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The semantics of the plural pronoun construction

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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.

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Correspondence to Masha Vassilieva.

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This paper revises material presented at FASL 9 and SALT 11. We are grateful to those audiences and to Anna Cardinaletti, Stefan Dył a, and Anna Feldman for stimulating discussion. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers.

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Vassilieva, M., Larson, R.K. The semantics of the plural pronoun construction. Nat Lang Seman 13, 101–124 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-004-1031-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-004-1031-5

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