31 INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE IMPERSONAL PRONOUNS: A FEATURE-GEOMETRICAL ANALYSIS Roberta D’ALESSANDRO & Artemis ALEXIADOU Abstract As is well-known, impersonal pronouns split into two main groups as far as their interpretation is concerned. Pronouns belonging to the first group, such as Italian si, receive an inclusive interpretation under certain specific circumstances, i.e. the speaker is included among those performing the action expressed by the verb. On the other hand, pronouns belonging to the second group do not allow for such a reading. In this paper we investigate the triggers and the distribution of inclusive- ness. In particular we are concerned with the properties that are responsible for the difference between the two groups of pronouns. We show that unspecified time ref- erence (Cinque 1988), as well as imperfective aspect, trigger a generic reading on pronouns. The absence of such specifications in a clause gives rise to the necessity of linking the impersonal pronoun to the Speech Act (Sigurðsson 2002, Speas to ap- pear), thus triggering an inclusive reading. Furthermore, we propose that the reason why impersonal forms are used in some languages to convey a 1st person plural reading is that such pronouns have been used more and more with an inclusive reading, losing their generic referentiality. This has led to a reanalysis of such forms as exclusively 1st plural forms. This paper is structured as follows: in the introduction, we provide an overview of the problems we are confronted with. Section 2 contains a discussion of those as- pects which yield an inclusive reading of impersonal si. In this section, we examine the effects of specific time reference and perfective aspect on inclusiveness, and draw a parallel with a similar phenomenon involving Spanish se and French on. In section 3, we provide an analysis which accounts for the interaction of impersonal si with Aspect and the Speech Act. Our proposal has implications for other pronouns: we discuss these in section 4. Section 5 contains a short note on the reinterpretation of impersonal si constructions as 1st person plural forms.