One True Anaphor

1.0 Introduction In this paper I will argue that there is only one true anaphor in natural language which takes many shapes. Building on the idea that some pronouns are constructed and others are 'native born' with features, as suggested in Kratzer (2009), I suggest further that, just like locally bound variables, all non-locally anteceded bound variable pronouns that are traditionally bound (c-commanded) are the spell-out of a special, but universally available, dependent form, which I call D-bound. At the heart of my proposal is the assumption that all bound anaphora, locally or at a distance, is achieved by a single, universally available, grammatical form, D-bound, the one true syntactically sensitive anaphor. The following assumptions are made about D-bound. 1) Properties of D-bound a) Always a variable-D-bound is the same object in SEM in all cases-it is interpreted as a bound variable regardless of its phi-features. b) Always bound-D-bound must be bound in a c-command configuration. c) Always feature compatible-D-bound must be feature compatible with its antecedent (informally, antecedent agreement) d) Morphological shape conditions-Spell-out of morphological shape of D-bound is potentially sensitive to whether binding is phase internal (essentially following Kratzer, 2009). i. Agreement compatible with morphological shape may be determined by phase-internal factors locally distinct from antecedent agreement. ii. D-bound enters the derivation with phi-features arbitrarily assigned to it. iii. Anywhere phase-internal shape is not required, D-bound receives default pronominal shape. D-bound spells out differently depending on when and how it is bound and agreed with. The idea is that the phonological shape of surface pronouns has two origins: Either the universal bound form D-bound is given pronominal shape as a default and random phi-features if it is not bound at the end of a phase, or it is given the shape of a local bindee if bound within a phase. D-bound, however, is never well-formed if free (even when it looks like a pronoun). Binding requires feature compatibility wherever it holds, however compatibility is achieved (unification, matching, non-conflict) as conditioned by local or default shape and the nature of the antecedent. The existence of local anaphoric shape is thus not expected to be a universal, though there are functional pressures for local anaphora resolution that can exploit phase-internal binding. Arguments that local binding should reduce entirely to Agree (locally), or that distance binding should reduce to context shift, are rejected, but the role of heads in effecting binding …