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| INTRODUCTION |
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| Every
natural language has referentially dependent elements,
that is elements which have no or inadequate semantic
content that receive interpretation only through association
with appropriate referentially independent elements that
is those which have semantic content. Some of these dependent
elements, such as anaphors (reflexives, reciprocals, etc.)
and pronouns have phonetic content whereas others such
as PRO, pro (instances of the so-called "understood"
elements) do not. Interpretation of such elements has
always been among the concerns of grammars, ancient and
modern, and as far as the modern generative grammar is
concerned, right from its inception, it has been one of
its major concerns, for reasons that have to do with explaining
child language acquisition and that need not detain us
here. This monograph, which is a revised version of Jain
A. (1990), presents a theory of some dependent elements
in the grammar of Hindi. Crucial ideas for the theory
proposed here come from the seminal works of Chomsky's
such as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB) , Some
Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government
and Binding, and Knowledge of Language (KOL), which represent
the initial phase of the Principles and Parameters Approach.
The proposed theory has also gained enormously from insights
in ancient Indian grammars. |
| This
work restricts itself to the study of lexical anaphors
and pronouns, and PRO in the grammar of Hindi. It leaves
out the empty elements that arise as a consequence of
movement, and pro, which are within the scope of the
binding theory in the Principles and Parameters grammars.
But hopefully this does not render the theory articulated
here less genera; after all, the non-lexical element
trace is just one more anaphor, and the theory of anaphor
binding proposed in any of the seminal works cited above
does not differentiate between lexical and non-lexical
anaphors with respect of assignment of antecedent [i.e.
there are no separate rules for the assignment of antecedent
to lexical and non-lexical anaphor]. The same holds
for lexical and non-lexical pronomials and the theory
of "pronoun binding" (i.e., the Principle
B of the binding theory). Therefore although the proposed
theory does not deal with trace and pro, it does not
suffer from lack of generality on this account; it cannot
be demonstrated, it is hoped, to be inadequate to deal
with these entitities. This study in fact extends the
scope of discussion of anaphor binding by bringing,
for the first time, into the discourse on binding the
so-called emphatic reflexive element. |
As
practitioners of the science of generative linguistics,
often the expectation from those like us who study new
languages within the framework of an existing theory
is that we explore the possibilities of this theory
to account for new facts, an exercise which indeed is
theory-testing, and suggest modifications for the theory
in case the facts turn out to be refractory on careful
analysis, rather than propose a different theory, thereby
inviting the criticism that we are too hasty in abandoning
the existing theory and opting out of the global effort
to improve the same. Such cooperative effort alone,
one might argue, can result in arriving at more insightful
and better scientific theories. This work is likely
to give one the feeling that we did not explore the
full possibilities of the existing theory when we encountered
what we thought were counter examples to it and without
making a serious effort to accommodate the problematic
data, gave into the temptation of working out a different
theory rather too hastily. |
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