Out of Africa: Logophoric pronouns and reported discourse in Finnish and High Latvian dialects
Out of Africa: Logophoric pronouns and reported discourse in Finnish and High Latvian dialects

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I will discuss properties of logophoric constructions and their place within a typology of reported speech. The data from Finnish and Latvian dialects prove that the phenomenon is not restricted to Africa and support the view expressed by Culy (1994; 1997) and others that logophoric pronouns, in contrast to long-distance reflexives, are rooted in reported discourse and cannot be explained in syntactic terms. Bhat’s (2004) claim that their primary function is to distinguish the participants of a reported speech act from the actual speaker and addressee leads to the opposition of logophoric constructions to direct speech, rather than indirect speech, and to a functional explanation of the distribution of types of reported discourse.

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