Pronominal Reference to Proper Names in Compounds

Abstract

Pronominal reference to the non-head element of a compound (e.g., „truck“ in “truck driver”) has previously been reported to be ungrammatical. In this paper, we hypothesize that the grammatical status of proper names may make them more acceptable as a non-head referent to a pronoun. However, our experimental results fail to provide support for any ban on pronoun reference to non-heads, regardless of whether they are proper names or common nouns.