Expressing the Self: Cultural Diversity and Cognitive Universals

Description

This book addresses different linguistic and philosophical aspects of referring to the self in a wide range of languages from different language families, including Amharic, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Newari (Sino-Tibetan), Polish, Tariana (Arawak), and Thai. In the domain of speaking about oneself, languages use a myriad of expressions that cut across grammatical and semantic categories, as well as a wide variety of constructions. Languages of Southeast and East Asia famously employ a great number of terms for first person reference to signal honorification. The number and mixed properties of these terms make them debatable candidates for pronounhood, with many grammar-driven classifications opting to classify them with nouns. Some languages make use of egophors or logophors, and many exhibit an interaction between expressing the self and expressing evidentiality qua the epistemic status of information held from the ego perspective. The volume's focus on expressing the self, however, is not directly motivated by an interest in the grammar or lexicon, but instead stems from philosophical discussions on the special status of thoughts about oneself, known as de se thoughts. It is this interdisciplinary understanding of expressing the self that underlies this volume, comprising philosophy of mind at one end of the spectrum and cross-cultural pragmatics of self-expression at the other. This unprecedented juxtaposition results in a novel method of approaching de se and de se expressions, in which research methods from linguistics and philosophy inform each other. The importance of this interdisciplinary perspective on expressing the self cannot be overemphasized. Crucially, the volume also demonstrates that linguistic research on first-person reference makes a valuable contribution to research on the self tout court, by exploring the ways in which the self is expressed, and thereby adding to the insights gained through philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. Cover Expressing the Self: Cultural Diversity and Cognitive Universals Copyright Contents Preface and acknowledgements List of figures and tables List of abbreviations The contributors 1: Introduction: The self in language, in thought, and en route in-between Part I: The self across languages 2: ‘Me’, ‘us’, and ‘others: ’Expressing the self in Arawak languages of South America, with a focus on Tariana 2.1 The Arawak language family: a snapshot 2.2 How person is expressed in Arawak languages 2.3 Inclusive and exclusive first person across Arawak languages 2.3.1 Borrowing an exclusive first-person pronoun 2.3.2 Developing an inclusive/exclusive distinction through language-internal resources 2.4 The expression of ‘self’ in Tariana 2.4.1 Personal pronouns and cross-referencing 2.4.2 A special status of first person in future forms 2.4.3 The expression of ‘self’ through evidentials 2.4.3.1 Evidentials and preferred information source in Tariana 2.4.3.2 Evidentials and person 2.4.4 Special features of first-person narrators 2.4.5 Downplaying the ‘self ’ 2.5 Conclusion Acknowledgements 3: The proper treatment of egophoricity in Kathmandu Newari 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Egophoricity in Newari 3.3 phoricity as self-ascription 3.4 Analysis 3.4.1 Indexicals vs egophors 3.4.2 Assertion 3.5 Conclusion 4: Self-referring in Korean, with reference to Korean first-person markers 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Background 4.2.1 Self-referring expressions and indexicality 4.2.2 Personal pronouns and self-referring expressions in Korean 4.3 Data collection and methods 4.4 Self-denigration 4.5 Contextual information 4.5.1 Information about interlocutors 4.6 Non-compositional meanings of first-person pronouns 4.7 Sources of first-person markers 4.8 Conclusions 5: Expressing the self in Japanese: Indexical expressions in the service of indexical thoughts 5.1 The importance of first-person perspective 5.2 First-person reference in Japanese 5.3 The problem: does self-expression in Japanese shed light on the characteristics of indexical thought? 5.4 A possible answer: extreme linguistic determinism 5.5 An alternative answer: distinguishing two sides of the self 5.6 Proposed analysis: facets of the self highlighted in communication 5.7 Implications for expressing indexical thoughts and for the indexical/non-indexical distinction in natural languages 5.8 Conclusion 6: De se marking, logophoricity, and ziji 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Expressing self in Chinese 6.2.1 A first look 6.2.2 Two ziji? 6.3 Ziji without de se 6.3.1 Going dynamic 6.3.2 Empathic locus 6.4 Ziji as a test case 6.5 Conclusion 7: Charting the speaker-relatedness of impersonal pronouns: Contrastive evidence from English, French, and Thai 7.1 Introduction 7. 2 Four types of speaker-related reference 7.3 Survey of impersonal pronouns in English, French, and Thai 7.3.1 Hypothesis 7.3.2 Method 7.3.3 English results 7.3.4 French results 7.3.5 Thai results 7.4 General discussion 7.5 Conclusion Acknowledgements Part II: Self-awareness and self-expression 8: Expressing the selves: Subject splits and viewpoint hierarchies in multiple-perspective constructions 8.1 The self as a blank space 8.2 First-person perspective(s) and the self 8.3 The emergence of ‘selves’ via subject split 8.4 The ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ selves 8.5 Concluding remarks: beyond the first-person perspective 9: Referential variability of generic ‘one’ 9.1 ‘One’ and first-person-oriented genericity 9.2 Assessment of Moltmann’s account 9.2.1 ‘One’ and third-person-oriented genericity 9.2.2 ‘One’ and objective predicates 9.2.3 Subject-based generalization 9.2.4 Addressee-targeted generalization 9.2.5 Simulation-based generalization 9.3 Four types of reference 9.3.1 Hypothesis 9.3.2 Method 9.3.2.1 Participants 9.3.2.2 Procedure 9.3.2.3 Materials 9.3.3 Results 9.3.3.1 Type C: −speaker, +generalization 9.3.3.2 Type B: +speaker, +generalization 9.3.3.3 Type A: +speaker, −generalization 9.3.3.4 Type D: –speaker, –generalization 9.3.3.5 Summary 9.4 Two dimensions of contextual variation 9.4.1 Specific/generic reference and at-issue content 9.4.2 Basis of the generalization and domain restriction 9.4.3 Summary 9.5 Conclusion Acknowledgements 10: Expressing the sel: fFrom types of de se to speech-act types 10.1 Introduction 10.2 De se thoughts: meaning and communication 10.3 Towards a speech act-based account of expressions de se: methods and theoretical prerequisites 10.4 Expressing self-reference: evidence from Polish 10.4.1 The objectives 10.4.2 The questionnaire: design and data collection 10.4.3 The findings 10.4.4 Discussion 10.5 Concluding remarks: de se thoughts and speech acts Acknowledgements Appendix Part III: De se thoughts and indexicality 11: The incremental self 11.1 Introduction 11. 2 The cognitive significance of utterances 11.3 The attitudes 11.4 Self-knowledge 11.5 Two puzzling cases 11.6 Lewis and de se belief 12: On the essentiality of thoughts (and reference 12.1 Introduction 12.2 The cognitive base of perceptual thoughts and reference 12.3 Agent-centred behaviour and viewpoints 12.4 Conclusion Acknowledgements 13: Pragmatic indexicals 13.1 Introduction: indexicality—functionalism galore? 13.2 Expressing the self: I and its kin 13.3 The source of the unified account: syntax or pragmatics? 13.3.1 From syntax to pragmatics or the other way round? 13.3.2 Syntactic accounts: two examples 13.3.2.1 Imposters 13.3.2.2 A monstrous mixing of perspectives: exception or norm? 13.3.2.3 Feature blocking? 13.3.3 Self-reference and generic one 13.4 Pragmatic indexicals? 13.4.1 Semanticization of indexicality and its problems 13.4.2 Expression of the self in Default Semantics 13.5 Remnants of indexicality: categories and functions, types and tokens 13.6 Conclusions Acknowledgements References Name index Subject index