A pragmatic analysis of german impersonally used first person singular ‘ICH’

Sarah Zobel
Abstract

The German first and second person singular pronouns ich and du allow for a referential use and an impersonal use. In their impersonal use, both pronouns behave like the impersonal pronoun man (Engl. one) in generic sentences. I argue that the aspect of impersonally used singular personal pronouns that distinguishes them (i) from each other, (ii) from impersonal pronouns, and (iii) from “ordinary” generic sentences is their pragmatic effects. The semantic contribution of the three pronouns and their containing utterances is discussed before a comparative analysis of the pragmatic effects of impersonally used ich and du and impersonal man is given. The analyses are illustrated with naturally occurring data from a self-compiled data collection. Turning to a more practical topic in the second part of the paper, I discuss a methodological issue regarding corpus-based analyses of low-frequency phenomena, such as impersonally used ich in the second part of this paper by reporting a small-scale corpus study.

Keywords:
Quick links
A browser-friendly version of this article is not yet available. View PDF
Alonso-Ovalle, Luis
(2002) Arbitrary pronouns are not that indefinite. In C. Beyssade, R. Bok-Bennema, F. Drijkoningen, and P.Monachesi (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Amsterdam: John BenjaminsPublishing Company, pp. 1-15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Amaral, Patricia Matos, Craige Roberts, and E. Allyn Smith
(2007) Review of ‘The Logic of Conventional Implicature’ by Chris Potts. Linguistics and Philosophy 30: 707-749. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro
(1995) The variability of impersonal subjects. In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, and B.H. Partee (eds.), Quantification inNatural Languages. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, pp. 107-143.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
(1988) On “si”constructions and the theory of arb. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 521-581.Google Scholar
Condoravdi, Cleo
(1989) Indefinite and generic pronouns. In E. Jane Fee, and K. Hunt (eds.), Proceedings of the Eighth WestCoast Conference on FormalLinguistics, pp.71-84.Google Scholar
De Cock
Barbara (this volume) Non-prototypicality of personal pronouns in typical registers? A cross-linguistic analysis. Pragmatics 26.3: 361-378. DOI logo
Gregersen, Frans, and Torben Juel Jensen
this volume) How did ‘man’ become ‘du’, or did it? The pragmatics of generic second person pronouns in modern Danish spoken language. Pragmatics 26.3: 417-446. DOI logo
Grice, Paul
(1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41-58.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Grimberg, Mary Lou
(1994) On Nunberg on indexicality and deixis. UCL Working Papersin Linguistics 6:1-38.Google Scholar
Gregersen, Frans, and Torben Juel Jensen
this volume) How did ‘man’ become ‘du’, or did it? The pragmatics of generic second person pronouns in modern Danish spoken language. Pragmatics 26.3: 417-446. DOI logo
Grice, Paul
(1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole, and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41-58.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Grimberg, Mary Lou
(1994) On Nunberg on indexicality and deixis. UCL Working Papersin Linguistics 6:1-38.Google Scholar
Gruber, Bettina
(2011) Indexical pronouns: Generic uses as clues to their structure. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 47: 331-360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Helmbrecht, Johannes
(2015) A typology of non-prototypical uses of personal pronouns: Synchrony and diachrony. Journal of Pragmatics 88: 176-189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hugo Rojas, Evelyn
(2011) Las formas de segunda persona singularcomo estrategias evidenciales [The forms of second singular person as evidential strategies]. Revista de Linguistica Teorica y Aplicada Concepcion (Chile) 49: 143-167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamp, Hans
(2008) Discourse structure andthe structure of context. Ms., IMS Universität Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Kaplan, David
(1989) Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, and H. Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 481-563.Google Scholar
Kitagawa, Chisato, and Adrienne Lehrer
(1990) Impersonal uses of personal pronouns. Journal of Pragmatics 14: 739-759. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Kluge, Bettina
this volume) Misunderstanding or (deliberately) misinterpreting the second singular –how speakers politely deal with referential ambiguity. Pragmatics 26.3: 501-522. DOI logo
Krifka, Manfred, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Gregory N. Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Gennaro Chierchia, and Godehard Link
(1995) Genericity: An introduction. In G. Carlson, and J. Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-124.Google Scholar
Laberge, Suzanne, and Gillian Sankoff
(1979) Anything youcan do. In T. Givón, (ed.), Discourse and syntax. New York: Academic Press, pp. 419-40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malamud, Sophia A
(2006) Semantics and pragmatics of arbitrariness. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
(2012) Impersonal indexicals: One, you, man, and du . Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15:1-48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moltmann, Friederike
(2006) Generic one, arbitrary PRO, and the first person. Natural Language Semantics 14: 257-281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Relative truth and the first person. Philosophical Studies 150: 187-220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Two kinds of first-person-oriented content. Synthese 184:157-177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nogué, Neus, and Òscar Bladas
this volume) “Que bé, tu!” (“That’s great, you!”): Non-prototypical uses of the second person singular pronoun tu(you) in spoken Catalan. Pragmatics 26.3: 473-500. DOI logo
Nunberg, Geoffrey
(1993) Indexicality and deixis. Linguistics and Philosophy 16: 1-43. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Potts, Chris
(2005) The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna
(2004) Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tarenskeen, Sammie
(2010) From you to me (and back):The flexible meaning of the secondperson pronoun in Dutch. Master’s thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Thurmair, Maria
(1989) Modalpartikeln und ihreKombinationen. Linguistische Arbeiten 223. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Zifonun, Gisela
(2000) Man lebt nur einmal. Morphosyntax und Semantik des Pronomens “man”. Deutsche Sprache 28: 232-253.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte
(2011) Discourse particles. In C. Maienborn, K. vonHeusinger, and P. Portner (eds.), Handbook Semantics (HandbücherzurSprach-und Kommunikationswissenschaft HSK 33.2). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 2011-2038.Google Scholar
Zobel, Sarah
(2010) Non-standard uses of German 1st person singular pronouns. In K. Nakakoji, Y. Murakami, and E. McCready (eds.), JSAI-isAI, LNAI 6284, pp. 292-311.Google Scholar
(2014) Impersonally Interpreted Personal Pronouns. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Göttingen. Available at http://​hdl​.handle​.net​/11858​/00​-1735​-0000​-0023​-991B​-2