The original purpose of the project was to undertake an investigation of VP anaphora in South Saami. It quickly turned out that because of the fact that the syntactico-semantic documentation of pronominal and anaphoric elements in the language is at best poor, it was deemed it necessary to subject these to thorough scrutiny.
The implementation of the project has involved in-depth surveys of the theoretical literature on pronominals and indexicals, as well as in-depth investigations of the South Saami pronominal system. The results have been presented at competitive international conferences, both in specialized publications and popular venues. A proposed monography has gained interest from John Benjamins Publishers, Amsterdam. Throughout the project, research issues have been continuously discussed with other experts in the field and language-specific generalizations have been thoroughly discussed with L1 speakers.
South Saami pronominals are particularly interesting, partly because the language lacks grammatical gender, which in combination with the fact the third person is represented by a distinct tripartite system, yields intricate patterns of interaction among the third person pronouns. The project explores the idea that vital aspects of the interpretation and distribution of pronouns are closely linked to operator-like elements in the higher domains of the clausal spine, in conjunction with varying structural complexities in the pronouns themselves (e.g. Cardinaletti & Starke 1999, Déchaine & Wiltschko 2002, Baker 2008, Holmberg 2010, Sigurdsson 2011, among several others).

The first major result is that South Saami is a hybrid between a consistent and a partial null subject language (NSL). On the one hand, the distribution of overt and covert subject pronouns is fully comparable to consistent NSLs, such as Italian. That is, the overt subject pronoun dihte ‘(s)he/it’ introduces a new topic, whereas the covert subject pronoun is obligatorily coreferent with a topic, and it may not co-vary with an overt subject pronoun (see Frascarelli 2007, Holmberg 2010). Crucially, the topic antecedent may, but need not be syntactically local. On the other hand, similarly to partial NSLs, such as Finnish, South Saami has a third person inclusive generic null pronoun, which are unattested in consistent NSLs. Drawing on the work by Holmberg (2005, 2010, 2016), I propose that the C-domain of South Saami is of the same kind as consistent NSLs, whereas the inflectional domain is of the same ilk as partial NSLs. Specifically, Frascarelli (2007) argues at length that the relation between a null subject in a consistent NSL and its antecedent is mediated by a null pronominal element in the C-domain, A-Top. For Holmberg (2010), A-Top values a definiteness feature on T, while the null pronoun itself is referentially deficient. In contrast, partial NSLs are taken to lack A-Top, and T is not equipped with a definiteness feature. Partial NSLs have at their disposal a structurally sufficient null pronoun, that is distributionally restricted to embedded contexts. A consequence of Holmberg’s theory is that it also accounts for why partial NSLs accommodate a third person inclusive generic null pronoun, and why consistent NSLs do not. In essence, my research argues that what sets South Saami apart from partial NSLs, is the presence of A-Top. This hypothesis also rhymes well with the fact that the subject agreement system in South Saami never makes an affixal distinction between the 2nd and 3rd persons singular in actual speech (Jaeggli & Safir 1989, Duarte 1995, Rohrbacher 1999, Holmberg 2016).

The second major result is the discovery that South Saami accommodates West African-style logophoricity (Safir 2004, Anand 2006, Baker 2008). Logophoricity is expressed by means of the third person pronoun satne ‘(s)he/it’ which is distributionally restricted to finite complements of attitude predicates (say, think, believe, etc.). One clear diagnostic of logophoricity is the availability of interleaving effects in multiple embedding, where the most deeply embedded clause hosts two logophoric arguments. This fact rhymes well with the general consensus that logophoric pronouns are variable bound (Safir 2004, Anand 2006, Baker 2008). The general hypothesis is that the relation between the antecedent and the pronoun is mediated by an operator LOG that resides in the C-domain. Hence, there is a superficial similarity to the account of consistent NSLs. LOG and A-Top differ in two crucial aspects, however. The former is locally controlled by its antecedent, whereas the distance to the pronoun is unbounded. A-Top, in contrast, tolerates distant antecedent, while the relation to the null subject is local. This gives rise to freezing effects when a null and a logophoric pronoun co-occur in the most deeply embedded clause in multiple embeddings.
It is also noteworthy that the pronoun satne may occur in root contexts as well (compare Adesola 2005 on Yoruba), with the consequence that it induces a first personal perspective on the third person. As a consequence, truth conditions are affected as well as the interpretation of speaker-oriented adverbs. Again, these facts suggest that satne is variable that is bound by an operator in the C-domain.

The third major result is the discovery that the system of reference tracking outlined above, breaks down in the context of subjunctive complements of directive and commissive verbs. While the language lacks a subjunctive paradigm, the subjunctive mood is syntactically expressed by the future auxiliary, in combination with Subject-Aux-Inversion (SAI). Moreover, the subject of the subjunctive complement is obligatorily coreferent with an argument of the selecting predicate. However, unlike the situation in indicative contexts, overt and covert subject pronouns freely co-vary in subjunctive complements, hence yielding a pattern that is reminiscent of partial NSLs. The reason, I claim, follows from the idea that the subjunctive complement is not a full CP, but rather a truncated clause whose highest projection is a Mood Phrase (for instance, Giorgi & Pianesi 2004). This approach precludes the existence of mediators such as A-Top and LOG in the embedded domain, and therefore the pattern of a partial NSLs emerges.

In sum, the distribution of the three types of third person pronouns in South Saami can be accounted for under the hypothesis that C-domain hosts operator-like elements that act as mediators for reference tracking. Furthermore, the pronouns differ in structural complexity, and therefore they are matched with different elements in the C-domain. South Saami is argued to be a hybrid NSLs, such that is exhibit signature behaviors of both consistent and partial NSLs. In subjunctive complements, the pattern of a full-fledged partial NSL emerges, due to the absence of the relevant projections in the highest domain of the clause.

The project raises a number of questions for future research. Firstly, the mechanisms of reference tracking in the other Saami languages have not subject to deep inquiry. On a par with South Saami, these too have a tripartite system of third person pronouns, but a preliminary study of North Saami by Partapuoli (2020) shows that the language is a partial NSL, on a par with Finnish. Yet, several details remain to be investigated. For instance, the basic mechanisms of reference tracking in Lule Saami are largely unknown. Hence, a fruitful future project would undertake research on these languages and examine details of micro-variation in the realm of reference-tracking. Finally, the outcome of the project is an important component in the study of VP anaphora in the language.

The requirement to publish in the Open Access format has been satisfied wherever possible. It is not satisfied for my contribution to the prestigious publication Dalmi, Tsedryk & Ceglowski. eds. (2022); it is satisfied in Eren, Giannoula, Gray, Lam and Martinez Del Rio. eds. (2020), due to the highly competitive nature of CLS and its impact on the field. A further exception is Fossum. eds. (2020), which is run by the South Saami foundation Saemien Sijte, which is an important channel to reach the South Saami community. As for the pending monograph, John Benjamins accommodates Open Acess.