Pronominal vs. anaphoric pro in Kannada

Abstract

Kannada licenses a pronominal pro and an anaphor pro in root and subordinate clauses. In the subordinate clauses, pro’s person feature largely determines its pronominal/anaphoric status. Accordingly, there are four types of pro, each with a distinct referential property. The 1st and 2nd person pros allow pronominal and anaphoric interpretations. In their pronominal reference, they refer to the speaker and the listener, respectively. In their anaphoric reference, they refer to the matrix subject and the object, respectively, irrespective of the latter’s person feature, which results in a feature mismatch between pro and its antecedent. The 3rd person pro allows only pronominal interpretation. Kannada quotative verbs report direct speech. The null subjects in the embedded clauses of reported speech are basically pronominal because they are ‘copies’ of the pronominal subjects in direct speech. Accordingly, the embedded verbal inflection corresponds to inflection in direct speech, which results in a feature clash between pro and its antecedent. The fourth type, a null anaphor, occurs in non-argument endu-clauses. It is bound by an NP in the matrix with which it shares its F-features. It is the semantic relation between the non-argument and main clauses that explains the presence of an anaphoric pro here.