This paper explores the idea that first and second person indexical pronouns have one common identical source based on an index. This approach derives the distinction between hearer and speaker by means of spatio-temporal anchoring of the indexical base to the utterance context. Accordingly, it is argued that the deictic category person is nonatomic but dependent on spatial (and temporal) deixes. Evidence is drawn from data concerning various types of second person pronouns and their interpretation. It will be shown that the generic use of second person pronouns available in a large number of languages underlies specific morphosyntactic restrictions that have so far remained undiscussed in the relevant literature that mainly sought a purely semantic account of the phenomenon (Alonso-Ovalle 2002; Malamud 2007). Based on a number of IndoEuropean languages, it will be shown that certain contexts require the indexical to be temporally anchored to the utterance context giving rise to a strictly indexical interpretation. Generic interpretations are available if the indexical is only spatially but not temporally anchored.

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Second person singular pronouns are widely used in generic contexts, referring to people in general rather than to the single addressee of the utterance. Based on the assumption that pronouns are morphosyntactically complex elements, this paper argues that only pro-φPs in the sense of Déchaine and Wiltschko (2002) are licit in those environments while fully fledged pro-DPs are necessarily interpreted indexically. It is argued that the latter contain an interpretable but unvalued time-feature in D which restricts the interpretation of the entire structure to a specific temporal stage of the individual denoted by the pronoun. The article shows that in German, English, and Dutch this time-feature is valued by utterance time, thus leading to an indexical interpretation of the pronoun. From a broader perspective, the time-feature is proposed to be universally present in indexical pronouns. Ultimately, its properties are responsible for crosslinguistic variation in the syntax and semantics of first and second person pronouns.

This paper discusses Austro-Bavarian directionals, which adhere to the following pattern: preposition plus suffix -a or -i, e.g. auffa (upwards-a) and auffi (upwards-i). These directionals indicate that movement occurs either towards the speaker’s location (-a) or towards a location crucially distinct from the speakers location (-i). I propose that this alternation is an overt manifestation of Hale’s (1986) semantic universal of central versus non-central coincidence. I analyze them as fully fledged PathPs whose internal syntax is based on Ritter and Wiltschko’s (2009) implementation of the coincidence theme. These directionals show that dialectal data can confirm both semantic and syntactic universals that have been argued for on the basis of entirely unrelated domains and languages.