So let’s talk about pronouns. All words have some meaning, but some words are so dependent
on context that by themselves, they almost don’t mean anything at all. When I tell
people “I host the Ling Space”, they know that Moti Lieberman’s a YouTube host. But
pronouns like “I” can refer to just about anybody; after all, if you look up “I” in the dictionary,
you're probably not gonna find a picture of, well, me.
So how do we decide what pronouns can refer to, if their meaning just changes from time to time?
The answer's more complicated than you might think. I’m Moti Lieberman, and this is The Ling Space.
We’ve talked a bit before about the abstract structures underneath our sentences. But if
you think syntax is just about drawing up some trees, think again!
The relationships that syntacticians have spent decades uncovering aren’t just empty,
airy musings; they really have a big impact on the way that we use and interpret certain words.
And #1 on that list is pronouns. In fact, by the 1980s, linguists had so much to say
about them that they devoted a whole framework to them, known as Binding Theory! We’ll explore
its three basic principles in this episode, but first, let’s figure out what
pronouns even are. Well, like we just said, some words don’t
really have the kinds of meanings that you can just memorize and know, like “Amsterdam”
or “oxygen”; instead, they need to latch on to something else around them in order to get their meaning.
And around them can really mean, like, nearby in the world.
So, imagine you’re at a party, and your friend gestures to Isaac across the
room, and says “He used to date a girl named Monica”. Even if you’ve never met Isaac,
the circumstances tell you who “he” refers to.
That’s because the circumstances point out Isaac as the meaning of “he”.
If that sentence were used in another setting — at some other party,
with totally different people, that “he” could mean somebody else entirely.
As long as whoever that happens to be also dated a girl named Monica.
Depending on context for meaning is the defining property for pronouns.
But as it turns out, pronouns don’t always have to travel across the room to get their meaning.
Sometimes, they can get it right in their own sentence!
Take, for instance, “Hazel went to the mall so she could hang out with Kaitlyn”. You
might not know who Hazel is, but you know who the pronoun “she” refers to -
it’s that Hazel person who’s doing the mall-going.
Now, here’s where things get interesting. Our syntactic knowledge — the rules that
we have stuck inside our heads telling us how to interpret sentences — it doesn’t only tell us what
pronouns can refer to, it also tells us what they can’t.
So like, there’s no way that we can interpret that sentence so that “she” means Kaitlyn.
So what’s going on there?
If you’ve watched any of our other syntax videos, you can probably guess that the answer
has to do with the structure of the sentence. There are principles at work, dictating which
words a pronoun can refer to, and where you’ve got syntax rules, you’re
gonna have trees. But just to nail this down, let’s consider if we can make this a
linear order thing - so maybe “she” can only refer to a noun that comes before it?
That sort of rule may work for the sentences we’ve looked at so far, but it wouldn't work for something
like “She went to the support group, because she’s still a cancer patient”. In this
sentence, both pronouns can for sure point to "cancer patient", even though they're before it!
To get an idea of what these principles
must look like, and how they work, let’s take a gander at some pronouns that need to
find meaning within the sentence: reflexives. Up until now, we’ve been focusing on personal
pronouns — so things like “he”, “she” or “me”. These can look either within
a sentence or outside of it to find something that they can refer to. Reflexive pronouns — like “himself”,
“herself”, or “myself” — are much needier; they have to have a noun nearby to
can comfort them and tell them who they are.
So, imagine the sentence “Hazel saw herself as a grenade”. The pronoun “herself”
has to refer back to “Hazel”. It can’t refer to anyone else — not Hazel’s mom, not
Anna, no one but Hazel! The pronoun’s meaning is locked down.
And to understand how that happened, we need to take a look at some of the underlying structure.
The first thing to notice is that we’ve put a little “i” beside both of the noun
phrases; this represents the fact that “herself” refers back to “Hazel”.
So part of our rule should be that reflexive pronouns point at something inside their own
clause. But that’s not quite enough. What about “Herself saw Hazel”?
With just our current rule, you might think that the reflexive should still be able to
refer to “Hazel”. But this sentence sounds awful! Something’s gone terribly wrong.
We know that the order of the words alone can’t do the job.
So we’ll need to introduce a new ingredient — a special connection between different
parts of a syntactic tree. We call this relationship constituent command, or c-command for short.
C-command is a little bit like your line of sight in a theatre with stadium seating;
you can see everyone beside you, and you can see everyone down in front of you,
but you can’t see anyone above you in the back.
And if you’re all the way at the bottom, you can’t see anything else except your own row.
If you can see something else, then you c-command it. So, in our first structure, the first
noun c-commands the reflexive. We can be sure that this is true, because
in general, the first noun phrase c-commands everything right beside it, and everything
below that, including the reflexive pronoun.
And now that we know about c-command, we’re ready to set down our first rule.
