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Compound pronouns in English
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2020
Abstract
This article explores the syntax of compound pronouns (e.g. someone, nothing). Several theories of these formatives have been proposed previously (e.g. Kishimoto 2000; Blöhdorn 2009), but most of them fail to account for the fact that compound pronouns behave simultaneously like compounds and phrases. By presenting corpus data of some special coordination and modification patterns of compound pronouns, I argue that they should instead be analysed as compound phrases: constructions which are morphologically compounds, but syntactically phrases. Both features play important roles in determining how compound phrases are modified. Moreover, I propose a modification paradigm based on Larson & Marušič (2004), which classifies common postmodifiers at different levels. Finally, I examine the syntactic behaviour of less frequently used nominal compound pronouns such as nobody, which are supplementary to the phrasal ones.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
1I would like to thank the reviewers of ELL for their critical comments. I am also very grateful to the Editor, Prof. Bernd Kortmann, and the journal for publishing this article. Finally, I am thankful for the supervision of Prof. Bas Aarts. All remaining errors are mine.
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