SYNTACTIC REANALYSIS OF PRONOUNS AS DEMONSTRATIVES: A CASE OF DEGRAMMATICALIZATION

Abstract

This paper argues that Old Japanese (8th century) had a distinction between strong and deficient pronouns, comparable to the distinction found in Romance languages as described in detail by Cardinaletti and Starke (1999). I propose that the loss of the deficient pronouns, which occurred in Early Middle Japanese, is best analyzed as loss of the functional category AgrP within the extended nominal projection. Due to the loss of AgrP, strong pronouns, in particular first person ware, underwent a shift from first person to second person and acquired the derogatory sense found in Late Middle Japanese. I argue that this change can be formally analyzed as a categorial reanalysis of personal pronouns as demonstratives, and that it involves what Norde (2006, 2009) defines as “degrammaticalization.”