Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981)

In Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory (henceforth BT), Principles A and B structurally regulate the relations between anaphoric elements and their antecedents within the same sentence. These principles constrain the interpretation of two different types of DPs: reflexives, pronouns, whose antecedents are in A-position (an argument position that can potentially be assigned a thematic role by its predicate, i.e. a position in which arguments can be base-generated). Principle A determines the interpretation of reflexive elements; Principle B deals with the interpretation of pronouns.

(19) Principle A: An anaphor is bound in its governing category.

Principle B: A pronoun is free in its governing category.

In this framework, an antecedent DP binds an anaphoric element if it c- commands it and is coindexed with it; free simply means not-bound.14 _In

order for an anaphoric element to receive its referential content from an antecedent, the two elements need to share the same index, they need to be coindexed.15 _{The structural domain in which coindexation is allowed}

14 _{Node A c(onstituent)-commands node B iff the branching node α1 immediately}

dominating A either dominates B or is immediately dominated by a node α2 which

dominates B, and α2 is of the same category type as α1. (Reinhart, 1983:23)

15 _{In order to properly capture the notion of coindexation, in the sections where the}

in the case of Principle A or disallowed in the case of Principle B is defined as the governing category of an anaphoric element. It is the domain which is the smallest maximal projection (IP or NP) containing the anaphor, the governor for the anaphor and an accessible subject.

(20) Suei claimed that [IP Ann j gave herself*i/j/heri/*j in].

According to Principle A, the reflexive herself in (20) must be bound in its governing category, which in this case is the complement IP containing it. There are two candidate DPs Ann and Sue in (20) that could potentially bind the reflexive. The DP Ann c-commands the reflexive and binds it, since it is found in the governing category of the reflexive. The DP Sue fails to bind the reflexive locally because it is outside the governing category of herself. The interpretation of pronouns, on the other hand, is governed by Principle B, according to which a pronoun must be free in its governing category. The DP Ann can therefore, not bind the pronoun because but it can be bound by the DP Sue, which is outside its governing category.

According to this model, pronouns and reflexives are supposed to be in complementary distribution. There are, however, a number of environments, two of which are exemplified in (21), where the two elements are not in complementary distribution and, therefore, cannot be accounted for by BT (for an overview, see Burkhardt, 2004, and the references therein).

(21) a. Suei put the book near herselfi/heri.

b. Maryi found that the picture of herselfi/heri was appalling.

Furthermore, sentences such as (22) are grammatical but in each one of them Principle A is violated.

(22) a. All the guests, apart from myself, seemed to like the food served at the party.

b. Maxi boasted that [IP the queen invited Lucie and himselfi for a

drink].

c. [DP Peteri’s jokes] worked against himselfi.

and coreference relations between the pronominal element and an antecedent are indicated by subscripts only. As alredy mentioned, throughout the rest of this study I indicate such a relation using italics.

In sentence (22a) the first person reflexive has no obvious antecedent and appears to be left unbound (for details, see Zribi-Hertz, 1989; among others). In (22b), the embedded IP is the governing category within which the reflexive himself must be bound. However, the antecedent DP

Max binding the reflexive is outside the governing domain. In sentence

(22c), the whole DP Peter’s jokes c-commands the reflexive, yet the reflexive is linked with Peter, a constituent that does not c-command it.

There are also examples of Principle B violations and one such example is the use of third person pronouns in some dialects of American English (23) (see Horn, 2002, and the references therein). The pronoun him in (23) is bound by an antecedent in its governing domain, which violates Principle B.

(23) Johni won himi a prize.

BT also fails to capture a distinction between SELF-anaphors (zichzelf) and SE-anaphors (zich) that exists in languages like Dutch, but not in English (Everaert, 1986). There are environments where the two can co- occur, such as in (23), where in English himself is used.

(24) a. Jani hoorde zichi/zichzelfi fluisteren.

Jan heard SE/SELF whisper. b. Johni heard himselfi whisper.

The above listed phenomena represent problems for BT and many attempts have been made to reformulate or extend the theory in order to accommodate for these facts, as well as others. The majority of these attempts remained syntactic in nature. For example, Hestvik (1991, 1992) made an attempt at redefining the government categories by introducing subjectless domains in order to account for the non-complementary distribution of reflexives and pronouns in PPs such as in (21). Another example is a parameterised BT introduced by Wexler & Manzini (1987) in order to account for cross-linguistic differences in the nature of binding domains, which the authors treat as language-specific. Besides the above-mentioned reformulations, there are many other similar attempts (for an overview, see Burkhardt, 2004).

As opposed to purely syntactic BT, a proposal based on Reinhart’s (1976, 1983) ideas has emerged, which has pointed out that there are a number of pronominal dependencies that cannot and should not be explained on the basis of structural relations only. This proposal can for example be found in the formulation of the Reflexivity model (Reinhart

& Reuland, 1993), which acknowledges the need for a discourse level of representation in order to account for all instances of pronominal reference. It relies on the notion of c-command as the main tool in separating syntactic dependencies from the ones that occur at the level of discourse, and dependencies are defined in terms of relations of the pronominal element and its antecedent with their predicates. The Reflexivity model will be discussed in the following section.