“We are 9 degrees and sunny”: the use of personal pronouns with weather predicates

This squib discusses a construction heard during weather reports on CBC Radio One in Manitoba whereby personal pronouns appear as the subjects of weather predicates. We show that the use of we/you in statements like we are minus 15 degrees and Brandon, you are sunny is unlike other non-prototypical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian journal of linguistics 2024-06, Vol.69 (2), p.267-275
Main Authors: Ghomeshi, Jila, Duncan, Mercedes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Canadian English
Deixis
Dialects
Expletives
Predicate
Pronouns
Rain
Short/En bref
Weather
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Summary:This squib discusses a construction heard during weather reports on CBC Radio One in Manitoba whereby personal pronouns appear as the subjects of weather predicates. We show that the use of we/you in statements like we are minus 15 degrees and Brandon, you are sunny is unlike other non-prototypical uses for personal pronouns that have been noted in the literature and argue they index place rather than person. We note that the deictic coordinates of the utterance that are spelled out by these pronouns are necessary for a felicitous interpretation of weather statements, even though they are typically implicit. This implicit deixis, in turn, sheds light on a long-standing claim that weather-it, in contrast to a true expletive, is ‘quasi-argumental’ (Chomsky 1981). That is, we suggest that the deictic coordinates of an utterance are ‘quasi-arguments’.
ISSN:0008-4131
1710-1115
DOI:10.1017/cnj.2024.18