Referential and functional aspects 
of the Norwegian first person plural vi

This paper explores questions of reference and communicative functions of the Norwegian first-person plural pronoun vi, based on transcripts of video recorded conversations between patients and nursing students or medical students. While many authentic examples of vi seem to be at odds with the meaning of vi proposed in Borthen (2010), we argue that the discrepancy is only apparent and can be accounted for through a pragmatic, relevance-theoretic analysis (Sperber and Wilson 1995). We compare this analysis to a sense enumeration approach and claim that the former is preferred for cognitive reasons. We show how pragmatic processes and principles can explain the fluidity of vi, and how our analysis is compatible with various communicative functions of the pronoun.