Pronouns, presuppositions, and semantic variation

This paper addresses the question of whether and how the semantics of third-person pronouns can vary across languages. I investigate third-person non-demonstrative pronouns in St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish), including null pro and its overt animate plural counterpart wit. I provide evidence for a striking cross-linguistic difference between the St’át’imcets pronouns and English ones: third-person non-demonstrative pronouns in St’át’imcets lack familiarity effects (cf. also Davis 2006). These pronouns may introduce new discourse referents, they allow apparent ‘backwards pronominalization’ in situations in which English disallows it, and they behave in other respects like indefinites (e.g., they participate in sluicing). A novel pronoun is illustrated in (1) (from Davis 2006); the phenomenon is widespread and not limited to a literary register: