Anaphora and Language Design

by Reuland, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780262515641
• ISBN10: 0262515644
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-07
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Pronouns and anaphors (including reflexives such as himselfand herself) may or must depend on antecedents for their interpretation. These dependencies are subject to conditions that prima facie show substantial crosslinguistic variation. In this monograph, Eric Reuland presents a theory of how these anaphoric dependencies are represented in natural language in a way that does justice to the the variation one finds across languages. He explains the conditions on these dependencies in terms of elementary properties of the computational system of natural language. He shows that the encoding of anaphoric dependencies makes use of components of the language system that all reflect different cognitive capacities; thus the empirical research he reports on offers insights into the design of the language system. Reuland's account reduces the conditions on binding to independent properties of the grammar, none of which is specific to binding. He offers a principled account of the roles of the lexicon, syntax, semantics, and the discourse component in the encoding of anaphoric dependencies; a window into the overall organization of the grammar and the roles of linguistic and extralinguistic factors; a new typology of anaphoric expressions; a view of crosslinguistic variation (examining facts in a range of languages, from English, Dutch, Frisian, German, and Scandinavian languages to Fijian, Georgian, and Malayalam) that shows unity in diversity.

Author Biography

Eric Reuland is Faculty Professor of Language and Cognition at Utrecht Institute of Linguistics, Netherlands.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Goals	p. 1
Background	p. 4
Variation in Binding	p. 7
Toward Explanation in Linguistics	p. 9
Linguistics as a Cognitive Science	p. 9
A Minimalist Perspective on Natural Language Grammar	p. 10
What Would Make CHL Trivial?	p. 14
Unity and Diversity in Anaphoric Dependencies	p. 19
Universals and Sources of Invariance	p. 19
Toward Explaining the Binding Conditions	p. 22
Interpretive Dependencies	p. 25
Binding and Coreference	p. 27
A Definition of A-Binding	p. 30
A-Binding: Logical Syntax and Semantics	p. 34
The Canonical Binding Theory	p. 38
An Overview of the CBT	p. 38
Locality	p. 40
BT Compatibility	p. 42
Some Further Challenges to the CBT	p. 43
Beyond the CBT	p. 44
Types of Nominal Expressions	p. 44
Parameters of Variation	p. 46
Indices and Their Demise	p. 53
Binding and Coreference Revisited	p. 56
Summary and Structure of the Book	p. 58
Structural Conditions on A-Binding	p. 69
Background	p. 69
The Status of C-Command in Binding	p. 70
Pronominals versus Anaphors	p. 79
Conclusions	p. 80
A Modular Approach to Binding: Reflexivity, Chains, and Exemption	p. 81
Defining Reflexivity	p. 81
Condition B: Main Facts	p. 83
Condition A: Main Facts	p. 88
Semantic and Syntactic Predicates	p. 95
The Structure of SE Anaphors and SELF Anaphors	p. 96
An Independent Factor: Syntactic Chain Formation	p. 100
Dutch versus Frisian	p. 100
Chains and the Chain Condition	p. 102
Where Neither the Chain Condition nor Condition B Applies	p. 105
Chains and Hierarchy	p. 107
Condition B in N- and P-Predicates	p. 109
N-Predicates	p. 109
P-Predicates	p. 110
Toward Explaining the Binding Conditions: Reflexivity and Chains	p. 115
Conclusion	p. 120
Representing Anaphoric Dependencies: Issues of Economy	p. 123
Introduction	p. 123
The Nature of Economy: Its Rationales	p. 126
Competition in Brazilian Portuguese	p. 130
