Subject Anaphors: Exempt or Not Exempt?

Pollard and Sag (1992) reformulate Principle A of Principles-and-Parameters binding theory in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) in order to account for anaphors that occupy an exempt position, as himself does in (1) (Pollard and Sag's (14b)).

(1) John knew that the reports about himself were fabricated.

Exempt positions are what Büring (2003) calls "noncomplementary" positions, where both reflexives and nonreflexives could be used; in other words, in such positions reflexives and nonreflexives are not in complementary distribution. If a reflexive is used, then it does not have a local binder—though, as Pollard and Sag hold, it may be subject to other, nonsyntactic constraints.

In HPSG binding theory, subject anaphors are predicted to be inherently exempt anaphors. Apparently, however, the theory limits subject anaphors to subject positions of "non-finite ('small') clauses" (Pollard 2005:2). The reason is that originally the theory's main focus was on English, where anaphors do not occupy the subject position of finite clauses. Pollard and Sag (1992:290) hold that "in English, anaphors simply have no nominative forms" and, thus, a sentence like (2) is ungrammatical.

(2) *Herself ran away.

Nevertheless, subject anaphors do occur in other languages, such as Thai and Chinese, as Woolford (1999) points out. Woolford, however, does not mention whether an anaphor in such a position can occur without a local binder and thus be exempt, as the theory predicts (Büring 2003:312). The purpose of this squib is to test this prediction by presenting an account of the behavior of subject anaphors in Thai and Chinese, using HPSG binding theory.

The Thai and Chinese anaphors examined here are local subject anaphors. Local anaphors take a clause-internal antecedent and are not subject to clause-external binding. Subject anaphors are predicted to be inherently exempt from clause-internal binding. Therefore, the prediction is that local subject anaphors should be exempt from any obligatory binding and that they are only subject to nonsyntactic constraints.

Section 1 presents an overview of the theory. Section 2 gives more relevant details about Woolford's (1999) account of subject anaphors. Section 3 presents Thai and Chinese data along with their analysis. Section 4 provides a summary and a conclusion.

1 HPSG Binding Theory: Exempt Anaphors

English displays structures in which reflexives and nonreflexives are in complementary distribution.

(3) John_i admires himself_i/*k/him_*i/k.

But it also displays structures in which reflexives and nonreflexives are in noncomplementary distribution.

(4) John_i saw a picture of himself_i/him_i/j.
(Büring 2003:291-292)

Pollard and Sag (1992) reformulate Principle A of binding theory in the framework of HPSG in order to account for reflexives that occur in noncomplementary positions. The authors hold that an anaphor that occurs in a noncomplementary position "lacks a local o-commander" and is thus "exempt from principle A" (p. 287). In Pollard and Sag's theory, Principle A reads as follows:

(5) "A locally o-commanded anaphor must be locally o-bound."
(Pollard and Sag 1992:287)

O stands for obliqueness, which is characterized in terms of relations between grammatical functions, whereby a subject is less oblique than a primary object, which is in turn less oblique than a second object (Pollard and Sag 1992:266). Local o-command and local o-binding are defined as follows:¹

(6) A locally o-commands B just in case A is a less oblique coargument than B. (based on Pollard and Sag 1992:287, Pollard and Xue 1998:293)

(7) "A locally o-binds B just in case A and B are coindexed and A locally o-commands B." (Pollard and Sag 1992:287, Pollard and Xue 1998:293)

Since a locally o-bound anaphor is by definition coindexed with a less oblique coargument, an object anaphor can be o-bound by a subject, but a subject anaphor (being the least oblique) cannot be locally o-bound at all. Therefore, an anaphor in a subject position—if a language allows such a thing—must be an exempt anaphor, trivially obeying Principle A.² This idea...