Mission

The main purpose of this platform is to create a repertory of the pronominal systems that can be described in a significant subset of world language families. Although the etymology of the term “pronoun” [pro-noun] is the object of debates among linguists, there is a general agreement that it applies to sets of mutually defined phonemic elements whose actual referential contents depends on the contexts in which they appear. By themselves, they are not deprived of abstract meaning since they represent a range of mutual oppositions between self and others, genders, numbers, and grammatical functions. However they acquire actual meaning only when they appear in context. This is why some linguists have proposed to define pronouns as “shifters” since their full referential meaning shifts from context to context. The range of meaningful oppositions they offer varies across languages: the meaning of self and other, for instance, depends on the social categories of otherness that characterize a culture and the corresponding self that can be differentially related to these categories; numbers may include dual. or trial (even quadral) numbers in addition to the distinction between singular and plural; genders may or may not distinguish feminine and masculine, may or may not have neutral or epicene (that is, all-purpose) pronouns. In any language, clusters of pronouns form well-defined morphosyntactic systems under the constraints of pragmatic rules that vary with cultures and social contexts within cultures. These systems constitute matrices, both linguistic and social, through which new members of a society (as infants or immigrants) learn the grammatical categories corresponding to their relative social status within that society. However, as any other aspects of languages, pronominal systems are undergoing changes with time. They are sensitive to the linguistic and social dynamics that impact their contexts and they undergo consequential morphosyntactic and pragmatic changes.

As finite sets of inter-related morphosyntactic elements, pronominal systems can be described independently as self-contained units. Their grammatical and pragmatic functions can be reliably documented both through textual records and methodic observations of spoken interactions. An encyclopedic repertory of pronominal systems will provide a invaluable resource within the rich ecology of the scientific mapping of the contemporary languages of the world such as the comprehensive Glottolog that provides information about the different languages, dialects, and families of the world (https://glottolog.org/langdoc); the Grambank, a monumental database that currently covers 2,467 language varieties, capturing 195 features from comparative linguistic variables (https://grambank.clld.org/languages);  and the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), a large database of structural properties of languages (phonological, grammatical, lexical), now completed (https://wals.info). Those invaluable resources, mostly still in progress, are addressed to specialists but remain challenging for linguists interested in theoretical and comparative approaches to pronominal systems. Relevant information concerning over 2.000 languages is distributed across numerous sections. For example, in the Grambank, personal pronouns of the first person plural that may be inclusive or exclusive have a single morphology in some languages (the distinction being carried by extralinguistic signals) but are distinguished in some other languages through additional phonemes. An exhaustive list of that pronominal category is available independently from the pronominal systems in which they are observed. ASOPS will endeavor to strike a balance between exhaustivity and specificity through focusing on the morphosyntactic and pragmatic profiles of functional pronominal systems in a significant selection of world languages spoken by sizeable populations. 

There also exist some commercial websites offering information about the languages of the world for all sorts of practical purposes such as Ethnologue that claims to cover over 7,000 languages, with a variety of practical purposes from helping to devise language survival policies to marketing beyond the mainstream languages and cultural codes. ASOPS resources are an open resource for students and researchers free of user-charges.  

The ASOPS comprehensive resource online, focusing exclusively on pronominal systems in a user-friendly format, has a precedent from the times when such endeavors could only be produced in print: Pronominal Systems edited by Ursula Wiesemann (1932-2022), and published in 1986 by Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen. The 481 pages (informally reproduced in the typewriter fonts of the time) describe the pronominal systems in a limited number of languages (five from the Americas, nine from Africa, and three from Asia), with the addition of a general introduction by Joseph H. Greenberg, and three essays of general interest concerning pronouns, one of which is a comparative discussion of co-referentiality by the editor. This project originated in the research fostered by the Summer Linguistic Institute, founded in the 1950s by linguists Kenneth L. Pike, the initiator of tagmemics, a functionalist linguistic theory that provided a methodology to investigate languages. The ultimate goal of the annual Summer Linguistic Institutes was to train missionaries of the evangelical faith to master the languages of the exotic populations they endeavored to convert to Christianity, hence the contents of the book edited by Professor Wiesemann. Investigators were asked to follow a questionaire when engaged in producing linguistic and pragmatic accounts of pronominal systems, an essential knowledge when the aims of interacting with populations are to establish trusting relationships in their own languages and to gather reliable information about their notion of proper interpersonal communications.  A review of this important volume, rich of information albeit of a restricted scope, will appear in the RESEARCH section of ASOPS.