A Feature-Based Account of Long-Distance Anaphora

Abstract

In this paper, I aim to give a unified account of long-distance and localbinding phenomena and provide a single constrained theory of anaphors in the framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1992, 1994, 1995a&b). In section 1, I criticize the LF movement theory which has been argued by Lebeaux (1983), Chomsky (1986), Pica (1987, 1991), Battistella (1989), Katada (1991) and others. In section 2, I provide a feature-based account of long-distance and local binding anaphors. In section 3, I discuss how feature-raising analysis can account for apparent long-distance binding phenomena in Picture-DP(or Picture-NP) constructions which have been treated exceptionally so far. Extending Section 3, I argue in section 4 that apparent long-distance binding phenomena in constructions containing expletives and non-person NPs result from morphological properties of the anaphor. In section 5, I argue that orientation of the antecedent (i.e. subject orientation or no particular orientation) naturally results from interaction between the proposed LF structure and feature raising. Finally, in section 6, I conclude that binding reduces to morphological properties, and hence Condition A of the binding theory can be dispensed with.