In this thesis the structure of the nominal group in Black South African English (BSAfE) is investigated by means of a comparison of data from the Tswana Learner English Corpus (TLEC) and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). Both corpora consist of student essays and are sub-corpora of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The TLEC represents a non-native variety of English, namely BSAfE, while LOCNESS represents native English from the United States and the United Kingdom. In the existing literature there are observations about and examples of (non-standard) characterizing features of BSAfE pertaining to nouns, determiners and quantifiers (e.g. Gough 1996), but until now, no in-depth study of the grammar of the nominal group in BSAfE has been undertaken. This study is an attempt to fill that gap. I present a description of the grammatical features of BSAfE observed in the corpus data in terms of linguistic functions and without assuming that they are errors or evidence of deficiencies. Though the approach is comparative (in the sense that a control corpus is used), it is primarily descriptive and non-normative, and as such, function-based. This study is conducted within the theoretical framework of functional linguistics, drawing on systemic functional linguistics as well as other functional and cognitive approaches to language. The specifying functions that the nominal group and its elements may fulfill form the basis of the descriptive framework. These functions are (1) the type-specifying function of the noun, (2) the (referent-)specifying function of the determiner, (3) quantification and (4) quality specification by modifiers and complements. The type-specifying function of the noun is particularly relevant in Chapter 4, which deals with the grammatical patterns of the noun people, although it also informs analyses in Chapters 5 and 6 which deal with determiners and quantification respectively. Quality specification is especially relevant in the description of the grammatical patterns of the noun people. The noun people is the most frequent noun in each of the corpora, but is at the same time a positive keyword in the TLEC, which means that it occurs much more frequently in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. Analysis of the full corpus concordances of this noun provides much evidence of anti-deletion in BSAfE (as first postulated by Mesthrie, 2006) and also sheds some light on left dislocation patterns involving the noun people (cf. Mesthrie, 1997). This analysis also reveals unique uses of the definite article and certain quantifying constructions in the TLEC data, which are investigated in the next two analysis chapters. A comparison of concordance samples of the articles indicates that the definite/indefinite distinction is made in both corpora and that there is not enough corpus evidence to postulate that there is a different system underlying the choice of article in BSAfE, such as a system based principally on the specific/non-specific distinction, as postulated by Platt, Weber and Ho (1984) for New Englishes in general. Analysis of the concordances of demonstrative and possessive determiners indicate that these determiners are used proportionally more frequently in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. Concordances of the words that are normally classified as quantifiers indicate that there are many more partitive-of quantifying constructions in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. The words some and most are positive keywords in the TLEC. After analyses of their concordances, it is concluded that their relative frequency can be attributed to the fact that some is often used merely as an indefinite marker and that most is often used as a synonym for many. The study shows that BSAfE largely shares its general grammar of the nominal group with other (including native) varieties of English, but at a finer level of analysis, some characteristic constructions and uses are detected. The corpus data indicate that the unique constructions in the TLEC data are mostly functionally motivated. These constructions represent conventionalized innovations in the sense used by Van Rooy (2010), rather than mere language learning errors. / Thesis (PhD (Linguistics and Literary Theory))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

In this thesis the structure of the nominal group in Black South African English (BSAfE) is investigated by means of a comparison of data from the Tswana Learner English Corpus (TLEC) and the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). Both corpora consist of student essays and are sub-corpora of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The TLEC represents a non-native variety of English, namely BSAfE, while LOCNESS represents native English from the United States and the United Kingdom. In the existing literature there are observations about and examples of (non-standard) characterizing features of BSAfE pertaining to nouns, determiners and quantifiers (e.g. Gough 1996), but until now, no in-depth study of the grammar of the nominal group in BSAfE has been undertaken. This study is an attempt to fill that gap. I present a description of the grammatical features of BSAfE observed in the corpus data in terms of linguistic functions and without assuming that they are errors or evidence of deficiencies. Though the approach is comparative (in the sense that a control corpus is used), it is primarily descriptive and non-normative, and as such, function-based. This study is conducted within the theoretical framework of functional linguistics, drawing on systemic functional linguistics as well as other functional and cognitive approaches to language. The specifying functions that the nominal group and its elements may fulfill form the basis of the descriptive framework. These functions are (1) the type-specifying function of the noun, (2) the (referent-)specifying function of the determiner, (3) quantification and (4) quality specification by modifiers and complements. The type-specifying function of the noun is particularly relevant in Chapter 4, which deals with the grammatical patterns of the noun people, although it also informs analyses in Chapters 5 and 6 which deal with determiners and quantification respectively. Quality specification is especially relevant in the description of the grammatical patterns of the noun people. The noun people is the most frequent noun in each of the corpora, but is at the same time a positive keyword in the TLEC, which means that it occurs much more frequently in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. Analysis of the full corpus concordances of this noun provides much evidence of anti-deletion in BSAfE (as first postulated by Mesthrie, 2006) and also sheds some light on left dislocation patterns involving the noun people (cf. Mesthrie, 1997). This analysis also reveals unique uses of the definite article and certain quantifying constructions in the TLEC data, which are investigated in the next two analysis chapters. A comparison of concordance samples of the articles indicates that the definite/indefinite distinction is made in both corpora and that there is not enough corpus evidence to postulate that there is a different system underlying the choice of article in BSAfE, such as a system based principally on the specific/non-specific distinction, as postulated by Platt, Weber and Ho (1984) for New Englishes in general. Analysis of the concordances of demonstrative and possessive determiners indicate that these determiners are used proportionally more frequently in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. Concordances of the words that are normally classified as quantifiers indicate that there are many more partitive-of quantifying constructions in the TLEC than in LOCNESS. The words some and most are positive keywords in the TLEC. After analyses of their concordances, it is concluded that their relative frequency can be attributed to the fact that some is often used merely as an indefinite marker and that most is often used as a synonym for many. The study shows that BSAfE largely shares its general grammar of the nominal group with other (including native) varieties of English, but at a finer level of analysis, some characteristic constructions and uses are detected. The corpus data indicate that the unique constructions in the TLEC data are mostly functionally motivated. These constructions represent conventionalized innovations in the sense used by Van Rooy (2010), rather than mere language learning errors. / Thesis (PhD (Linguistics and Literary Theory))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Le travail de cette thèse se situe dans le domaine de la sémantique nominale et porte sur un échantillon de noms dénotant les humains (NH) pendant les différentes phases de vie : bébé, enfant, adolescent, adulte, vieillard (N-[âge]). Elle poursuit un triple objectif. D’abord, il s’agit d’offrir une description linguistique fine d’un ensemble de N-[âge] dont le fonctionnement est resté méconnu jusqu’à présent. En démontrant leur caractère hybride – les N-[âge] dénotent à la fois des propriétés référentiellement essentielles et intrinsèquement transitoires – nous mettons en évidence des paramètres inédits pour la description des NH en général. Enfin, notre thèse explore la possibilité d’un élargissement notionnel du domaine aspectuel vers la sémantique nominale en interrogeant la notion de phase et en démontrant que l’ensemble des N-[âge] bénéficie d’une structure phasale. / This thesis research lies in the field of nominal semantics and focuses on a sample of nouns denoting humans (HN) during different stages of life: infant, child, teenager, adult, elderly (N-[age]). It is three fold. First, this works aims at offering a linguistic description of a set of N-[age] whose operation has remained unknown until now. Demonstrating their hybrid nature - N-[age] denote both referentially essential and intrinsically transient properties - we provide novel parameters for the description of HN in general. Finally, this thesis explores the possibility of notional extension of the aspectual domain to nominal semantics by questioning the concept of phase and by demonstrating that all N-[age] have a phasal structure.