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On empathic and logophoric binding (Oshima., 2007)

Citation

Oshima, D. Y. (2007). On empathic and logophoric binding. Research on language and computation, 5(1), 19-35.

My thoughts

Summary

• It is well known that the notions of “logophoricity” and “point of view” are crucial factors for the licensing of certain anaphoric expressions
• These terms all happened to have overlapping definitions
• but empathy and logophoric perspectives should be separated, and both factors play important roles in binding
• there are three types of linguitics point of view
  • empathy
  • logophoricity
  • spatio-temporal = deicitc perspective

Emapthy and logophoricty

• The notion of logophoricity was first pointed out, in the 70’s, on data from some African languages, which have a special kind of pronoun—logophoric pronouns—that appears in indirect discourse environments and exclusively refers to the agent of reported speech or thought. In certain languages (e.g., Japanese and Icelandic), so-called long-distance reflexives carry the same function (see Huang, 2000 for an overview).
• certain logophors have an extended use to represent the speaker’s point of view or empathy which is the particiaptns of the described event
• the logophoric and empathic uses of referential expressions have been often confounded and grouped together
• however, there are at least two authors who makes the claim to seperate logophroticty and empathy, Kuno 1978 and Culy 1994, 1997

What is empathy?

Kuno (1987) defines the notion of empathy as follows: (1) Empathy: Empathy is the speaker’s identification, which may vary in degree, with a person/thing that participates in the event or state that he describes in a sentence.

Degree of Empathy: The degree of the speaker’s empathy with x, E(x), ranges from 0 to 1, with E(x) = 1 signifying his total identification with x, and E(x)= 0 a total lack of identification. (Kuno, 1987, p. 206)

• example: japanese verb yaru and kureru
  • yaru is used when the action is looked at from the point of view of the referent of the subject or the neutral (objective) point of view
  • kureru is used when the event is described from the point of view of the referent of the dative object

• empathy locus = the particiapnt that receivers the highest degree of empathy within a clause

• Topic Empathy Hierarchy (Kuno 1987:210):
  • Given an event or state involving A and B such that A is coreferential with the topic of the present discourse and B is not, it is easier for the speaker to empathize with A thank with B
• zibun has at least three distinct uses: reflexive, logophoric, and empathic (perspectival)
  • compatibility with first personpronouns
  • possibility of non-subject/discrouse binding
  • de se interprtion

• empathy relation: is the relative degree to which entities are empathized with by the speaker
  • should be treated as a contextually provided partially order set of individuals