Concept: logophoric pronoun

Definition

A logophoric pronoun is an anaphoric form for a 3rd person referent in a complement clause of a verb of speech or a verb of thought that indicates coreference with the subject (the speaker or thinker) of the matrix clause.

Comments

Works on logophoric pronouns often emphasize that the antecedent of the logophoric pronoun is best characterized in semantic terms, but the subject of the verb of speech or of thought is always included, so the narrower definition given here is not problematic.

Croft's comparative concept

logophoric construction (CXN):

logophoric construction (CXN) = the construction in a logophoric system for complement clause constructions that is used when a participant in the complement event is coreferential with the speaker, addressee, or experiencer of an utterance, propositional attitude, knowledge, or commentative event. Example: Donno Sɔ Oumar Anta inyemɛñ waa be gi ‘Oumari said that Anta had seen himi’ is an instance of the logophoric construction – the reference to Oumar in the comple- ment clause uses a special pronoun form inyemɛñ. (Section 18.4.2)

Quotation

von Roncador (1992: 164): "The logophoric form in a dependent clause is taken to mark coreference with a higher subject of a verb of saying... The logophoric form denotes reference to the reported speaker, whereas the regular pronominal form... in reported speech indicates reference to someone else." ❡ Huang (2002: 211): "Logophoricity refers to the phenomenon whereby the ‘perspective’ of an internal protagonist of a sentence or discourse, as opposed to that of the current, external speaker, is being reported by some morphological and/or syntactic means."