Long-distance Anaphors Research Articles

Long-Distance Binding and Logophoricity in Korean Anaphors: A Corpus-based Study

This corpus-based study investigates the distributions of Korean multiple anaphors, with respect to their morphological types and discourse-pragmatic properties in Long-Distance (LD)-binding. The study is based on the theory of Long-Distance Anaphors (LDAs), such as ‘form-function correlation’ argument (Cole, Hermon, & Sung, 1990; Reinhart & Reuland, 1993; Reuland, 2011, 2017), as well as exempt binding and logophoricity (Sells, 1987; Pollard & Sag, 1992). Based on Sejong Treebank (Parsed Corpus), six hundred sentences containing various Korean anaphors went through manual coding of 5 linguistic factors related to LD-binding: locality, discourse, exempt, logophoric, and logophoric roles. The encoded sentences in distinct conditions were analyzed in terms of frequency by using Chi-square tests. The overall results demonstrated the following: 1) Korean anaphors did not show form-function correlations in terms of binding type and morphological form. 2) Korean anaphors can occur even in syntactically non-exempt positions. 3) Logophoricity conditions were found with the LD-antecedents of the anaphors. The results seem to support discourse-pragmatic analysis with Korean anaphors.

Covert reflexive argument in inalienable relational nouns

This paper argues that inalienable relational nouns in Mandarin Chinese, specifically kinship nouns (e.g. father, sister) and body-part nouns (e.g. head, face), have an implicit reflexive argument. Based on a syntactic comparison between kinship nouns, body-part nouns, local- and long-distance bound reflexives, we argue that the implicit reflexive arguments of kinship nouns and body-part nouns differ from each other: The implicit argument of kinship nouns must be locally bound, whereas that of body-part nouns can either be locally bound or long-distance bound. Therefore, we conclude that these two types of implicit arguments in Mandarin Chinese correspond to local- long-distance bound reflexives, respectively. Finally, we relate this difference to binding theory concerning local and long-distance anaphors.

Empathy and Chinese long distance reflexive ziji—remarks on Giorgi (2006, 2007)

With the assumption that long distance anaphors (LDAs) are unsaturated positions, Giorgi (Nat. Lang. Linguist. Theory 24:1009–1047, 2006, Linguist. Inq. 38(2):321–342, 2007) argues that the machinery independently needed for temporal anchoring—i.e., the syntactic representation of the coordinate of the bearer-of-attitude and that of the speaker—can also account for long distance binding. In this paper, we claim that the interpretative similarity between temporal anchoring and anaphoric binding suggested by Giorgi cannot be maintained, especially for Chinese, after pointing out the limitations of Giorgi’s theory concerning Chinese LDA ziji. With the recognition of the fact that Chinese long distance reflexive ziji also has an empathic use based on Kuno and Kaburaki’s (Linguist. Inq. 8(4):625–672, 1977) notion of empathy, we argue that a minimal revision to Giorgi’s theory, namely replacing the speaker’s coordinate with the empathy locus which encodes the information of the speaker’s empathy in the embedded clause, will help account for all the difficulties that Giorgi’s theory faces concerning Chinese LDA ziji.

Binding Interpretations of Anaphors by Korean Heritage Speakers

This study investigates the potential incomplete acquisition of binding interpretations in Korean-English bilinguals by asking whether and how the majority language of these bilinguals (English) influences their family or heritage language (Korean), especially when exposure to and use of English starts very early. The experiment tested the long-distance and local interpretations of different Korean anaphors—caki, casin, and caki-casin—by 51 Korean-English bilinguals raised in Korean-speaking families residing in the United States (22 early bilinguals and 29 late bilinguals) together with a control group of 34 Korean monolinguals residing in Korea. Overall results indicated that the bilinguals maintain the distinction between local and long-distance anaphors, though not to the same degree as monolinguals. There was a tendency among early bilinguals to choose more local binding overall compared to the late bilinguals and Korean monolinguals. At the individual level, many early bilinguals failed to differentiate between caki-casin and casin in terms of binding distance, treating both as local anaphors, whereas monolinguals and late bilinguals tended to collapse caki and casin, treating both as long distance anaphors.

