Pronominal System and Reference in Pulaar

Abstract

This paper examines pronominal reference and the long-distance anaphor in Pulaar, a West African language spoken from Senegal to Niger and Cameroon. I am focusing on Toore, a dialect of Pulaar spoken in southern Senegal. I will first give a sketch of the pronominal system of Pulaar with specific focus to the facts or paradigm that need to be accounted for. I will further show the different contexts that license the antecedent-pronoun coreference as well as the referential nuances that exist between different classes of pronoun. In this regard, I posit that the differences noted in antecedent-pronoun coreference can be explained by definiteness and/or specificity along the lines of Schwarz (2009) and Enç (1991).