Anaphors in English and the scope of binding theory

Proceedings of the 27th west coast conference on …, 2008

2008

… and Typological Explorations. Mouton de Gruyter …, 2008

2009

Virtually the only sentence that Jespersen (1933: 111) devotes to what we now know as binding theory is a statement that English uses a reflexive for the object when the subject and object are identical. Yet, about half a century later, binding had become one of the central modules of the grammar, governing not only the distribution and interpretation of pronominals and anaphors, but also movement (Chomsky 1981).

2012

Whether in grammars, dictionaries or encyclopaedias of linguistics, anaphora, which etymologically means back reference (ana-= backwards,-phorein = carry), is unanimously defined as an interpretive relation between at least two elements, in which one element guides the interpretation of the other(s). For Asher & Simpson [1994 : 116], for instance, "an element or construction is dependent for its interpretation on being associated with something else in the context", while to Huddleston & Pullum [2002 : 1453], "anaphora is the relation between an anaphor and an antecedent, where the interpretation of the anaphor is determined via that of the antecedent" [see also, for instance, DUCROT & SCHAEFFER 1995 : 458 or CHARAUDEAU & MAINGUENEAU 2002 : 45]. But although all linguistic frameworks share this definition, there is wide variety as to what the notion of anaphora is taken to cover, which in turn has consequences on the senses given to the words 'anaphor' and 'antecedent', and on the boundary between anaphora and deixis. Anaphora is typically said to be endophoric-that is, to have an antecedent which is a segment of text. It is then opposed to deixis, in which an expression also gets its interpretation indirectly, but prototypically via a situational element, indicated for instance by a gesture. Anaphoric relations might be of various types-coreferentiality, association, resumption, ...and involve nominal, verbal or adverbial elements, as illustrated by the following utterances: (1) Bruce smiled to himself as he walked along Forth Street. (nominal anaphora) (2) Please complete this form in full. Failure to do so will result in your application to join the scheme being rejected. (verbal anaphora) Cercles 22 (2012) Laure Gardelle / 26 (3) I put the keys in the top drawer; they should still be there. (adverbial anaphora) But this is only one possible approach to anaphora, anaphors and antecedents. The present paper proposes to give an overview of the meanings that these words acquire in various theoretical frameworks, more specifically in one domain: the noun phrase. The aim is to make out the theoretical implications of such choices, for a better grasp, ultimately, of the mechanisms at work in anaphora processing. Three theoretical approaches are examined in turn: Binding Theory, textual anaphora, and the cognitive-pragmatic definition.

In most European languages intensifiers (e.g. Latin ipse, German selbst, Russian sam, Italian stesso, etc.) differ from reflexive pronouns (Latin se, German sich, Russian sebja, Italian sé) in both form and distribution. 2 In these languages intensifiers can be combined with reflexive pronouns (cf. German sich selbst, Russian sam sebja, etc.). In a wide variety of languages, however, including Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian languages, Indic languages, Persian and English (X-self), intensifiers and reflexive pronouns are completely identical in form, though not in distribution. Such wide-spread polysemy cannot be completely fortuitous and it is therefore a major challenge for any semantic analysis of the relevant forms as well as for any theory of reflexivity to explicate this close relationship between the two uses of the same form. Many recent analyses of reflexivity in English as well as many theoretical discussions of reflexivity in general fail to draw a clear distinction between intensifiers and reflexive anaphors. The term emphatic reflexives (emphatics), used inter alia in , suggests that intensifiers are simply a specific, emphatic use of reflexives. 3 A very crude attempt to subsume intensifiers as in he himself under the category 'anaphor' is made in , where he claims that such uses of self-forms could and should in principle be incorporated in the Binding Theory. Recent theoretical studies of reflexivity (cf. do not clearly distinguish between intensifiers and reflexive anaphors either. What these studies do distinguish are two (or more) types of anaphors: morphologically simplex or SE anaphors (Dutch zich, Norwegian seg, Italian sé, etc.) and morphologically complex or SELF anaphors (English himself, Dutch zichzelf, Norwegian seg selv, etc.). 4 This distinction is assumed to correlate with different binding properties of the relevant expressions: SE anaphors and SELF anaphors differ in their domain properties insofar as the former may be long-distance bound, whereas the latter are always locally bound. Moreover, the two types of anaphors are assumed to differ in their antecedent properties: SE anaphors are subject-oriented, whereas SELF anaphors can also select non-subjects as antecedents. In all of these analyses SELF anaphors are regarded as complex syntactic expressions which cannot be decomposed semantically. That these anaphors are combinations of reflexive pronoun + intensifier or derive historically from combinations of pronoun + intensifier plays no role in these discussions. A further example of the important role that intensifiers play in recent theorizing about reflexivity without being clearly distinguished from reflexive pronouns is the claim made in Reinhart and Reuland (1993: 663) that only SELF anaphors can reflexive-mark a predicate that is not inherently reflexive. In other words, SE anaphors, however they are to be identified cross-linguistically, have no reflexivizing function.

