Long-distance anaphora and the blocking effect

Abstract

Sohng, Hong-Ki. 2015. Long-distance anaphora and the blocking effect. Linguistic Research 32(3), 719-747. This paper aims at giving a principled account of long-distance anaphora including the blocking effect under the LF movement analysis of LD reflexives in the Minimalist Inquiries framework. I have shown that the absence of the blocking effect for Korean LD anaphora does not follow from the Feature Percolation Principles put forward by Cole, Hermon & Huang (2006). Thus I put forth the Feature Percolation Principle to properly handle the blocking effect for Chinese LD anaphora and the absence of the blocking effect for LD anaphora in Italian, Icelandic, and Korean. The Chinese LD reflexive with no inherent φ-features gets and checks its φ-features in terms of the Feature Percolation Principle at LF. Overall, it is shown that the blocking effect exhibited by the Chinese LD anaphor follows from its lack of inherent φ-featuress and the Feature Percolation Principle, and that the absence of the blocking effect for the LD reflexives in Korean, Italian, and Icelandic is due to the fact that they have inherent φ-features. (Korea Aerospace University)