Page 235 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

2.2 Bound Variables
If the interpretation of anaphora just involved coref- erence, then an example like (41) would mean that Max read John's mail, for the reconstructed VP would be 'read John's mail.'
John, read his, mail and Max did too. (41)
However, this sentence clearly has another interpret- ation, under which Max read his own mail. This is even clearer in (42). (Note that the concern here is only with the set of possible interpretations; the issue is not about preferences for a particular interpretation on a particular occasion of utterance.)
John, read his, mail before Max did. (42)
Here, the content of the VP that is being reconstructed and predicated of Max seems not to be what is para- phrased in (43a), but (43b).
(a) An x such that x read John's mail. (43) (b) An x such that x read x's mail.
The second 'x' corresponds to the pronoun, and indi- cates that the pronoun is being interpreted like a vari- able (say, a variable in first-order logic); its reference varies with whatever value is assigned to x. Hence, this is known as the 'bound variable' interpretation of a pronoun.
Following the interpretation of a variable in logic, it can be shown that reference is not relevant at all for the bound variable interpretation of a pronoun. In (44), the existence of any relevant individuals is denied, but the pronoun still may take the NP no manager as its antecedent, and receives a bound vari- able interpretation—whichever manager one chooses, it is not the case that he read his mail on Friday.
No manager, read his, mail on Friday. (44)
Additionally, a pronoun may only be bound as a variable by a quantifier which has scope over it. Consequently, while anaphora is possible in (45a), it is blocked in (45b).
(a) Each guest, brought a present which she, had (45) picked out at Macy's.
(b) Each guest, brought a present. *She, had picked it out at Macy's.
Even though the coreferential and bound variable uses of pronouns are distinct, they both obey the Bind- ing Theory: in (46) below, the quantified NP every ballerina may (logically) take scope over the rest of the sentence, but nevertheless the anaphora indicated is not possible. This is because the syntactic con- figuration violates Principle C ofBT.
"She, danced on every ballerina,'s toes. (46)
These observations indicate that the coindexing that BT refers to may not have a uniform semantic
interpretation: sometimes it may represent coref- erence, and sometimes the binding of a variable (see Evans 1980, Reinhart 1983).
2.3 E-type Pronouns
Examples like the following have been claimed to show that other interpretations of anaphora are poss- ible.
Farmer Jones owns some sheep,. The village vet (47) examines them, every spring.
The reasoning is as follows: the antecedent some sheep does not really refer to a particular group of sheep, but rather just asserts the existence of some such group. Hence it would be odd to think of the pronoun them as coreferring. Yet, if the pronoun were inter- preted in the other way, as a variable, then (47) should have an exact paraphrase in (48) (a relative pronoun always gets the variable interpretation).
Farmer Jones owns some sheep, which, the village (48) vet examines every spring.
However, the two do not seem to mean the same thing; (47) seems to say that the vet examines all of Jones's sheep, while (48) seems to say that the vet only exam- ines some of them. Hence, the pronoun is not receiving the variable interpretation, either. This new interpret- ation is known as the 'E-type reading' (after G. Evans).
In other examples, the pronoun is clearly neither coreferential with its antecedent, nor a bound vari- able.
Themanwhogavehispaycheck,tohiswifeiswiser (49) than the one who gave it, to his mistress.
Here, the pronoun seems to be functioning simply as a shorthand for a repetition of its antecedent (his paycheck).
3. Conclusion
The period since the mid-1960s has seen significant progress in the understanding of the range and com- plexity of anaphoric types, the most prominent of which have been surveyed here. However, many important aspects of analysis still remain to be dis- covered, for example for the 'paycheck' sentence just mentioned, or the weak crossover structures in (14). The bibliography cites works which have been influ- ential in setting out problems and/or suggesting approaches for their solution.
Bibliography
Chomsky N 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht
Evans G 1980 Pronouns. Lin 11:337-62
Faltz L M 1985 Reflexivization, A Study in Universal Syntax.
Garland Publishing, New York
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