A Synthesis: The Competition between Hem and Zich Revisited	p. 131
Conclusions	p. 136
Binding by Chains: The Syntactic Encoding of Interpretive Dependencies	p. 137
Introduction	p. 137
Underspecification	p. 138
Index-Free Binding	p. 140
The Binding Requirement on Anaphors	p. 144
Encoding Dependencies within CHL	p. 145
Dependencies in the Framework of Chomsky (1995)	p. 146
Overt V-to-T	p. 149
Checking Zich's Features	p. 151
Linking	p. 151
Features and Feature Bundles	p. 153
CHAINs and Chains	p. 155
Covert V-to-T	p. 156
Conditions on the Tail: What Blocks Chain Formation?	p. 159
Recoverable Features	p. 159
A Nonrecoverable Property: Number	p. 162
A Further Perspective: The Role of D	p. 164
Definiteness and POSS Anaphors	p. 166
Binding versus Logophoricity	p. 169
Subjunctive	p. 170
Nonmatching Antecedents	p. 171
Maximality of Chains and Conditions on Chain Heads	p. 173
The Issue	p. 173
SE as a Subject	p. 173
Agreeing to Bind	p. 174
Background	p. 174
Implementation	p. 176
An Empirical Consequence	p. 178
Conclusion	p. 179
Deriving the Binding Conditions: Encoding and Sources of Invariance	p. 181
Introduction	p. 181
Deriving the Binding Conditions: Why Conditions A and B?	p. 185
Why is Reflexivity Marked?	p. 185
Condition B and the IDI	p. 186
Licensing Reflexivity	p. 189
Operations on Argument Structure: The ¿-System	p. 192
From Lexical Reflexivity to Structural Case and Pronouns in English	p. 202
Protecting a Variable	p. 206
A Note on Binding and an Interim Summary	p. 209
A Note on Binding	p. 209
An Interim Summary	p. 211
Deriving Condition A	p. 214
The Syntax of Reflexive-Marking	p. 215
Reference by Proxy and the Functional Semantics of Pronominals	p. 219
How SELF Movement is Enforced	p. 222
Remaining Questions and Summary of Results	p. 237
Revisiting Faltz's Typology	p. 237
The Notion "Anaphor": Its Theoretical Significance	p. 239
From Invariants to Variation: Masking	p. 240
Conclusions	p. 245
Reflexive-Marking by SELF Movement: A Case Study	p. 247
Introduction	p. 247
The Internal Structure of SELF Anaphors	p. 247
Further Consequences of SELF Movement	p. 249
The Definition of Syntactic Predicates: Which Property Attracts SELF?	p. 253
Local Binding of 1st- and 2nd-Person Pronominals	p. 255
Maximality of Chains and Conditions on Chain Heads	p. 259
The Issue	p. 259
Nominative Complex Anaphors	p. 260
Summary and Conclusions	p. 266
Variation in Anaphoric Systems within Germanic	p. 267
Introduction	p. 267
Local Binding of Pronouns in Frisian	p. 268
German Sich	p. 273
German Sich and Reflexivity	p. 273
Case and Case Distinctions	p. 279
Concluding the Discussion of Case and Chains	p. 283
Long-Distance Anaphors in Germanic	p. 285
Introduction	p. 285
Anaphors across Germanic Languages	p. 286
Capturing the Variation in Binding Domains	p. 295
Discussion from Current Perspectives: Long-Distance Binding and Minimalism	p. 302
Long-Distance Binding of Direct Object SE	p. 311
Logophoricity: Icelandic Logophoric Anaphora	p. 314
Introduction	p. 314
Subjunctives	p. 316
Infinitives	p. 319
Summary of the Facts	p. 320
The Interpretation of Sig: Binding versus Coreference	p. 321
Conclusions and Open Issues	p. 322
Summary and Conclusions	p. 323
Discussion, Summary, and Conclusions	p. 325
Introduction	p. 325
How to Encode Anaphoric Dependencies: Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Variation	p. 326
Kayne 2002	p. 327
Zwart 2002	p. 330
Boeckx, Hornstein, and Nunes 2007	p. 331
Safir 2004a and 2004b	p. 335
Hicks 2009	p. 336
Overview and Summary of Results	p. 337
General Conclusions	p. 341
Notes	p. 345
References	p. 393
Author Index	p. 419
Subject Index	p. 425
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