Impossible persons / Daniel Harbour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harbour, Daniel, author.

Series:

Linguistic inquiry monographs

Linguistic Inquiry Monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Person.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Number.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Pronoun.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Morphosyntax.

Semantics.

Universal grammar.

Physical Description:

ix, 312 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2016]

Summary:

Impossible Persons, Daniel Harbour's comprehensive and groundbreaking formal theory of grammatical person, upends our understanding of a universal and ubiquitous grammatical category. Breaking with much past work, Harbour establishes three core theses: one empirical, one theoretical, and one metatheoretical. Together, these redefine the data subsumed under the rubric of "person," simplify the feature inventory that a theory of person must posit, and restructure the metatheory in which feature theory as a whole resides. At its heart, Impossible Persons poses a simple question of the possible versus the actual: in how many ways could languages configure their person systems, in how many do they configure them, and what explains the size and shape of the shortfall? Harbour's empirical thesis-that the primary object of study for persons are partitions, not syncretisms - transforms a sea of data into a categorical problem of the attested and the absent. Positing, innovatively, that features denote actions, not predicates, he shows that two features alone generate all and only the attested systems. This apparently poor inventory yields rich explanatory dividends, covering the morphological composition of person, its interaction with number, its connection to space, and properties of its semantics and linearization. Moreover, the core properties of this approach are shared with Harbour's earlier work on number features. Jointly, these results establish an important metatheoretical corollary concerning the balance between richness of feature semantics and restrictiveness of feature inventories. This corollary holds deep implications for how linguists should approach feature theory in future. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 In a Nutshell 1

1.1 Three Theses 1

1.2 Methods 5

2 The Path to Partition 7

2.1 Introduction 7

2.2 A Problematic Problem 8

2.3 A Problem with Promise 17

2.4 Alternatives 30

2.5 Conclusion 38

3 The Partition Problem 39

3.1 Introduction 39

3.2 The Full Problem 40

3.3 Empirical Domain 44

3.4 Partitions Illustrated 50

3.5 Conclusion 64

4 The Partition Problem Solved 65

4.1 Introduction 65

4.2 Elements of the Solution 67

4.3 Solution of the Partition Problem 78

4.4 Ø 95

4.5 The Partition Element Problem 97

4.6 Conclusion 98

5 Morphological Composition 101

5.1 Introduction 101

5.2 Clusivity 103

5.3 Second and General First Person 113

5.4 Limits and Constraints 121

5.5 Conclusion 128

6 Number and the Functional Sequence 129

6.1 Introduction 129

6.2 Lattice Diagrams 130

6.3 Partitions with Number 133

6.4 Two Semantic Asides 146

6.5 Interfaces 153

6.6 Conclusion 168

7 Spaces, Objects, Paths 169

7.1 Introduction 169

7.2 Empirical Case 170

7.3 Theoretical Underpinnings 178

7.4 Conclusion 185

8 Oldfangled and 187

8.1 Introduction 187

8.2 Interlinguistic Adequacy 188

8.3 Intralinguistic Adequacy 199

8.4 The Challenge of Mixed Partitions 210

8.5 Conclusion 216

9 The Form of the Phi Kernel 217

9.1 Introduction 217

9.2 Operations 217

9.3 Order 219

9.4 Combinatorics 220

9.5 Valence 222

9.6 Cognition and Evolution 228

9.7 Conclusion 232

10 Conclusion 233.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780262034739

0262034735

9780262529297

0262529297

OCLC:

946160389