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:25:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3547.pdf: 2139633 bytes, checksum: f475e62efc91a89ea44917a0eb9b20f1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-12-17 / In the past few years, several studies based on constructional morphology to describe the mechanisms of construction of deverbal nouns, that is, nouns derived from verbs, using a synchronic perspective were carried out. The interest in this topic comes from the productivity of the construction mechanism of this type of noun. The impact in the Portuguese language, especially on its formal use, is not irrelevant. There aren't studies showing the variations of these mechanisms in Brazilian Portuguese (PB), much less, a diachronic perspective of him. We believe the current mechanisms be very similar with from XVI, XVII e VXIII. The suffix productivity and formation process can been suffering some kind of changing to specific words. The project Historical Dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese (DHPB) of centuries from XVI through XVIII, sponsored by the Programa Institutos do Milênio, and the construction of a corpus collected for this project, are, at the same time, a challenge and an opportunity to deepen the knowledge about this aspect of the Portuguese language. The analysis of this corpus gives us an opportunity to observe how these mechanisms evolved on the Portuguese language. However, there aren't yet tools that automate this type of research, enabling the morphologists to acquire this kind of data efficiently. The objective of this research was, first of all, to describe the different mechanisms of deverbal nouns construction in PB according to the SILEX morphological construction model (cf. Corbin 1987, 1991, 1997, Correia 1999, Rio-Torto (org.) 2004 and Rodrigues 2006). A second objective was the development of a computational system, named EXTRADEV, which allows easy access to the following data: (a) deverbal nouns (current and historic) with various morphological structures; and (b) graphical variants of nominal action (historic), to allow easier information retrieval. The methodology used on the construction of this system is grounded on: (i) description of deverbal nouns and computational rule‟s building about these; (ii) a pilot study of the fifty most frequent verbs of the DHPB project, extracted using UNITEX, and on the analysis of the graphical variations of these verbs; (iii) the knowledge of the Python programming language and regular expressions; and (iv) the use of the resources constructed for the DHPB project, such as a system of generation of graphical variants, SIACONF. We found 1,742,663 action deverbal instances and 15,633 distinct forms of the same without change of spelling. This number more variants extracted in the second module EXTRADEV, totalling 22,442 occurrences of deverbal history (6,809 variants and 15,633 deverbal no change in spelling). We followed some criteria analysis: frequency data, analysis about deverbal form based on in etymoly and history dictionaries and the last criteria was based on the observation of the final list of historical deverbal. With this study, we aim to increase the knowledge of the diachronic variations of deverbal nouns and to motivate the joint linguistics and computer science contribution, particularly the one made by the natural language processing area, to empower future studies about the Portuguese language. / Nos últimos anos, têm-se desenvolvido trabalhos em morfologia construcional que visam à descrição dos mecanismos de construção de nomes deverbais, isto é, nomes derivados de verbos, numa perspectiva sincrônica. As razões para esse interesse podem encontrar-se na produtividade dos mecanismos de construção deste tipo de nomes, cujo impacto no uso do português, sobretudo em contextos formais de uso, não é irrelevante. Faltam, no entanto, estudos que nos permitam conhecer, por um lado, o Português do Brasil (PB) em nível destes mecanismos e, por outro, ter uma perspectiva diacrônica deles. Acreditamos que os mecanismos de construção atuais para o PB sejam iguais aos dos séculos XVI, XVII e XVIII, podendo existir alterações relacionadas aos sufixos mais produtivos e à mudança dos processos de construção mais produtivos para determinadas palavras. A realização do projeto Dicionário Histórico do Português do Brasil (DHPB) dos séculos XVI a XVIII, financiado pelo Programa Institutos do Milênio, associada à construção do corpus coligido para esse efeito constituem ao mesmo tempo um desafio e uma oportunidade para o aprofundamento do conhecimento sobre este aspecto da língua portuguesa. Por um lado, a análise do corpus dános a oportunidade de verificar como se processou a evolução destes mecanismos de construção no português. Porém (e este é o desafio), não existem ainda ferramentas para realizar tais pesquisas de forma (semi-) automática, que permitam aos morfologistas obter os dados necessários para o seu trabalho com agilidade e eficiência. O objetivo desta pesquisa de mestrado foi, em primeiro lugar, descrever os diferentes mecanismos de construção de nomes deverbais em PB de acordo com o modelo de morfologia construcional SILEX (cf. Corbin 1987, 1991, 1997, Correia 1999, Rio-Torto (org.) 2004 e Rodrigues 2006) e, em segundo, desenvolver um sistema computacional denominado EXTRADEV que permitiu um acesso fácil aos seguintes dados: (a) nomes deverbais de ação históricos com as mais diversas estruturas morfológicas; e (b) variantes gráficas desses nomes deverbais (históricos), que facilitem o trabalho de recuperação de informação relativa aos mesmos. A metodologia utilizada para a construção deste sistema se embasa: (i) na descrição dos deverbais e na