Abstract
The paper aims at providing an explanation of pronominals in Modern Standard Arabic (hereafter MSA) by assuming that the relation between pronouns and available binders is constrained by the same syntactic condition, i.e., a pronoun cannot be coindexed with a c-commanding NP within its local domain. It also aims at providing a unified account of two types of pronominals in MSA, referential and bound pronouns. These two types of pronouns have different values for their binders; where a referential pronoun requires a name to be coindexed with; a bound pronoun requires a distinct subject, i.e., a quantifier as its binder. The paper adopts Principle B of the theory of binding to account for these pronouns by examining how this principle can express the content of disjoint reference for pronouns embedded in Ss, NPs and PPs in MSA and to see whether the phenomenon of disjoint reference in Arabic supports principle (B).
Highlights
IntroductionWithin this approach, binding constraints on coreference are usually defined in syntactic terms and considerable efforts in the last three decades have been directed at attempting to define the constraints on corefernce within and across sentences
The theory of binding has been the focus of a wide array of an extensive scholarly literature since the emergence of Generative Syntax
The paper aims at providing an explanation of pronominals in Modern Standard Arabic by assuming that the relation between pronouns and available binders is constrained by the same syntactic condition, i.e., a pronoun cannot be coindexed with a c-commanding NP within its local domain
Summary
Within this approach, binding constraints on coreference are usually defined in syntactic terms and considerable efforts in the last three decades have been directed at attempting to define the constraints on corefernce within and across sentences. This theory makes another prediction by claiming that anaphors and pronominal are in complementary distribution, for instance, in English, reciprocals and reflexives fall into the category of anaphors; whereas, personal pronouns fall into the category of pronominals.
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