Project "Animacy features and the flexibility of pronouns"

About

Animacy features and the flexibility of pronouns is a subproject of the SFB Language between redundancy and the deficiency (Austrian Science Fund SFB 10.55776/F1003).

We investigate the animancy features (and animacy restrictions) of different types of pronouns mostly in the context of prepositional phrases. The main questions addressed in this subproject are (i) whether certain types of pronouns are specified in terms of animacy (e.g., strong pronouns as +human) and (ii) how redundancy and deficiency allow such pronouns to be used in a way that deviates from their animacy features (e.g., strong pronouns for inanimate referents).

Team

Steffen Heidinger (PI)

Yanis da Cunha (postdoc)

Alina Schwarzenberger (student assistant)

Activities

Publications

Presentations

Online-workshop Pronouns in PPs: Orphan Prepositions and Pronoun Types