Tibor Kiss Reflexivity and Dependency

Reflexivity and Dependency

The analyses of Pollard and Sag (1992, 1994) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993) answer why certain reflexive pronouns – so-called picture-NP-reflexives – behave anomalously in allowing co-reference with nonbinding antecedents. These reflexives are exempt from Binding Theory’s Principle A because Principle A only requires binding if a potential antecedent is available in a given local domain. The r...

Tibor Kiss Anaphora and Exemptness a Comparative Treatment of Anaphoric Binding

(1) a. Johni likes himselfi/*j. b. *Johni knows Billj likes himselfi. Since exempt anaphors are exempt from Principle A of Binding Theory, they do not have to be bound syntactically. Instead, their behavior with respect to possible coindexations is determined by pragmatic and discourse factors, such as logophoricity. The behavior of exempt anaphors in the grammar of English can be illustrated b...

Constraint-Based Approaches to Germanic Syntax

Reflections on Reflexivity: Sociological Issues and Perspectives

Reflexivity is actually a key term in the dramatic and rapid changes confronted by the human sciences (especially sociology) during the last four decades and “yet the word is used in so many different senses that it often sustains confusion rather than clarifying any underlying issues” (Holland, 1999: 463). In general, reflexivity was comprehensively defined by George Herbert Mead as “the turni...

Measuring the Productivity of Determinerless PPs

We determine the productivity of determinerless PPs in German quantitatively, restricting ourselves to the preposition unter. The study is based on two German newspaper corpora, comprising some 210 million words. The problematic construction, i.e. unter followed by a determinerless singular noun occurs some 16.000 times in the corpus. To clarify the empirical productivity of the construction, w...