On the Interpretation of Stressed Pronouns

Abstract

All languages in the world appear to have personal pronouns, but they come in different forms, for instance full versus reduced ones or free versus bound ones. In languages that have both reduced and non-reduced pronouns, the reduced ones are specialized for anaphoricity, the non-reduced ones have focus functions (cf. Bresnan 2001). In languages that do not have different types of pronouns, the interaction with prosody gives the same result: unstressed pronouns need less effort; hence they are specialized for anaphoricity, while the stressed ones have focus functions. However, stress is used for different reasons in language (new information, contrast, shift in reference) and it is not always clear what principles guide a hearer’s interpretation of a stressed or unstressed pronoun in a certain context. What are the different types of constraints that play a part in (un) stressed pronoun resolution and how do these interact? In this article the interpretation of stressed pronouns in discourse will be analysed in an optimality theoretic fashion. 1.