000K utf8 1100 2021$c2021-11-09 1500 eng 2050 urn:nbn:de:hbz:465-20240627-095022-1 2051 10.1515/zaa-2021-2023 3000 Hernández, Nuria 4000 Personal Pronouns: Variation and Ambiguity [Hernández, Nuria] 4209 Personal pronouns are vague and highly versatile. In addition to their canonical functions as deictics and anaphors, they can be used to express meanings that go beyond morphosyntactic mapping and feature matching. Potential ambiguity is minimised by a variety of syntactic and extra-syntactic means, including the conversational context. Disambiguation through categorical morphological distinctions is rarely needed. Different non-canonical uses that may theoretically result in ambiguous utterances are presented to illustrate how speakers embrace variable pronoun choice that eludes prescriptive isomorphism, for the sake of expressivity and pragmatic meaning. An ‘Avoid Ambiguity’ principle is suggested for conversation that takes account of the benefits of linguistic variability, vagueness, and the situatedness of natural talk. 4950 https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2021-2023$xR$3Volltext$534 4950 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:465-20240627-095022-1$xR$3Volltext$534 4961 https://duepublico2.uni-due.de/receive/duepublico_mods_00077199 5051 400 5550 ambiguity 5550 corpus linguistics 5550 fuzziness 5550 language variation 5550 personal pronouns 5550 polysemy 5550 pronoun pragmatics 5550 situated meaning 5550 vagueness 5550 “Avoid Ambiguity” principle