2 Probing phrases, pronouns, and binding

Abstract

Binding theory and its principles A, B, and C played an enormously important part in the development of G&B-theory. The abandonment of indices (the inclusiveness condition), and of the syntactic relation government, two core concepts in the definitions of the binding principles (BP), left the BPs with no theoretical significance in the MP (Chomsky, 1995). Only a few attempts have been made to reconcile the descriptive adequacy of the BPs with the MP. These analyses are based either on movement (Kayne, 2002;Zwart, 2002), or on the structure of reflexives, and a reformulation of violations of BPs as cross-over phenomena Wiltschko, 2002a,b, 2004). However, these approaches have significant drawbacks when other areas of syntax are concerned, for instance, restrictions on movement, and c-selection. Moreover, they fail to provide any insights into the question why R-expressions, pronouns and anaphors show the behaviour they do. This paper attempts to solve the binding problem by breaking it down into two parts: one, the nature of probes, and two, the structure of pronouns and reflexives. The proposed analysis does not suffer from the above mentioned drawbacks.Concerning the first part, Chomsky (2001, 2004) analyzes agreement phenomena in the verbal-argument domain as a relation between a probe and a goal. We will show, however, that the stipulation that only v and T are probes is misguided. Based on Bare Phrase Structure (BPS) (Chomsky, 1995) we show that the consequence of the way phrase structure is built is that every item with uninterpretable features is a probe. When DP is merged to V or v in (1) the syntactic derivation treats both V/vP and DP, or D, as heads and possible probes.(1) vPThe fact that D is a phrase in (1) is not determined until after merge with vP. Since v projects D must, by definition, be a phrase (Chomsky, 2004). Since D lacks value for its case feature it is a probe when it is merged with vP. We argue that probing is an effect of, on the one hand the computational system's desire to get rid of uninterpretable features, and on the other hand the fact that external merge is the operation that makes the deletion possible. Consequently, probing is an effect of external merge. We show that this analysis has no unwanted results, and that a theory without the stipulation that only heads are probes gives as good empirical coverage as the previous theory. Hence, the proposed analysis is more minimal.Concerning the second part, the structure of pronouns and reflexives, we show, with data from e.g. relative clause formation and word formation processes, that pronouns are roots, just like any other lexical category (Halle and Marantz, 1993; Josefsson, 1998, among others).We assume that the difference between reflexives and pronouns is not a structural difference but a difference in feature values on D. Support for this assumption comes from the distributional pattern of reflexives, i.e. without an antecedent, they cannot function as arguments (cf. Longobardi, 1994), and they are not referential (cf. Sto...

A model for L1 grammatical attrition

“…The model that we present in this article can in principle accommodate such attrition within binding properties. It is argued by Reuland (2001, 2011), Heinat (2008) and Hicks (2009), for example, that under a Minimalist approach binding constraints (specifically, binding principles A and B) reduce to general properties of syntactic computation that manipulate the features of lexical items. Differences across languages concerning how these features are assembled on lexical items result in different kinds of syntactic manipulation, and in different binding patterns (e.g.…”

Long object shift and reflexives

“…There is agreement between the antecedent and the reflexive at some point during the syntactic derivation, (13a), satisfying binding principle A (see e.g. Reuland 2001; Heinat 2006 for analyses of binding involving Agree) but at lexical insertion there is only one clitic form available for the highest – i.e. the long object shifted – position.…”

“…Only reflexives can have their person features delinked. Exactly what this difference is is not the topic of this paper, but see Heinat (2006) for an analysis where the difference between reflexive and personal pronouns lies in the internal syntactic structure of the two types of pronoun.…”

Auxiliary selection is Agree

“…Similarly, if 𝑣 contains an unvalued person feature (namely, in reflexive clauses), the person probe on Perf remains unvalued, too. In fact, I assume that the reflexive pronoun, which is merged as direct or indirect object, enters the derivation with unvalued 𝜙-features and acquires them via binding by the external argument (Heinat, 2006;Reuland, 2001Reuland, , 2005. When 𝑣 probes for person, the reflexive object bears unvalued 𝜙-features, because the external argument has not been introduced yet by 𝑣.…”