Theory of binding Book

 
TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE
THEORY OF BINDING
Abhilasha Jain
and
B.N. Patnaik
The symmetrical predicates can take either of the following as antecedent:
a)   agent and an explicit target
b)   plural agent with or without target
Consider the following examples which validate (a):
(111)   iran ne iraq se yudh kiya
iran CM iraq CM war do+PAST
(Iran fought with Ira.)
(112)   gorbachev ne rajiv gandhi se vartalap kiya
gorbachev CM rajiv gandhi CM conversaton do
                                                      +PAST
(Gorbachev held talks with Rajiv Gandhi.)
(113)   (113) iran ne yudh kiya
iran CM war do+PAST
(114)   gorbachev CM conversation do+PAST
Consider (115) and (116) which provide suport for (b):
(115)  
(100)  
vartalap kiya
conversaton do+PAST
(Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi held talks (with each other)).
Since these are symmetric predicates, when they have plural agents, they need not occur with explicit targets (themes) because the symmetrical nature of the predicate expresses the same. However, if at all they do occur with target, then, of necessity, the target has to be an anaphoric element expressing reciprocity. This accounts for the optionality of paraspar in (115) and (116). Notice that the predicates in (115) and (116) are agentive and paraspar, of necessity, chooses agent as its antecedent.
Why does paraspar not choose perceivers as antecedents? Symmetric predicates do not take dative subjects. Predicates in dative subject constructions take perceivers and themes alone as their arguments. Such predicates do not take target as one of their arguments. But since the symmetric predicate takes target, it never occurs in the dative subject construction. The impossibility of the occurrence of symmetric predicates in dative subject construction rules out the possibility of paraspar occurring in these constructions and therefore of paraspar choosing a perceiver as antecedent.
Thus we find that paraspar, apneap and svayam all choose agents as antecedents. In our discussion we maintained that svayam and apneap are in some sense "human instrumentals" and paraspar, a target. It amounts to saying that they have semantic roles but, then, while motivating the distinction betwwen A and N.A-apnaphors in Hindi we had maintained that these are not arguments because they cannot occur in argument positions. Recall Chomsky's remarks, in this respect (Chomsky: 1981b: 103, 147). Discussing sentences like "John is widely/generally belived to be a liar", Chomsky observes that the optional adverbial has the theta-role "agent".
In view of the above, (15), (52), (65), (86) and (87) can now be stated as follows:
Previous Next Top
 
Theory of Binding Page
 
FeedBack | Contact Us | Home
ciil grammar footer