An Experimental Syntactic Study of Binding of Multiple Anaphors in Korean

In this paper we investigated the binding behavior of three Korean reflexives-caki, casin, and caki-casin-through a Truth Value Judgment Task with pictures and found that while caki and caki-casin pattern as claimed in the theoretical literature, as a long-distance and a local anaphor respectively, native Korean speakers differ in how they treat casin. While the speakers as a group treat casin as an LDA, individual results revealed a bimodal distribution, with one group of speakers consistently treating casin as an LDA and another, smaller, group consistently treating it as a local anaphor. This distribution is puzzling in that the grammar of speakers who treat casin as a strictly local anaphor appears to violate the cross-linguistic generalization that morphologically simple reflexives are long-distance anaphors. We show that this problem is only apparent, since the bare form casin lends itself to two different structural analyses. In addition, we show that the greater percentage of speakers who treat casin as an LDA reflects an ongoing change in the grammar of Korean, where casin is both increasing in frequency and taking on more long distance antecedents. This assessment is supported by the sociolinguistic profiles of speakers we tested as well as the frequency and distribution of casin in Bible translations.

On the Nature of Long-Distance Anaphors

I consider two interpretive properties of long-distance anaphors: (a) they have only a pure-reflexive reading, in the sense that they fail to refer to portrayals of their antecedent, and (b) whenever possible, they must be interpreted as de se, or to put it better, as first-personal. Long-distance anaphors seem to be interpretively parallel to local reflexive construals such as those seen with inherent reflexivity and constructions of inalienable possession. Moreover, in some languages, such as Chinese and Italian, long-distance anaphors can also be locally bound, and in such cases, they pattern with self anaphors rather than with inherent reflexives. To account for this pattern, I propose that long-distance anaphors, together with the local construals mentioned above, are the spell-out of an unsaturated position, saturated in the course of the derivation via θ-identification with the antecedent.

A Feature-Based Account of Long-Distance Anaphora

In this paper, I aim to give a unified account of long-distance and localbinding phenomena and provide a single constrained theory of anaphors in the framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1992, 1994, 1995a&b). In section 1, I criticize the LF movement theory which has been argued by Lebeaux (1983), Chomsky (1986), Pica (1987, 1991), Battistella (1989), Katada (1991) and others. In section 2, I provide a feature-based account of long-distance and local binding anaphors. In section 3, I discuss how feature-raising analysis can account for apparent long-distance binding phenomena in Picture-DP(or Picture-NP) constructions which have been treated exceptionally so far. Extending Section 3, I argue in section 4 that apparent long-distance binding phenomena in constructions containing expletives and non-person NPs result from morphological properties of the anaphor. In section 5, I argue that orientation of the antecedent (i.e. subject orientation or no particular orientation) naturally results from interaction between the proposed LF structure and feature raising. Finally, in section 6, I conclude that binding reduces to morphological properties, and hence Condition A of the binding theory can be dispensed with.

Binding Principle for Long-distance Anaphors

Binding Principle for Long-distance Anaphors

Binding relations in noun phrases in Spanish

Abstract This article offers an account of binding relations between noun phrase internal elements and their potential antecedents inside or outside the noun phrase in Spanish by assuming that the distribution of constituents of a noun phrase differs minimally from the distribution of equivalent constituents inside clauses. We show that the location of a noun phrase containing anaphoric elements has important consequences on the availability of coreference relations between these elements and an outside antecedent. By assuming that anaphors or pronouns are coindexed in Spanish with a genitive clitic which optionally raises to Infl, we account for the fact that long-distance anaphors occur in the same environment where wh-movement is licensed; while pro-nominals are possible where wh-movement is illegal.