Morphosyntax of Self-ascription: A Cross-linguistic Study

This dissertation investigates cross-linguistic variation in the domain of de se speech and attitude reports and argues for a number of novel generalizations. Chapter 2 introduces data from Telugu and Nuer to establish a new way to express de se attitudes. In both these languages, an embedded third person pronoun controls first person verbal agreement morphology. I propose a model where embedded pronouns can be simultaneously first and third person as advanced by Schlenker (2003) along with the view of syntax-morphology mapping where the morphology can express only a subset of the features present in the syntax. I generalize this system to account for all the previously noted variation in this domain including indexical shift, logophors, logophors that control first person agreement and languages like English that use a third person pronoun and agreement morphology. A previously unobserved typological gap in this domain is also noted. Chapter 3 shows that when a pronominal element is read de se, the most deficient possible element (in Cardeletti & Starke’s 1999 sense) must be used. This is shown to follow from a general constraint Minimize DP!. The chapter also establishes a typology regarding the type of elements that undergo indexical shift. Chapter 4 investigates the role of complementation in the licensing logophors and indexical shift. It is shown that the distribution of both is tied to acomplementizer etymologically related to the verb say. I propose an analysis in which only these complementizers introduce embedded contexts that license logophors and indexical shift, which has consequences for the locus of cross-linguistic variation in the domain under investigation