On the Preference for Minimization in Referring to Persons: Evidence from Hebrew Conversation (2006)

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Gonen Hacohen, Emanuel A. Schegloff, (2006), “On the preference for minimization in referring to persons: evidence from Hebrew conversation”, Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 1305–1312.

Hebrew is among the languages in which person, number and gender are inflected on the verb in past and future tenses. Although free-standing pronouns are therefore “redundant” in common-sense terms when articulated in such contexts, they do occur, and constitute departures from what conversation analysts propose to be a preference for minimization in person reference. Several exemplars are examined to show one interactional environment in which this usage occurs, and which it can be seen to mark, namely, environments of disalignment. Three upshots of this analysis are explicated.