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The semantics of the plural pronoun construction

  • Stony Brook University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

The meaning of 'we' is usually seen as 'I + others'. Russian, along with many other languages, has a construction that allows an overt specification of 'others', the so-called Plural Pronoun Construction (PPC), which involves a plural pronoun and a comitative phrase. The syntactic behavior of this comitative phrase differs from that of other with-phrases such as VP-adjuncts, NP-adjuncts, and comitative conjuncts. We will argue that the syntactic behavior of the PPC-comitative follows from its syntactic status as a complement of the plural pronoun D°. We will also suggest a formal semantic analysis of PPC, where the comitative phrase is argued to supply the unsaturated element in the interpretation of the plural pronoun.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)101-124
Number of pages24
JournalNatural Language Semantics
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2005

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