The typology of structural deficiency: On the three grammatical classes

Abstract

It is a general property of language that words fall into classes. Among the many relevant oppositions (verbs/adjectives, transitives/ergatives, etc.), one distinguishes itself from all others: that instantiated by the opposition between different classes of pronouns.This opposition is unique in regularly contrasting synonymous pairs; in cutting across all components of grammar; in having no systematic correlation with any interpretive characteristic (semantic or phonetic); in determining a large set of (apparently) absolute universals; and in cutting across lexical classes, §1.1.1-5.The fundamental goal of the present inquiry is to uncover the primitive underlying these exceptional classes.It is a general property of language that words fall into classes. Among the many relevant oppositions (verbs/adjectives, transitives/ergatives, etc.), one distinguishes itself from all others: that instantiated by the opposition between different classes of pronouns.This opposition is unique in regularly contrasting synonymous pairs; in cutting across all components of grammar; in having no systematic correlation with any interpretive characteristic (semantic or phonetic); in determining a large set of (apparently) absolute universals; and in cutting across lexical classes, §1.1.1-5.The fundamental goal of the present inquiry is to uncover the primitive underlying these exceptional classes.