Cover not available
Article published In:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 22:1 (2022) ► pp.1–42

A questionnaire-based study of impersonalization in Romanian and English

With special attention to passivization

| University of Cambridge , UK
ORCID logo | Lancaster University , UK
This paper is the first contrastive study of impersonalization in Romanian and English. Taking an acceptability judgment approach, we describe the functional potential in all impersonal uses of not only the pronouns ‘one’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ but also the lesser studied passive. We find inter alia: a similar division of labor in the languages between ‘you’ and ‘they’ for contexts paraphrasable as, respectively, ‘everyone’ and ‘someone/some people’; a wider range of uses for pro-dropped ‘they’ than for its overt counterpart, as hypothesized in previous research; and a preference in English, but not Romanian, for passives to ‘they’ especially in contexts like ‘they’ve stolen my wallet!’, where the referent is entirely unidentifiable and likely to be singular. Levels of identifiability and number, each of which has been suggested in a separate semantic map as necessary for capturing impersonalization, are also shown to interact, supporting a proposal to combine them in one map.
Keywords: impersonal, pronoun, passive, semantic map, English/Romanian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Impersonalization
    • 1.2Impersonal constructions
    • 1.3Languages
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Acceptability judgment questionnaires
    • 2.2Questionnaire design
    • 2.3Implementation
    • 2.4Statistics
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Universal-internal uses
      • 3.1.1In general
      • 3.1.2‘You’ and ‘one’
      • 3.1.3The passive, versus ‘you’
    • 3.2Non-universal-internal uses
      • 3.2.1In general
      • 3.2.2‘They’
      • 3.2.3The passive, versus ‘they’
    • 3.3Summary
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 21 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.20004.rad
References (48)
References
Baayen, R. H. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bard, E. G., Robertson, D. and Sorace, A. 1996. Magnitude Estimation of Linguistic Acceptability. Language 72(10): 32–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabredo Hofherr, P. 2006. “Arbitrary” Pro and the Theory of Pro-Drop. In Agreement and Arguments, P. Ackema, P. Brandt, M. Schoorlemmer and F. Weerman. (eds), 230–257. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cojocaru, D. 2003. Romanian Grammar. Durham: Slavic and East European Language Research Center, Duke University.Google Scholar
Coussé, E. and van der Auwera, J. 2012. Human Impersonal Pronouns in Swedish and Dutch: A Contrastive Study of Man and Men . Languages in Contrast 12(2): 121–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Creissels, D. 2008a. Impersonal and Related Constructions: A Typological Approach. Lyon: Lumière University Lyon 2.Google Scholar
2008b. Impersonal Pronouns and Coreference: The Case of French On. Lyon: Lumière University Lyon 2.Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, R. 2007. Impersonal Si Constructions: Agreement and Interpretation. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Data-Bukowska, E. 2018. The Third Person Plural Impersonal in Swedish: A Typological Account. Linguistica Copernicana 151: 163–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Hoop, H. and Tarenskeen, S. 2015. It’s All about You in Dutch. Journal of Pragmatics 881: 163–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, C. 1998. Impersonal Se Constructions in Romance and the Passivization of Unergatives. Linguistic Inquiry 29(3): 399–437. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenger, P. 2018. How Impersonal does One Get? A Study of Man-Pronouns in Germanic. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21(3): 291–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernández, S. S. 2013. Impersonality in Spanish Personal Pronouns. In Deixis and Pronouns in Romance Languages, K. J. Kragh and J. Lindschouw. (eds), 87–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fonesca-Greber, B. and Waugh, L. R. 2003. On the Radical Difference between the Subject Personal Pronouns in Written and Spoken European French. In Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use, P. Leistyna and C. F. Meyer. (eds), 225–240. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gast, V., Deringer, L., Haas, F. and Rudolf, O. 2015. Impersonal Uses of the Second Person Singular: A Pragmatic Analysis of Generalization and Empathy Effects. Journal of Pragmatics 881: 148–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gast, V. and van der Auwera, J. 2013. Towards a Distributional Typology of Human Impersonal Pronouns, Based on Data from European Languages. In Languages Across Boundaries: Studies in the Memory of Anna Siewierska, D. Bakker and M. Haspelmath. (eds), 119–158. