Pronoun of laziness: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 19:12, 27 September 2014

Definition

Pronoun of laziness is a pronoun which is only partially co-referential with an antecedent.

Example

If the sentence John gave his hat to me, but Bill gave it to Sarah is intended to mean that I got John's hat and Sarah Bill's hat, the pronoun it does not have the same (intended) referent as his hat, and thus is only 'lazily' co-referential with the full NP. If one takes the sentence to have a logical form like [John:x [x gave [x's hat] to me ] and [Bill:y gave [y's hat] to Sarah] with his a bound variable, it can be taken to be a copy of its antecedent (x's hat), rather than being co-referential with it. Full implementation of this analysis by means of lambda-abstraction is, however, more involved.

Links

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

Haik, I. 1986. Pronouns of Laziness, in: S. Berman et al (eds.) NELS 16, 197-216, U.Mass. Amherst.
Partee, B.H. 1978. Bound Variables and other Anaphors, in:D. Waltz (ed.) Proceedings of TINLAP 2, 79-85, .

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+==Definition==
 '''Pronoun of laziness''' is a [[pronoun]] which is only partially co-referential with an [[antecedent]].
-=== Example ===
+== Example ==
+If the sentence ''John gave his hat to me, but Bill gave it to Sarah'' is intended to mean that I got John's hat and Sarah Bill's hat, the pronoun ''it'' does not have the same (intended) referent as ''his hat'', and thus is only 'lazily' co-referential with the full NP. If one takes the sentence to have a logical form like [John:x [x gave [x's hat] to me ] and [Bill:y gave [y's hat] to Sarah] with ''his'' a bound variable, ''it'' can be taken to be a copy of its antecedent (x's hat), rather than being co-referential with it. Full implementation of this analysis by means of [[lambda-abstraction]] is, however, more involved.
-if the sentence ''John gave his hat to me, but Bill gave it to Sarah'' is intended to mean that I got John's hat and Sarah Bill's hat, the pronoun ''it'' does not have the same (intended) referent as ''his hat'', and thus is only 'lazily' co-referential with the full NP. If one takes the sentence to have a logical form like [John:x [x gave [x's hat] to me ] and [Bill:y gave [y's hat] to Sarah] with ''his'' a bound variable, ''it'' can be taken to be a copy of its antecedent (x's hat), rather than being co-referential with it. Full implementation of this analysis by means of [[lambda-abstraction]] is, however, more involved.
-=== Links ===
+== Links ==
 [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Pronoun+of+laziness&lemmacode=448 Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]
-=== References ===
+== References ==
 * Haik, I. 1986. ''Pronouns of Laziness,'' in: S. Berman et al (eds.) NELS 16, 197-216, U.Mass. Amherst.
 * Partee, B.H. 1978. ''Bound Variables and other Anaphors,'' in:D. Waltz (ed.) Proceedings of TINLAP 2, 79-85, .
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 [[Category:Syntax]]
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