Using synchronous tree adjoining grammar to model the typology of bound variable pronouns

Abstract

This article presents a novel analysis of bound variable anaphora using Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (STAG), a pairing of a Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) for syntax and a TAG for semantics. While a bound variable pronoun can occur at a distance from its binder, as in ‘Every girli believes that shei is intelligent’, languages vary, though in a limited way, as to how near or far from its binder a bound variable should be. As any dependency between two syntactic objects must be localized to a single predicate domain in TAG, modelling bound variable anaphora in syntax and semantics poses an interesting challenge for STAG. In our analysis, bound variable pronouns are represented as Multi-Component sets in both syntax and semantics, composing in delayed tree-local derivations. This allows us to not only account for variable binding at a distance, but it also allows us to define a single derivational parameter with which observed patterns of bound variable locality can be modelled, ruling out unobserved patterns, while capturing the range of interpretive possibilities for bound variable pronouns across languages.