Third person pronoun inflection in German

  In this section we consider a variety of third person pronouns. We do not include a discussion of the first and second person personal pronouns here. The patterns of variation are simply not interesting enough to warrant inclusion. And, unlike the third person pronouns, they are not related to the other inflectional patterns described here. The third person pronouns normally decline as if they were members of the Det_2 determiner class, independently of whether the corresponding determiner is a member of that class. Thus Dieser/pro and Dein/pro decline identically even though Dieser/det and Dein/det belong to different determiner declension classes. Our treatment thus needs to bring pronouns under the Det_2 class, as well as showing that their syntactic status is that of a noun phrase and that their inherent person is third. It will also be useful to provide for the class of pronouns that lack genitive forms. We implement this by pointing the relevant paths at the node UNDEF. This node is not given any definition in the fragment and so these paths also end up with no values defined. This is a standard DATR technique for characterising partial functions. Thus we introduce the nodes Pronoun and Pronoun-g, below:

Pronoun:
    <> == Det_2
    <syn cat> == np
    <syn person> == third.

Pronoun-g:
    <> == Pronoun
    <mor word gen> == UNDEF.

For a canonical pronoun of this type, all we need to do is say (i) that it is an instance of the Pronoun (or Pronoun-g) class, and (ii) that its phonology is the same as that used for the corresponding determiner.

Dein/pro:                        Dieser/pro:
    <> == Pronoun                    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Dein.                   <phn> == Dieser.
Euer/pro:                        Ihr/pro:
    <> == Pronoun                    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Euer.                   <phn> == Ihr.
Jener/pro:                       Mein/pro:
    <> == Pronoun                    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Jener.                  <phn> == Mein.
Sein/pro:                        Unser/pro:
    <> == Pronoun                    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Sein.                   <phn> == Unser.
Kein/pro:                        Welcher/pro:
    <> == Pronoun-g                  <> == Pronoun-g
    <phn> == Kein.                   <phn> == Welcher.
Ein/pro:
    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Ein
    <syn number> == sing.

Given our analysis of the definite article, it is also rather straightforward to provide an account of German relative pronoun forms. What we need to say is that they are pronouns which are, by default, identical to the corresponding definite article forms; that the genitive suffix is -en; and that the dative plural suffix is that standardly found in German pronouns. All this can be said in the five DATR equations that follow:

Der/pro:
    <> == Pronoun
    <phn> == Der
    <mor suffix> == Null
    <mor suffix gen> == "Suffix_en:<phn root form>"
    <mor suffix dat plur> == Pronoun.

Hence:

Der/pro:
    <mor word nom sing masc> = d e r
    <mor word nom sing femn> = d i:
    <mor word nom sing neut> = d a s
    <mor word acc sing masc> = d e n
    <mor word acc sing femn> = d i:
    <mor word acc sing neut> = d a s
    <mor word gen sing masc> = d E s @ n
    <mor word gen sing femn> = d e r @ n
    <mor word gen sing neut> = d E s @ n
    <mor word dat sing masc> = d e m
    <mor word dat sing femn> = d e r
    <mor word dat sing neut> = d e m
    <mor word nom plur masc> = d i:
    <mor word nom plur femn> = d i:
    <mor word nom plur neut> = d i:
    <mor word acc plur masc> = d i:
    <mor word acc plur femn> = d i:
    <mor word acc plur neut> = d i:
    <mor word gen plur masc> = d e r @ n
    <mor word gen plur femn> = d e r @ n
    <mor word gen plur neut> = d e r @ n
    <mor word dat plur masc> = d e n @ n
    <mor word dat plur femn> = d e n @ n
    <mor word dat plur neut> = d e n @ n.

Like Der/pro and the other third person pronoun forms described here, the third person personal pronoun forms are, in essence, instances of the Strong_2 declension, albeit ones that exhibit a significant degree of segmental suppletion. And, as with the relative pronouns, the final -en suffix shows up in the dative plural. Given the way our treatment of the Strong_2 declension works, only four stipulations relating to individual nominative singular segments are needed to capture all the suppletive forms. We have elected to leave all the genitive forms undefined. To the extent that putative genitive forms of German personal pronouns do occur, they are identical to the citation forms of the corresponding possessive determiners. But they do not occur freely and we incline to the view that such occurrences are really possessive determiner tokens, not genitive pronoun tokens.

Er/pro:
    <> == Pronoun-g
    <phn> == Strong_2
    <phn syl1 onset nom sing femn> ==  z
    <phn syl1 peak>                ==  i:
    <phn syl1 peak nom sing masc>  ==  e:
    <phn syl1 peak nom sing neut>  ==  E
    <phn syl1 coda nom sing neut>  ==  z
    <phn root form dat sing femn>  == "Ihr"
    <mor suffix> == Der/pro.

This leads to the following unique paradigm:

Er:
    <mor word nom sing masc> =   e: r
    <mor word nom sing femn> = z i:
    <mor word nom sing neut> =   E  z
    <mor word acc sing masc> =   i: n
    <mor word acc sing femn> = z i:
    <mor word acc sing neut> =   E  z
    <mor word dat sing masc> =   i: m
    <mor word dat sing femn> =   i: r
    <mor word dat sing neut> =   i: m
    <mor word nom plur masc> = z i:
    <mor word nom plur femn> = z i:
    <mor word nom plur neut> = z i:
    <mor word acc plur masc> = z i:
    <mor word acc plur femn> = z i:
    <mor word acc plur neut> = z i:
    <mor word dat plur masc> =   i: n @ n
    <mor word dat plur femn> =   i: n @ n
    <mor word dat plur neut> =   i: n @ n.

 Noncomatose German-speaking readers of Cahill and Gazdar (1997a, 239) will have been puzzled at the appearance of the following claim:

Er:
    <mor word dat sing femn> =   e: r.

However, it is a typo, not a theorem derived from the axioms given in the paper.