dual number on
plural number (Universal 34: ‘No language has a dual [number] unless it has a plural.’
Greenberg 1963:94).
Although these dependencies must be the consequence of some aspect of universal
grammar, morphological theory has not in general attempted to provide an account of
them. It seems to be widely assumed that features are collected in unstructured bundles
and that morphological rules may freely refer to any feature or group of features,
regardless of whether or not they form a natural class.
1.1. THE PROBLEM WITH UNSTRUCTURED BUNDLES OF FEATURES. Manymodern theories
of morphology claim that morphosyntactic features are grouped in unstructured bundles
and even make a virtue of it—despite the fact that a certain amount of organization is
implicit in the very terminology common to all morphological theories. Consider, for
example, the discussion of MORPHOSYNTACTIC REPRESENTATIONS (MSRs) in Anderson
(1992:92): ‘The minimal (and thus the most desirable) theory of MSRs . . . is one that
would assign them no internal structure at all.’ Yet even given this explicit assertion,
Anderson does not assume that MSRs representing agreement features are entirely
unstructured. He implicitly assigns attribute-value structure to them: There is at least
a PERSON attribute that may bear the values
[
me], [
you];aNUMBER attribute that
may bear the values
[
pl]; and a GENDER attribute that may bear a series of familiar
values such as
[
masc], [
fem], [
neut]. This organization, whether implicitly
assumed, as in Anderson 1992, or explicitly assumed, as in the LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR (LFG) or HEAD-DRIVEN PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR (HPSG) frameworks,
is essential to prevent the unmotivated combinatorial explosion of potential cross-classi-
fications. In a system where a single form could bear any combination of the features
[1], [2], [sg], [pl], [masc], [fem], there would be 2
6
possible combinations of feature
values. Collecting the person, number, and gender features together into mutually exclu-
sive subgroups brings the paradigmatic possibilities down to something much more
closely approximating the facts of natural language.
2
2
Some systems assume that some features are mutually exclusive, while others are not; so, for example,
Dalrymple and Kaplan (2000) make conjoined use of a [Speaker] and [Hearer] feature (as we do, see below)
to capture inclusive forms, but assume that it would not be possible to simultaneously bear, for instance,
[fem] and [masc]. This only adds to the general indeterminacy of the system. In approaches that do