Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 64(4): 571–573, 2019
doi: 10.1017/cnj.2019.29
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2019
The syntax of person
WILL OXFORD
University of Manitoba
will.oxford@umanitoba.ca
and
JILA GHOMESHI
University of Manitoba
jila.ghomeshi@umanitoba.ca
This thematic issue contains a selection of papers that were presented at the Manitoba
Workshop on Person, which was held in Winnipeg on September 22 and 23, 2017.
The workshop featured twenty-three presentations, including keynote talks by two
recognized experts on person, Daniel Harbour and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta. This
was the tenth in a series of Canadian workshops on the syntax and semantics of nom-
inals that have been held since 2005. These workshops have served to engage scho-
lars working on nominals, from both within and outside of Canada, in an exchange of
ideas. Several of the workshops have led to published collections of papers.
The topic of person, suggested to us by Éric Mathieu and Diane Massam, was
chosen not only because of its empirical complexity, but also for its theoretical
importance, as person has been argued to play a fundamental role in syntactic struc-
ture. Subject-verb agreement, for example, is typically driven by person, and
Chomsky (2000, 2001) has proposed that such agreement is in fact the source of
the grammatical distinction between subject and predicate: the subject gains its
special status in the sentence precisely because the predicate has agreed with it for
person. It is not an exaggeration, then, to say that person lies at the heart of the struc-
ture of sentences in many languages – much more so than other features such as
number or gender.
Although great strides have been made in our theoretical understanding of
person in recent years (e.g., Harley and Ritter 2002; Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009;
Cysouw 2003; Adger and Harbour 2007; Nevins 2007; Baker 2008; Wechsler
2010; Ackema and Neeleman 2013), the field is very far from a consensus regarding
both the nature of person and the reasons for its important role in syntax. This may be
because person has often been discussed secondarily in work focusing on other topics
such as agreement (e.g., Baker 2008), alignment (e.g., Béjar and Rezac 2009), or case
(e.g., Adger and Harbour 2007). However, with the recent publication of the
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572 CJL/RCL 64(4), 2019
significant monograph titled Impossible Persons by Daniel Harbour (2016), it has
become evident that looking at person as an independent object of inquiry may
lead to new insights regarding its nature and patterning.
The papers in this issue address three broad themes:
. The structural representation of person. Two papers focus on the representation of
person in the structure of nominals. Bjorkman, Cowper, Hall, and Peters argue that a par-
simonious model of person features can also derive patterns of spatial deixis, while Ritter
and Wiltschko use data from the patterning of impersonal pronouns to argue that the
structure of nominals includes speech-act projections parallel to those that have been pro-
posed in the structure of clauses.
. The role of person in clausal syntax. Three papers examine issues related to the Person-
Case Constraint (PCC), a well-known set of restrictions on the person features of co-argu-
ments. Keine, Wagner, and Coon show that agreement in German copula constructions
exhibits hierarchy effects for both person and number; a partial unification with PCC con-
texts is proposed. Yokoyama argues that putative “repair” strategies employed to evade
PCC violations are best regarded not as last-resort repair operations, but rather as distinct
constructions that are conditioned in their own right. Compton shows that Inuktitut agree-
ment displays patterns that could be taken to instantiate the PCC, but argues that a PCC-
based analysis is not in fact appropriate.
. The interpretation of person. Three papers consider person from a perspective that
includes its semantic interpretation. Kučerová proposes that the addition of semantic
indices at the syntax–semantics interface accounts for various paradoxes in the patterning
of syntactic versus semantic person. Pancheva and Zubizarreta propose that person fea-
tures play a key role in the representation of evidential contrasts, which can in turn
affect the temporal interpretation of a clause. Finally, the squib by Ceong considers the
interpretation of person in discourse-oriented null subject languages, showing that the
complementizer can impose a particular person interpretation on the null subject of a
complement clause.
The authors examine these issues through the lens of a geographically, genetically,
and typologically diverse range of languages, including Czech, French, German,
Guaraní, Hebrew, Heiltsuk, Inuktitut, Italian, and Korean.
We thank all of the workshop participants for their contributions, which made for
a rich environment in which to discuss ideas. We also thank the reviewers of the
papers submitted to this issue for their invaluable feedback, and the editors of the
Canadian Journal of Linguistics, Elizabeth Cowper and Heather Newell, for their
unfailing support and encouragement throughout the preparation of this issue. For
logistical assistance with the workshop, we are grateful to Heather Cherpako at the
University of Manitoba, Krista Michie and Dustin Jay at Red River College, Sing
Lung Wong, our student assistants Sarah Hoffman, Nicole Brunette, and
Christopher Lansang, and University of Manitoba graduate students Hanadi
Azhari, Khashayar Hamidzadeh, Amani Makkawi and Yadong Xu. The workshop
was made possible due to funding from the Department of Linguistics, the Faculty
of Arts Endowment Fund, the Dean of Arts, and the Vice-President (Research and
International), all at the University of Manitoba, as well as the Canadian Linguistic
Association.
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OXFORD AND GHOMESHI 573
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