contrução de regras; (ii) em um estudo piloto dos cinquenta verbos mais frequentes do corpus do projeto DHPB, extraídos por meio da ferramenta UNITEX e na análise das variantes gráficas destes verbos; (iii) no conhecimento da linguagem de programação Python e expressões regulares; e (iv) no uso de recursos criados no projeto DHPB, como o sistema de geração de variantes gráficas SIACONF. Foram encontrados 1.742.663 ocorrências de deverbais de ação e 15.633 formas distintas dos mesmos sem variação de grafia. Este número, mais as variantes extraídas no segundo módulo do EXTRADEV, somam um total de 22.442 ocorrências de deverbais históricos, sendo eles 6.809 variantes e 15.633 deverbais sem variação de grafia. Seguimos os seguintes critérios de análise: frequência, análise da estrutura morfológica com auxílio de dicionários históricos e etimológicos, e observação da lista final de deverbais históricos. Com este trabalho pretendemos contribuir para um melhor conhecimento da variação diacrônica na construção de nomes deverbais através dos dados que foram encontrados, mas, sobretudo, motivar a aliança entre linguística e a ciência da computação, particularmente o processamento de língua natural, de modo a potencializar estudos futuros sobre a língua portuguesa.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-11-01T13:00:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 marcoantoniofilgueirassantosfilho.pdf: 300723 bytes, checksum: c6c7714812c64456520dda2c90cd56ac (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-12-15T13:23:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 marcoantoniofilgueirassantosfilho.pdf: 300723 bytes, checksum: c6c7714812c64456520dda2c90cd56ac (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-15T13:23:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 marcoantoniofilgueirassantosfilho.pdf: 300723 bytes, checksum: c6c7714812c64456520dda2c90cd56ac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-09-14 / Nesse texto, mostraremos a importância da Lingüística Histórica para a formação do professor de língua portuguesa. Veremos que os fenômenos lingüísticos são muitas vezes explicáveis à luz das ferramentas oferecidas por esse segmento da Lingüística. Traçaremos um breve resumo do percurso da Filologia Românica até o início do século XX. Explicaremos como ocorre a flexão de número dos nomes em Português, confrontando o que é explicado nos livros didáticos, nas Gramáticas Tradicionais e na literatura lingüística com o que tem a oferecer de contribuição a Lingüística Diacrônica. Utilizaremos exemplos, além da flexão de número, em que a diacronia oferece explicações plenas e satisfatórias. A motivação para esta dissertação parte da observação da pouca importância que tem sido dada aos estudos de diacronia da Língua Portuguesa nos cursos de graduação em Letras. Defendemos que o conhecimento dessas ferramentas pode ajudar muito no ensino da Gramática Tradicional, de maneira a torná-la realmente reflexiva, como tanto queremos os lingüistas. A Gramática Tradicional não deve deixar de ser estudada, mas seu ensino deve ser reinventado. Deixar de estudá-la, hoje, no contexto em que nos inserimos, seria um grande crime para com os nossos alunos, pois muitos concursos que garantem um emprego público, portanto estável, cobram em seus exames de seleção questões relacionadas ao conhecimento normativo dessa Gramática. Os vestibulares de fato não o fazem, mas os objetivos de nossos alunos não se limitam apenas a tais exames, pois muitos não podem esperar quatro anos (no mínimo) para buscar um emprego e enxergam nos concursos para empregos públicos sua única chance de crescimento e desenvolvimento profissional e financeiro, e – por conseqüência – social. Defendemos a valorização da Lingüística Histórica por esta ter sido deixada à margem, não por achá-la mais importante que as outras “Lingüísticas”, pois acreditamos que a reinvenção do ensino da Gramática Tradicional depende de um trabalho conjunto de todas as áreas dos estudos em lingüística. Até por que, se há um fenômeno na humanidade que é um continuum, este fenômeno, naturalmente, é a língua. / In this text, we will show the importance of the Historical Linguistics for Portuguese teachers’ formation. We will see that the linguistics phenomena are explained according to the tools offered by the Linguistics segment. We will trace a summary of the Romance Philology to the beginning of the 20th century. We will explain how plural of nouns are explained in Portuguese, confronting to what is explained in textbooks, in Traditional Grammars and in the linguistics literature to what it can be offered to the Diachronic Linguistics. We will use examples, besides the plurals, in which the diachronic offers full and satisfactory explanations. The motivation for this dissertation is related to the very little importance that has been given to the Portuguese language studies of diachronic in Liberal Arts graduation. We support that the knowledge of those tools can help the teaching of the Traditional Grammar, turning it into more reflexive. That is the way the linguists want. The Traditional Grammar studies should not be put aside, but its teaching should be reinvented. To abstrain from studying it today, in the context that we introduced, it would be terrible to our students, because many public exams that guarantee a job, a stable one, require subjects related to the normative knowledge of that Grammar. In fact the national exams don't do that, but our students' objectives are not just limited to such exams, because many of them cannot wait for four years (at least) to look for a job. Many students consider the public exams the only way to have a professional growth and a financial development, and - consequently - social. We support the valorization of the Historical Linguistics because it was put aside, not for finding it more important than the other " Linguistics ", but for believing that the rediscovery of the Traditional Grammar teaching depends on a united work of all areas in the linguistics studies.