The first principle of Binding Theory, known as Principle A, says that a reflexive pronoun
must refer to something that c-commands it, in the same clause. Principle A is so fundamental
that if any part of it is broken, the whole sentence collapses!
So, going back to “Herself saw Hazel”, even though you might think that
the reflexive pronoun should be able to refer to that second noun phrase,
Hazel can’t reach up high enough to c-command it.
Hazel is sitting right in front of the screen; she's all
the way at the bottom and can’t see anyone outside of her own row. So that’s why
the meaning breaks down.
Even if a reflexiveh has something to refer to, that’s high enough up
in the structure to c-command it, things can still go wrong if it's in a different clause.
Take a look at the structure for the sentence “Gus thinks that himself got his license out of sympathy”.
The reflexive pronoun “himself” is c-commanded by “Gus”, but our rule
gets broken anyway because "himself" is hanging out in the lower, subordinate clause.
Gus is way up in the main clause; they just aren’t within reach of each other.
You can think of every clause as its own theater, and you can’t see from one theater into
the next, no matter how high up your seat is.
Now, since we’ve wrapped our heads around reflexive pronouns, maybe we can
go back and work out a second principle — one that works for plain old personal pronouns.
We already know that personal pronouns can grab hold of something in the environment
to refer to, because of sentences like “I read the book in two days", where the pronoun
“I” refers to the speaker. But they can also pick out something inside their own sentence.
So we can say “She’s still a cancer patient”, and the pronoun “she” can mean “cancer patient".
But this doesn't always work. Consider the sentence “Gus let him break the trophies".
Even if I close my eyes and I try really, really hard, I can’t get “him” to mean Gus.
It’s almost as if whenever some connection works for a reflexive pronoun, it can’t
work for a personal pronoun. If you had “himself” instead of “him” back there, “Gus let
himself break the trophies” would be just fine! You have a nice clear situation of c-command
within the same clause, and Principle A is happy. So what do we do with personal pronouns?
Well, the second principle of Binding Theory, or Principle B, really is the mirror image of
Principle A. It says that a personal pronoun can’t refer
to something that c-commands it inside its own clause. So they really are opposites!
That’s why if you have “Gus thinks that he got his license out of sympathy” instead,
the “he” has no problem being “Gus”. - now “Gus” and “he” aren’t in the
same clause. Just remember - wherever a personal pronoun
can refer to some noun, a reflexive can’t, and vice versa.
Okay, so we’ve got our theory all worked out, right? One rule for personal pronouns,
and one for reflexive pronouns? But, well… pronouns aren’t the only kind of words e need to
account for. Think back to one of our earliest examples: “Hazel went
to the mall so she could hang out with Kaitlyn”. Somehow, the pronoun “she” isn’t allowed
to refer to Kaitlyn, even though neither of our rules has been broken. So what’s going on?
To make a long story short, we need a third rule, a Principle C — one that covers
nouns. So that’s proper names like “Anna” or
“Patrick”, or definite noun phrases that describe specific things, like “that weird
author” or “my dad”. These kinds of expressions have the least
requirements for how to interpret them, since they specifically point to something
out in the world, unlike either flavour of pronoun. So our Principle C will need to
give them a lot of room to breathe.
Unlike reflexive and personal pronouns, these “referential expressions” can’t be c-commanded
by anything they refer to, or anything that refers back to them, even across clause boundaries!
Nouns are really rugged, lone wolf kinds of things.
That’s why even the pronoun “she” at the very beginning of the sentence still can’t
refer to Kaitlyn; as far away as it is, it still c-commands
“Kaitlyn”, so that interpretation is blocked.
So in short, a reflexive pronoun needs to be c-commanded by what it
refers to; a personal pronoun can’t be; and a regular noun phrase can’t be c-commanded
by anything that it refers to ever at all, even across clauses!
And with that last rule out of the way, we’re finally left with a much more solid idea of
the role syntax plays in interpreting even innocent seeming little pronouns.
With three principles, we can clear up all the complications in telling how to match
up our pronouns with their meanings. If you keep these in mind, your understanding will be faultless.
So, we’ve reached the end of The Ling Space for this week.
If you assigned the right referents to my pronouns, you learned that words that depend
on their context for meaning follow strict rules telling them where they can go and what
they can do; that reflexive pronouns are the most restricted, and must refer to and
be c-commanded by something in their own clause; that personal pronouns can't be c-commanded
by something in their own clause, if they’re going to refer to it;
and that referential noun phrases can never be c-commanded by anything they share their
meaning with, ever.
The Ling Space is produced by me, Moti Lieberman, and directed by Adèle-Elise Prévost. This
week’s episode was written by Stephan Hurtubise. Our editor is Georges Coulombe, our music
is by Shane Turner, and our graphics team is atelierMUSE. We’re down in the comments
below, or you can bring the discussion back over to our website, where we’ll have some
extra material on this topic.
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personal Ling Space, please subscribe. And we’ll see you next Wednesday. Pxa tirkun!