Condition R

Abstract

Reinhart and Reuland (1993) partition the set of anaphors into two syntactic subclasses: SELF anaphors, which reflexivize predicates, and SE anaphors, which, like pronominals, do not. This partition is intended to capture the antilocality of the SE anaphors. I argue that the appropriate partitioning of anaphors is semantic and not syntactic. Reinhart and Reuland's SELF anaphors are "near-reflexives," interpreted as a representation of their antecedents, whereas their SE anaphors are "pure-reflexives," requiring identity with their antecedents. The antilocality effects with pure reflexives are due to Condition R, a principle requiring reflexivity to be lexically expressed. The Condition R approach correctly accounts for the meanings of the two kinds of anaphors, grouping the near reflexives with pronominals and names, and correctly dissociates semantic reflexivity from the calculation of syntactic binding domains.

It is by now standard to define anaphors as NPs that cannot refer independently. Reinhart and Reuland (1993) further divide anaphoric NPs into two classes: those that reflexivize the predicates they are arguments of and those that do not. Referentially, however, these two types of anaphor are taken to be identical. In this article I show that this conclusion is not warranted by illustrating differences in the ways certain anaphors depend on their antecedents for reference. Although it is true that all anaphors are referentially dependent, some anaphors require complete identity with their antecedents whereas others do not. Anaphors of the first class, which I call pure-reflexives, identify the same entity in the world as their antecedents do. Anaphors of the second class, which I call near-reflexives, do not require complete identity with their antecedents; the referent of a near-reflexive can be loosely related to the referent of its antecedent by certain kinds of similarity to be made more precise below.

This distinction between pure- and near-reflexives has consequences for the theory of reflexive predicates and in conjunction with this theory enables us to explain the existence of so-called antilocal anaphors, which appear to resist binding by a coargument. I will show that the anaphors that Reinhart and Reuland claim to have the ability to reflexivize a predicate do not, in fact, ever occur as arguments of semantically reflexive predicates. The anaphors that resist binding by a coargument can occur on reflexive predicates, but only if that reflexivity is lexically expressed.

1 Predicate-Centered Binding Theory

The theory of reflexivity in generative grammar has traditionally been a theory of nominal types. NPs are identified as anaphors, pronominals, or R-expressions on the basis of the distributional properties of the elements that are coreferential with these NPs. Chomsky (1986) gives the following principles:

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1. a. An anaphor is bound in a local domain.

2. b. A pronominal is free in a local domain.

3. c. An R-expression is free (in the domain of the head of its chain).

The binding theory is thus a theory of the syntactic properties of referential dependence, specifying whether an NP requires an antecedent and the domain in which that antecedent must (or must not) be found.¹

Reinhart and Reuland (1993) (henceforth, R&R) have argued against this strictly nominal approach to binding, claiming instead that reflexivity is a property of predicates. On this view the role of reflexive pronouns in language is not to express coreference but to reflexivize predicates. The distribution of anaphors and pronominals is determined not by reference, a property of NPs, but by reflexivity, a property of predicates. From this predicate-centered perspective, an anaphor is still defined as an NP that is referentially deficient in the relevant respect, but the anaphors are broken into two types, those that reflexivize the predicates they are arguments of and those that do not.

The division into reflexivizing and nonreflexivizing anaphors is intended to capture the apparent antilocality of the nonreflexivizing ones. There are certain referentially dependent NPs that require a long-distance antecedent and not a local one. For example, the Dutch anaphor zich must be bound, but not by a coargument. The behavior of zich contrasts with that of zichzelf, which must be bound by a coargument.

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