-
1. Introduction
- The MIT Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 Introduction Normally, in order to refer to himself or herself, a speaker uses 1st person singular pronominal forms (in English, I, me, my, mine, myself ). To refer to a (single) addressee, a speaker uses 2nd person singular pronominal forms (in English, you, your, yours, yourself ). But this is not always the case. For instance, in an interview, newscaster Dan Rather referred to himself with the phrase italicized in (1). (1) At the time, CBS News and this reporter fully believed the documents were genuine. (transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0709/20/lkl.01.html) In a famous 1962 news conference, then future president of the United States Richard M. Nixon referred to himself with the italicized form in (2a); and in 2009, then Senate majority leader Harry Reid produced (2b). (2) a. You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.1 (en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon) b. “Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems,” Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference. (tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/reid-lieberman-is-the-leastof -my-problems.php) And there are many instances of English speakers referring to themselves as yours truly.2 (3) a. . . . though yours truly has tried to present his readers with a diverse variety of viewpoints, some very different from his. (www.dogandponny.org/2006/12/invitation-to-contributors.html) b. Yours truly spent his formative years riding around in the back of a ’65 Fairlane Ranch Wagon. (www.mustangandfords.com/featuredvehicles/ . . . /index.html) 2 Chapter 1 Other English examples of the general phenomena of interest here include the italicizedformsin(4).(ThankstoAnnaSzabolcsiforpointingoutexample(4f ).) (4) a. Your humble servant finds the time before our next encounter very long. b. This reviewer was unable to strictly follow the logic of the submission. c. James Patterson is represented, as is Danielle Steel, as is your faithful correspondent. (From Best American Short Stories 2007, edited by Stephen King) d. (Your) Daddy is going to get you an ice-cream cone. e. A chandelier overhead scattered shards of red, yellow and blue refracted light around the bathroom as this guest literally soaked in the luxury. (New York Daily News, 23 November 2007, 14) f. For this middle-class citizen who lives within my means, . . . , the angry posturing of law makers does nothing to appease my sickness at this foreseeable calamity. (New York Times, 24 September 2008, 26) g. Can the general/the judge tell this committee why so many cases have yet to be processed? h. Would the baroness like more wine? The forms in (4a–f ), on their usage of interest here, are like those in (1)–(3) in that they denote the speaker. Those in (4g,h) differ in denoting the addressee. Hereafter, we refer to these forms as imposters. What follows lends substance to the idea implicit in this terminology that the phenomenon involves forms whose actual analysis is distinct from that suggested by their appearance. More precisely, we will propose that imposters have a more complex syntactic structure than any regular DPs they may be homophonous with. Sothegoalofthisstudyistoconsiderthegrammaticalstatusofimposters,that is, of usages like this reporter and Nixon in (1) and (2) as well as yours truly and the forms in (4). At first glance, each imposter appears to be a 3rd person DP, grammatically no different from other 3rd person DPs that do not denote speaker or hearer. Most of them have the syntactic form of a standard 3rd person DP(e.g., this reporter, your faithful servant, the general). But there are imposter expressions such as yours truly and French bibi (see (6c)), both of which denote the speaker, whose forms are distinct from those of ordinary 3rd person DPs. Critically, even though they denote the speaker or addressee, all English imposters determine 3rd person verbal agreement,3 as noted by Stirling and Huddleston (2002, 1464); see (5). (We return to the issue of plural and coordinated imposters in chapters 3 and 9.) [35.168.113.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:25 GMT) Introduction 3 (5) a. This reporter is/*am signing off from Madrid, Spain. b. Nixon is/*am not going to resign. c. Yours truly is/*am unhappy. d. Yours truly runs/*run in the morning. e. Is/*Are Madam not feeling well? f. Is/*Are the general going to dine in his suite? A special case of the verbal agreement constraint was made explicit by Curme (1931, 14): “Instead of we some authors employ here a noun with the...