The Person That Isn't: On Defining the Third-Person, Negatively and Positively So
David Kummerow · Australian Journal of Linguistics · 2012
This paper addresses the issue of what is a ‘third-person pronoun’, utilizing the cross-linguistic World Atlas of Language Structures database for data. The paper highlights some difficulties with a purely negative definition of a third-person pronoun (i.e. neither speaker nor spoken to) before advancing a positive definition which seeks to build on certain advances that the negative definition afforded. Crucial to this positive definition is the interaction of third-person pronouns in the extended animacy hierarchy posited by Croft. The particular participation in the extended animacy hierarchy by third-person pronouns accounts for the diversity evidenced cross-linguistically, from sharing morphological traits with first- and second-person pronouns to having demonstrative–anaphoric multifunctionality in which demonstratives have both deictic and anaphoric functions.