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how Swedes writing in English construct number concord with collective nouns. This was done by studying three primary corpora: the Swedish English Newspaper Corpus (SWENC) and the press sections of Frown (American English) and F-LOB (British English). The findings were compared with the results in the Blogs in English by Swedes Corpus (BESC), Frown (American English) and F-LOB (British English). The SWENC contains texts from three online newspapers and one corporate newsletter in English, all of which are written by Swedes. The BESC contains texts from Swedes blogging in English. Frown and F-LOB contain texts from fifteen text genres in the 1990s. The results in the SWENC are discussed and compared with the press sections of F-LOB and Frown. The results are also compared with the BESC, Frown and F-LOB in order to see whether there is regional and stylistic variation. The results show that Swedes prefer singular verbal concord with collective nouns even though plural forms occur which seem to be closer to F-LOB Press (BrE) than Frown Press (AmE). In contrast, the SWENC differs from the press sections of Frown and F-LOB in constructing pronominal number. This difference could be influenced by Swedish usage which allows both singular and plural pronominal number with collective nouns. The study also shows that plural forms of political parties that seem to constitute collective units show variation in Sweden whereas such nouns take only plural concord in both American and British English.

This study investigates strategies used when translating compound nouns from German to Swedish. The source text translated and used for the analysis stems from the travel book Couchsurfing im Iran. Meine Reise hinter verschlossene Türen by Stephan Orth (2015). The focus of the study is twofold: 1) examining established compounds and 2) ad hoc compounds. The quantitative part of the analysis is based on Fleischer/Barz’ (2007) morphological classification of compound nouns and Vinay/Darbelnet’s (1995/2004) translation procedures, and also forms the basis for the qualitative analysis. The quantitative analysis shows that while nearly 60% of the established compound nouns were translated literally, quite a large number were rendered using other strategies, mainly paraphrases with nominal phrases. The translations of the ad hoc compounds showed the reverse pattern: only 36% were translated literally, while nearly 60% were translated with nominal phrases. The qualitative analysis suggests four major explanations for these shifts. The first is morphological limitation, where the Swedish language in some instances does not allow a certain word to be used as a compound modifier. The second is language preference, where a tendency towards a more verbal paraphrase in Swedish was noticed. The third is based on Toury’s law of growing standardization, which states that translations tend to be more explicit, in this case preferring longer and more transparent paraphrases to denser compounds. The fourth explanation is the lexical gap where ad hoc compounds proved to be particularly difficult to translate when one of their units did not have a direct counterpart in Swedish.

La présente thèse est consacrée à l’étude de la catégorie des noms du genre commun dans deux langues slaves : le russe et l'ukrainien. Les noms de cette catégorie ont deux particularités. Premièrement, la plupart d’entre eux sont expressifs et font partie des axiologiques. Nous montrons que leur expressivité peut dépendre de leur contenu phonétique et morphologique ainsi que des constructions syntaxiques dans lesquelles ces noms sont employés. Deuxièmement, les noms de cette catégorie présentent des particularités morphosyntaxiques : ils peuvent appeler l’accord syntaxique ainsi que l’accord sémantique. Nous montrons que le choix du genre de l’accord non seulement satisfait au besoin de référence, mais a également une fonction pragmatique. / SummaryThe present work deals with the category of common gender in two Slavic languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The nouns of this category have two major peculiarities. Firstly, most of them are expressive and axiological nouns. We reveal that the expressivity of this nouns depends on their phonetical and morphological content and on the type of syntactical constructions in which this nouns occur. Secondly, the nouns of this category present morphosyntactical peculiarities: the agreement with this nouns can be semantical and grammatical. We reveal that the choice of the gender of agreement depends not only on semantic and reference, it has also a pragmatic function.

