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Person and Number in Pronouns: A Feature-Geometric Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Heidi Harley and
Elizabeth Ritter
Heidi Harley*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
Elizabeth Ritter*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
*
Harley, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0028 [hharley@uarizona.edu]
Ritter, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada [ritter@ucalgary.ca]
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Abstract

The set of person and number features necessary to characterize the pronominal paradigms of the world's languages is highly constrained, and their interaction is demonstrably systematic. We develop a geometric representation of morphosyntactic features which provides a principled explanation for the observed restrictions on these paradigms. The organization of this geometry represents the grammaticalization of fundamental cognitive categories, such as reference, plurality, and taxonomy. We motivate the geometry through the analysis of pronoun paradigms in a broad range of genetically distinct languages.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , September 2002, pp. 482 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Linguistic Society of America

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