Page 232 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Reference
(a) The children, love theirf/each other,'s (15) parents.
(b) John, expected that a picture of him,/himself, would be in today's newspaper.
Such deviations from fully complementary dis- tribution of anaphors and pronominals can be accounted for either by permitting the domains of Principles A and B to be different, or by exempting certain pronouns from the principles. Both strategies have been explored in the literature; the issue remains an active topic of research. The complexity of the problem is compounded in languages like Norwegian which have possessive forms of reflexive pronouns, as seen in (16).
Jon, beundrer sin,/*hans, mor. (16) John admires self's/*his mother
In this case, it seems that the obligatory use of the possessive reflexive blocks a similar interpretation for the possessive pronoun, even though in other cases, such as (17) below, an alternation like that seen in (15) is more readily available.
Jon, gjorde oss glad i huset sitt,/hans,. (17) John made us fond of house self's/his
The idea that pronouns may be exempt from normal binding conditions in certain positions is supported by the existence of certain cases where anaphors are coreferential with antecedents which do not c-command them (18).
John/smostprized possessionisthepictureof (18) himself, hanging in the living room.
By definition, such an anaphor is not bound; hence, nomodificationofthecharacterization ofthedomains of the binding principles can cover such examples. Rather, they seem to be subject to a different set of constraints (see Sect. 1.4 for discussion of a related phenomenon).
1.3 Choice of Antecedents
In Sect. 1.2, the question of determining the domain in which antecedents are found has been treated. How- ever, there are other constraints on the choice of ante- cedent even within the specified domain. For example, in many languages, but not English, only subject NPs can be antecedents for reflexive pronouns.
Norwegian is such a language. It has four anaphoric (sets of) forms, excluding the reciprocal. The pronoun ham is just like English him, and must be free in its clause, so both (19c) and (19d) are acceptable.
Another form is ham selv (lit. 'him self'), and this must be bound to a nonsubject within its clause. Unlike English, then, (20a) is ungrammatical.
(a) *Ola, snakket om ham selv,. (20) Ola talked about himself
(b) Vi fortalte Ola, om ham selv,.
210
(a) *Ola, snakket om ham,. Ola talked about him
(b) *Vi fortalte Ola, om ham,. We told Ola about him
(c) Ola, vet at vi snakket om
Ola knows that we talked about him 'Ola knows that we talked about him.'
(19)
Subject-orientation of anaphors (those forms which must be bound, in some domain) is very common. Interestingly, reciprocals typically do not show such subject-orientation. For example, the Russian reflex- ive sebja must be bound to a subject, while the recipro- cal drug druga can be bound to nonsubjects.
Another not uncommon choice for antecedent is the 'logical subject/ intuitively, the agent of the action. Compare the Norwegian examples in (23) with the Marathi examples in (24).
(a) *En politimann, arresterte Jon, i sin,,v (23) kj0kkenhave.
A policeman, arrested John, in self(/./s kitchen-garden.
(b) Jon/ ble arrestert av en politimann i sin.,v> kjekkenhave.
John/ was arrested by a policemen, in self.^'s kitchen-garden.
ham,.
We told Ola about himself 1
'We told Ola about himself.
(c) *Ola, vet at vi snakket om ham selv,.
Ola knows that we talked about himself
The form seg is one that must take a subject ante- cedent. That antecedent must lie within the local tensed domain, but outside of the most local clause. This distinguishes examples (21c) and (2Id). Hence, seg will only appear inside of infinitival clauses, and may in principle be arbitrarily far away from its ante- cedent, so long as only nonfinite clauses intervene.
(a) *Ola, snakket om seg,. Ola talked about self
(b) *Vi fortalte Ola, om seg,. We told Ola about self
(c) *Ola, vet at vi snakket om
Ola knows that we talked about self
(d) Ola, bad osssnakkeom seg,. Ola asked us to-talk about self 'Ola asked us to talk about him.'
(21)
In(21c)segisboundbyasubjectoutsideofitsminimal tensed domain, and so the example is bad. In (2Id) the embedded clause is nonfinite, and this allows seg to take the matrix subject as antecedent.
Finally,theformsegselvmustbeboundtoasubject within its clause.
(a) Ola, snakket om seg selv,. Ola talked about self
'Ola talked about himself.'
(b) *Vi fortalte Ola, om seg selv,. We told Ola about self
(c) *Ola, vet at vi snakket om
Ola knows that we talked about self
(22)
seg,
seg selv,.