Terms of Binding

Abstract

The present dissertation aimed at achieving two goals. First, it constitutes an attempt to widen the search for phenomena that bear relevance to the idea that binding has a syntactic residue and is not, therefore, an exclusively semantic matter. Second, it tried to provide the technical means to account for these phenomena.

The case of the non-local binding of the Romanian bare reflexive sine (self) is used to back up the view that the syntactic residue of binding exists and should be extended so as to include A’-dependencies. Syntactically-encoded non-local binding is defined as a type of binding dependency that violates the Specified Subject Constraint. Non-locally bound anaphors, of the type instantiated by sine, are identified by a set of properties that include: subject orientation, c-command by both the local and the non-local antecedents and the restriction to the bound variable reading. There are diagnostics that point to the conclusion that non-local anaphors that meet these properties link up to their antecedents as the result of an A’-dependency having been established. The diagnostics include (i) the ungrammaticality of non-local binding out of adjunct islands and its very marginal acceptability out of relative clause islands and (ii) blocking of non-local binding by local wh-antecedents and quantified antecedents. The possibility of Romanian non-local sine to enter an A’-dependency with its non-local antecedents is determined by the morpho-syntactic properties of this bare reflexive form, i.e. by the feature specification it carries from the Lexicon.