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giacalone Ramat, A. and Sansò, A. 2007. The Spread and Decline of Indefinite Man-Constructions in European Languages: An Areal Perspective. In Europe and the Mediterranean Linguistic Areas: Convergences from a Historical and Typological Perspective, P. Ramat and E. Roma. (eds), 95–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gönczöl-Davies, R. 2008. Romanian: An Essential Grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haas, F. 2018a. “You can’t Control a Thing like That”: Genre and Change in Modern English Human Impersonal Pronouns. In Diachronic Corpora, Genre and Language Change, R. J. Whitt. (ed.), 171–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018b. Changing Human Impersonal Pronouns in English: A Corpus Study. Paper presented at the Fifty-First Conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Tallinn, Estonia, 30 August 2018.
Hall, D. 2020. The Impersonal Gets Personal: A New Pronoun in Multicultural London English. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 381: 117–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jensen, T. J. and Gregerson, F. 2016. What do(es) You Mean? The Pragmatics of Generic Second Person Pronouns in Modern Spoken Danish. Pragmatics 26(3): 417–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kitagawa, C. and Lehrer, A. 1990. Impersonal Uses of Personal Pronouns. Journal of Pragmatics 14(5): 739–759. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laberge, S. and Sankoff, G. 1979. Anything You can Do. In Discourse and Syntax, T. Givón. (ed.), 419–440. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malamud, S. 2012. Impersonal Indexicals: One, You, Man and Du . Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 151: 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manea, C. 2012. Remarks on the Passive Voice in English and Romanian. Studii de Gramatică Contrastivă 181: 54–73.Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. 2010. Generalizing Detached Self-Reference and the Semantics of Generic One . Mind & Language 25(4): 440–473. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myhill, J. 1997. Toward a Functional Typology of Agent Defocusing. Linguistics 35(5): 799–844. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Connor, P. E. 1994. “You could Feel it through the Skin”: Agency and Positioning in Prisoners’ Stabbing Stories. Text 14(1): 45–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pană Dindelegan, G. 2008. Construcții pasive și construcții impersonale. In Gramatica Limbii Române II: Enunțul, V. Guţu Romalo. (ed.), 133–147. Bucharest: Editura Academiei RomâneGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 2013. The Grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Posio, P. and Vilkuna, M. 2013. Referential Dimensions of Human Impersonals in Dialectal European Portuguese and Finnish. Linguistics 51(1): 177–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rasinger, S. M. 2013. Quantitative Research in Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Bloomsbury. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rudolf, O. 2016. Human Impersonal Strategies in English and Russian: A Comparative Corpus Study. PhD Thesis, University of Jena.Google Scholar
Sansò, A. 2006. ‘Agent Defocusing’ Revisited: Passive and Impersonal Constructions in some European Languages. In Passivization and Typology: Form and Function, W. Abraham and L. Leisiö. (eds), 232–273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shibatani, M. 1985. Passives and Related Constructions: A Prototype Analysis. Language 61(4): 821–848. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, A. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008. Ways of Impersonalizing: Pronominal vs. Verbal Strategies. In Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives, M. A. Gómez González, J. Lachlan Mackenzie and E. M. González Álvarez. (eds), 3–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011. Overlap and Complementarity in Reference Impersonals: Man-Constructions vs. Third Person Plural-Impersonals in the Languages of Europe. In Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, A. Malchukov and A. Siewierska. (eds), 57–90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, A. and Papastathi, M. 2011. Towards a Typology of Third Personal Plural Impersonals. Linguistics 49(3): 575–610. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, J. and Almeida, D. 2012. Assessing the Reliability of Textbook Data in Syntax: Adger’s Core Syntax . Journal of Linguistics 48(3): 609–652. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stirling, L. and Manderson, L. 2011. About You: Empathy, Objectivity and Authority. Journal of Pragmatics 43(6): 1581–1602. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Auwera, J., Gast, V. and Vanderbiesen, J. 2012. Human Impersonal Pronoun Uses in English, Dutch and German. Leuvense Bijdragen 981: 27–64.Google Scholar
Van Olmen, D. and Breed, A. 2018a. Human Impersonal Pronouns in Afrikaans: A Double Questionnaire-Based Study. Language Sciences 691: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zifonun, G. 2001. Man lebt nur einmal: Morphosyntax und Semantik des Pronomens man . Deutsche Sprache 38(3): 232–253.Google Scholar