Abstract
We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals and relative clauses, including those involving modals and proportional quantifiers. For example, an indefinite in the antecedent of a conditional can bind a donkey pronoun in the consequent by taking scope over the entire conditional. Our grammar manages continuations using three independently motivated type-shifters, Lift, Lower, and Bind. Empirical support comes from donkey weak crossover (*He beats it if a farmer owns a donkey): in our system, a quantificational binder need not c-command a pronoun that it binds, but must be evaluated before it, so that donkey weak crossover is just a special case of weak crossover. We compare our approach to situation-based E-type pronoun analyses, as well as to dynamic accounts such as Dynamic Predicate Logic. A new 'tower' notation makes derivations considerably easier to follow and manipulate than some previous grammars based on continuations. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.1.1 BibTeX info See also the interactive tutorial about the system in this paper
Highlights
A donkey pronoun is a pronoun that lies outside the antecedent of a conditional, yet covaries with some quantificational element inside it, usually an indefinite.(1) a
Since the if takes scope over the entire conditional, it is feasible for the indefinite to take scope over the entire conditional
Like most leading accounts of donkey anaphora, we provide no formal mechanism here that bounds the scope-taking of universals
Summary
A donkey pronoun is a pronoun that lies outside the antecedent of a conditional (or outside the restrictor of a quantifier), yet covaries with some quantificational element inside it, usually an indefinite. Evans 1977 made it standard to assume that the indefinite a donkey cannot take scope over the pronoun it in (1), and cannot bind it, at least not in the ordinary sense of binding. We argue that the indefinites in (1) do take scope over their donkey pronouns, and bind them in the ordinary way, just as a quantifier such as everyone takes scope over and binds the pronoun in the bound reading of Everyonei thinks hei is intelligent. As far as we know, no one has ever advocated an in-scope binding analysis of donkey anaphora. It turns out that the right theory of scope and binding makes an in-scope binding analysis feasible but straightforward
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