Dissolving Binding Theory
Johan Rooryck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
Abstract
This book adopts the strong Minimalist thesis that grammar contains no rules or principles specifically designed to account for anaphors and pronouns. Lexically, anaphors have unvalued φ-features, which need to be valued under Agree. This leads to the novel assumption that anaphors c-command their antecedents. This idea underlies the analysis of both simplex and complex reflexives. Simplex reflexives are merged in a configuration of inalienable possession, with the simplex reflexive c-commanding its antecedent inside a possessive small clause. Self-reflexives share the syntax of self-intensifi ... More
This book adopts the strong Minimalist thesis that grammar contains no rules or principles specifically designed to account for anaphors and pronouns. Lexically, anaphors have unvalued φ-features, which need to be valued under Agree. This leads to the novel assumption that anaphors c-command their antecedents. This idea underlies the analysis of both simplex and complex reflexives. Simplex reflexives are merged in a configuration of inalienable possession, with the simplex reflexive c-commanding its antecedent inside a possessive small clause. Self-reflexives share the syntax of self-intensifiers and floating quantifiers, raising to a vP-adjoined position to c-command their antecedents. In contrast to anaphors, pronouns have lexically valued φ-features. Postsyntactic lexical insertion accounts for absence of Principle B effects observed in many languages. The behaviour of pronouns and self-forms in snake-sentences is related to the nature of the Axpart projection of the locative preposition. Semantically, the difference between simplex and complex reflexives derives from the way they refer to spatiotemporal stages of their antecedents.
Keywords:
anaphor,
pronoun,
binding,
Agree,
distributed morphology,
reflexive,
snake-sentences,
inalienable possession,
unaccusative,
Axpart
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199691326 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691326.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Johan Rooryck, author
Professor of French Linguistics, Leiden University
Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, author
Professor of General and English Linguistics, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel
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