Talk:Reciprocal pronoun

Hey there, I will be providing structural edits and adding new content to this page focused on reciprocal pronouns. This is part of a course-based activity of a 3rd year syntax course, and I anticipate having the edits complete by the end of December. I would appreciate any and all constructive comments and suggestions about how to improve the overall quality of this article. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by RedinRainboots (talk • contribs) 23:39, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Examples of free reciprocal pronouns

I am confused! In the section dealing with free reciprocal pronouns, it seems that we are confusing two different things : one is a reciprocal pronoun that would bear person, gender and number features, and the other is the reciprocal pronoun that would not require an antecedent (an language in which speakers could say "each other bit" for "They bit each other"). The way it is stated seems that the former property imply the latter. Is there any evidence for this ?

The examples from Hausa do not show that the reciprocal has no antecedent since in this example, the reciprocal occupy object position (Hausa is SVO) and the subject is omitted because Hausa is pro-drop. If this showed that there exists free reciprocal pronoun, then we would have to conclude that Spanish "se vieron si mismo" (SE saw him/themselves) shows an example of "free reflexive" since there is no overt antecedent in the clause.

The references quoted are contradictory regarding this : Evans(2008) states that "the fact that reciprocal free pronouns have their own person/number features means there is no need to seek an antecedent before determining their reference." He gives the same example as in the WP article and refer to Newman's grammar on Hausa.
But what Newman says is "in a complex sentence, the reciprocal can refer only to an antecedent within its clause." Just like English !

So the only thing special about Hausa is that its reciprocal exhibits person features unlike English.

(To be fair, Evans mentions another language "Warluwarra" that also has a "free reciprocal pronoun" but the example he gives involves this time an overt antecedent for the reciprocal !)

So unless one of you guys objects, I will edit the article so that "free recicprocal pronouns" are understood as "pronouns bearing person features, and which are free morphemes (not clitics)", rephrasing the dubious sentence (these pronouns do need an antecedent). At least, it would prevent further confusion. Yuhna (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Non-English examples

Currently the article is much inferior than its corresponding one (Reflexive pronoun). One of the reasons for this is the lack of examples from languages other than English and A. Greek. I know some examples from French ([1]), German ([2]), Japanese & Tuvan ([3]), and Ixil ([4]). But, right now I'm too busy with other Wikiprojects to add these examples to the article, so I just give the websites above in case some else wants to undertake the task.
Omnipedian (talk) 13:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

New references to work with: Group A1 Reciprocal PronounsClaireLA (talk) 05:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

1) Frajzyngier, Zygmunt, & Curl, T. 1999. Reciprocals: forms and functions. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

2) Philip, W. (2000). Adult and Child Understanding of Simple Reciprocal Sentences. Language 76(1). 1-27

3) Dalrymple, M., Kanazawa, M., Kim, Y., McHombo, S. and Peters, S. (1998). Reciprocal Expressions and the Concept of Reciprocity. Linguistics and Philosophy, 21(2) pp. 159-210

4) Heim, I., Lasnik, H. and May, R. Reciprocity and Plurality. Linguistic Inquiry, 22(1). pp. 63-101.

5) Labelle, M. (2008). The French Reflexive and Reciprocal se. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 26 (4) pp. 833-876

6) Lebeaux, D. (1983). A Distributional Difference between Reciprocals and Reflexives. Linguistic Inquiry, 14(4) pp. 723-730

7) Higginbotham, J. (1980). Pronouns and Bound Variables. LInguistic Inquiry, Vol. 11, 4, 679-708.

8) Dalrymple, M., McHombo, S.A., & Peters, S. (1994). Semantic similarities and Syntactic contrasts between Chichewa and English Reciprocals. Linguistic Inquiry, 25(1),145-163.

9) Stuurman, F. (1975). Each Other - One Another: There will always prove to be a difference. English studies, 68(4), 353-360.

10) Badecker, W. (1982). The processing role of structural constraints on interpretation of pronouns and anaphors. Journal of experimental psychology, 28(4), 748-769.

11) Beck, S. (2001). Reciprocals are Definites. Natural Language Semantics, 9(1), 69-138.

12)Evans, N. (2008). Reciprocals and reflexives: Theoretical and typological explorations. Walter de Gruyter.

13) Williams, E. (1991). Reciprocal scope. Linguistic Inquiry,22(1), 159-173.

14)Dougherty, Ray C. (1974). The Syntax and Semantics of Each Other Constructions, Foundations of Language, 12, 1, 1-47.

ClaireLA (talk) 05:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Unnecessary bolding

The introduction and first two sections are unnecessarily bolded, and I do not know how to unbold them. 2601:2C5:C700:6C06:A506:E6B8:209A:BDFE (talk) 00:32, 13 September 2019 (UTC) I am the author of this message, but I forgot to log in. EonLinE (talk) 00:34, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I just undid the last edit from an IP-user. --Tlustulimu (talk) 19:04, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Reciprocal pronoun

It is a pronoun 113.21.79.82 (talk) 16:33, 10 August 2023 (UTC)