The contribution of person deixis to the construction and to the discourse context

In this talk, I will show how person deixis is in essence related to the construction in which it occurs and to the discourse context. In order to do so, I will propose a detailed analysis of some non-prototypical uses of person reference, among others generic seconds, pluralis maiestatis. On the one hand, I will show how the construction and the discourse context help us interpret the person reference form correctly and, on the other hand, how non-prototypical person reference uses contribute to shaping a specific discourse context and even discourse genre. The analysis will be based on examples taken from English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch