Obligatory nonlocal binding

Abstract

Grammatical dependencies, including anaphoric binding relations, are generally assumed not to ignore local relations and refer only to nonlocal relations. Yag Dii (Niger-Congo/Adamawa-Ubangi, Cameroon) provides counter-evidence to this otherwise well established generalisation. Yag Dii has a complicated pronominal system, originally described by Bohnhoff (1986, 2010), with pronominal forms whose distribution is determined by the nature of their antecedent, their grammatical function, and the type of clause in which they may appear. One set of forms exhibits an otherwise unattested form of nonlocality: the pronominal form and its antecedent must be separated by at least one clause, and the presence or absence of coreferent phrases in the intervening clause does not affect its appearance or distribution. The relation between this exclusively long-distance pronominal form and its antecedent seems to violate otherwise well-established locality conditions for anaphoric relations and, indeed, for grammatical dependencies more generally. We provide an analysis of binding in Yag Dii which captures the binding requirements for the exclusively long-distance form in a locally constrained manner by reference to an independently motivated feature demarcating the domain in which the exclusively long-distance pronominal must appear.