The aim of this study is to analyse the problems met when translating culture-specific items in a text about Australian and New Zealand colonial and post-colonial children’s literature into Swedish. The analysis quantifies and describes the different translation procedures used, and contrasts different strategies when there was more than one possible choice. It also outlines the reasons for the choices made when creating a text adapted for a Swedish audience. The translation methods applied are dynamic equivalence and domestication. As for the categorization of the material, the theories of Newmark (1988) have primarily been followed. The study shows that the frequency of each translation procedure depends on the type of culture-specific item, and the chosen translation method. It is argued that transference is the most commonly used procedure, and recognized translations are not as frequent as could have been expected with the choice of domestication. This is the case for proper nouns and references to literary works, where transference and dynamic equivalence has been given priority over domestication whenever the factual content was considered to be the most important aspect to follow. As for culture-specific items of the category social culture, neutralisation is the most commonly used procedure. In such cases the domestication method was more influential than dynamic equivalence as the consideration of ethics as well as avoidance of cultural taboos in the target culture were considered to be more important than content.

Cette thèse porte sur les particularités de la reprise anaphorique des pronoms indéfinis et des noms épicènes qui ont pour référents des individus humains indéfinis. Nous allons essayer de distinguer les différents facteurs (morphosyntaxiques, sémantiques et pragmatiques), qui influent sur le choix du pronom anaphorique. Ce choix ne sera pas toujours objectif. Il ne sera pas obligatoirement conforme aux règles d’accord syntaxique, puisqu’il dépendra de la décision de l’énonciateur concernant la pertinence du sexe ou du nombre d’individus faisant l’objet du discours. Ainsi, il est prouvé que le pronom personnel de la troisième personne du pluriel they est le meilleur candidat que ce soit dans les contextes où l’énonciateur et ses co-énonciateurs ignorent le sexe et/ou le nombre des personnes évoquées, dans les contextes génériques ou bien dans les contextes où l’énonciateur ne souhaite pas être précis sur l’identité de la personne dont il ou elle parle. Les pronoms personnels de la troisième personne du singulier he / she ne sont pas préférés dans ces contextes puisqu’ils rendent le référent plus défini qu’il l’est dans le discours en ajoutant des propriétés telles que le sexe et le nombre. Le choix que l’on fait pour se référer ou se coréférer sous-entend la prise d’un point de vue vis-à-vis des référents ou vis-à-vis des interlocuteurs. L’étude de plusieurs corpus, écrits comme oraux (BNC, COCA, SOAP, CHILDES, le corpus littéraire, le corpus de presse et d’émissions de télévision), nous a dévoilé que les locuteurs anglophones savent en quelque sorte manipuler le système pronominal conventionnel afin de rendre explicite ou de mettre en avant certains éléments ou bien d’en sous-spécifier ou d’en taire d’autres. / This dissertation investigates the peculiarities of pronominal reference to indefinite pronouns and epicene nouns that refer to indefinite human beings. It brings to light morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors which influence the choice of the anaphoric pronoun. This choice is not always objective, and does not necessarily match the rules of syntactic agreement. It tends to depend on the speaker’s decisions about the relevance of the sex and/or the number of individuals that are the topic of discussion. Thus, the third person plural pronoun they proves to be the best candidate when the referent’s sex and/or number is unknown by both the speaker and the hearer, as well as in generic contexts or when the speaker wishes to remain vague about the identity of the person he or she is referring to. The third person singular pronouns he / she do not fit in these contexts, since they render the referent more definite than it actually is in the discourse by adding such properties as sex and number. The choices that we make when referring or coreferring reveal our attitudes towards either referents or addressees. The study of both written and oral corpora (BNC, COCA, SOAP, CHILDES, literary, press and talk show corpora) reveals how English speakers are able to manipulate the conventional pronominal system so as to render explicit or highlight certain attributes and to underspecify others.