Proceedings of Salt, 2013

This paper investigates the behavior of the reflexive anaphor herself in English in conditions of narrow focus and argues in favor of (i) a theory of focus that is based around the notion of Current Question, and (ii) a theory of association with focus that assumes that some, but not all, focus associating operators exhibit conventional association; i.e. some, but not all, focus associating operators have lexical semantics that directly encode association with focus. The argument is based on the independently motivated observation that there exist asymmetries with regard to disjoint reference effects between subject and object wh-questions.

Linguistics in the Netherlands, 1996

In this paper I will be concerned with some alternations between anaphors and pronouns found in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), European Portuguese (EP) and Spanish (Sp) which, as exemplified by the BP contrast in , are triggered by quantificational elements like 'nobody': 1,2 (1) a {O Joáo/Nenhum aluno} tinha visto o livro atrâs de {(?)?si/ele} {Joáo/No pupil} has seen the book behind {(?) ?SE/him} b Ninguém tinha visto o livro atrâs de {si/*ele} Nobody has seen the book behind {SE/*him}?

Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1986

Genitiw seg-reflexives c. !seg selv]NP } selv-reflexives d. !ham selvjNP e. !hverandrejNP reciprocal 1 closeness anaphors The reflexive forms seg and sin are third person forms, contrasting with third person non-reflexive pronouns like ham 'him' etc.; in first and second person there are no special reflexive forms corresponding to seg! sin.' The labels to the right in (1) will be used for reference throughout. One fact about these anaphors is that the items in (c)-(e) are subject to a CLOSENESS requirement relative to their antecedent, which does not apply to (a)-(b); this requirement is essentially the same as for English reflexives and reciprocals, and provides the label indicated in (1). Another circumstance is that all the seg-reflexives «a)-(c» are constrained by a condition which, on the face of it, may seem not to apply to (d), (e), viz. that the anaphor be contained in an expression PREDICATED of the antecedent. The purpose of this paper is to bring to light some considerations favoring an approach where all anaphors, including (d), (e), are subjected to such a condition. Section 1.1. will demonstrate the closeness condition on (c)-(e), while sections 1.2. and 1.3. show the need for supplementary conditions relating to these anaphors, in view of certain constructions treated there. The predication condition on seg-reflexives is demonstrated in 2.1., and in 2.2.-2.3. we consider seg-reflexives inside those constructions which were seen to necessitate principles in addition to the closeness condition for the closeness anaphors. Crucially, no extra principles turn out to be required for the behavior of seg-reflexives in these cases. This opens the possibility of subjecting the closeness anaphors in general to a predication condition, whereby the supplementary principles considered in 1.2. and 1.3. can be dispensed with. Section 3. gives the outline of such an approach. Among other things, it will follow, on such an approach, that the notion of structural c-command will play a less direct role in the principles of anaphora binding than it does in current versions of EST, such as Government/Binding theory. While this discussion is carried out with 103