Comments on: Potts’ Linguistic Oddities http://semantics-online.org/2007/01/potts-linguistic-oddities A weblog on semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and intersections thereof Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:39:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: pjacobson http://semantics-online.org/2007/01/potts-linguistic-oddities#comment-599 pjacobson Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:28:03 +0000 http://semantics-online.org/2007/01/potts-linguistic-oddities#comment-599 <p>Can't resist pointing out that this is not a true "i-within-i" case (depending, of course, on how one defines that) - but it's no more so than, e.g.: Osama(i) is his(i) father's seventheenth son(i).</p> <p>We all know that that's not a real i-within-i violation because the indices here are just misleading; his is not "bound" within the phrase "his father's son" but is just a free pronoun which can be "accidentally coreferential" to "Osama". Same here, since this presumably was within a context where the referent (I think it was indeed Osama) was already under discussion. So "his" is just a free pronoun here. Polly Jacobson</p> Can’t resist pointing out that this is not a true “i-within-i” case (depending, of course, on how one defines that) - but it’s no more so than, e.g.:
Osama(i) is his(i) father’s seventheenth son(i).

We all know that that’s not a real i-within-i violation because the indices here are just misleading; his is not “bound” within the phrase “his father’s son” but is just a free pronoun which can be “accidentally coreferential” to “Osama”. Same here, since this presumably was within a context where the referent (I think it was indeed Osama) was already under discussion. So “his” is just a free pronoun here.
Polly Jacobson

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