Theory of binding Book

 
TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE
THEORY OF BINDING
Abhilasha Jain
and
B.N. Patnaik
Section V: a
We now turn to the issue of the domain in which an anaphor must find its antecedent. It may be recalled that we have argued that the notion of "governing category" cannot account for the occurrence of the anaphor in the so-called dative subject construction. Thus, there is a need for an alternative notion of the binding domain.
To start with, the binding domain of an anaphor is the minimal proposition (henceforth P) where proposition is a construction containing the anaphor/pronoun, the anaphor's or pronoun's predicate and the mukhya of that predicate. A certain subset of Ss, namely, those containing agentive etc. predicates, the ka-na NPs in which the predicate is always agentive and some instance of [X ka Y], where Y is a simple or a derived noun, qualify as P under this formulation. Consider the following:
(132) ram ka moh
ram CM attachment
(Ram's attachment.)
(133) pani ka ghara
water CM pot
( Water's pot = Pot of water)
(132) is ambiguous in the well-known way: (a) ram is the target of someone's moh and (b) ram is the one who is in the state of moh for something or somebody. As such, it is only in the latter interpretation that ram is the mukhya. Hence, it is only in this interpretation that (132) qualifies to be a P.
(133) does not qualify to be a propostion since it does not contain a mukhya.
The notion of P is reminiscent of the notion of "Complete Functional Complex" (CFC) of Chomsky; 1986a; 169). However, it is the clearly different form notion of CFC in that CFC involves grammatical function while the notion of P does not.
We now propose (134) as the statement of the binding of an anaphor in Hindi:
(134) an anaphor must be bound in P where bound
means be assigned a mukhya as antecedent.
However, as already pointed out the theory does not prevent an anaphor from being a mukhya or part of the mukhya phrase. The binding principle (134) needs to be relaxed in the light of this since it will undergenerate. Therefore (135).
(135) an anaphor must be bound in P if P contains a
mukhya distinct from the anaphor.
The following logically follows from the requirement that anaphors have to be bound in the smallest possible domain: if the mukhya is not distinct from the anaphor or contains the anaphor then the anaphor must be bound in the P , where P is the proposition immediately containing P. Needless to say that P is the smallest possible domain for such an anaphor. Thus, (135) must be supplemented by (136).
(136) an anaphor must be bound in P such that is
does not violate (135).
However, the following of data show that (135) is inadequate to account for the anaphor-antecedent relationship in Hindi:
(137) *[ram aur mohan] ne socha               ki ek dusre ghar
                      i                                       i
ram an mohan CM think+PAST COMP each other home
jayenge
go+FUTURE
(138) mohan ne [(e) khana khate hue apne dost] ko
mohan CM food eat PART self's friend CM dekha
see+PAST
(Mohan saw his friend eating food.)
In (137), the P of ek dusre is ek dusre ghar jayenge. This is an instance of an anaphor being the mukhya. In terms of (136) it will look for an antecedent in P which is root S. It does have a possible antecedent in ram aur mohan. Thus, (136) is satisfied. Yet, the sentence is ungrammatical.
Consider (138). It has an embedded relative clause khana khate hue apne dost which has the structure given below (ignoring many details):
(139)
The NP apna dost is the P for the anaphor apna. The P for the anaphor is the root S where mohan is the mukhya. NP* is not P for apna because it does not contain a distinct mukhya because (e) being coindexed with apna dost. The embedded S in (137) is tensed while in (138) it is non. The ungrammaticality of (137) shows that an anaphor cannot look for an antecedent beyond the tensed S. In view of this, we revise (136) to (140).
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