Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Determiners: articles and pronouns 809
A. The classical version of the Binding Theory
Most of the research on binding is based on the empirical observation that English
referential and reflexive personal pronouns are in complementary distribution. The
same thing holds for the Dutch referential and complex reflexive pronouns. This is
illustrated in the primeless examples in (380a&b), where coreferentiality is
indicated by means of italics. The primed examples serve the purpose of showing
that referential phrases normally cannot be used when a referential or reflexive
pronoun is possible; these examples are excluded on the intended reading,
according to which Jan and de jongen refer to the same individual.
(380) a. Ik denk dat Jan zichzelf/*hem bewondert.
I think that Jan himself/*him admires
‘I think that Jan admires himself.’
a′. *Ik denk dat Jan de jongen bewondert.
I think that Jan the boy admires
b. Jan denkt dat ik hem/*zichzelf bewonder.
Jan thinks that I him/himself admire
‘Jan thinks that I admire him.’
b′. *Jan denkt dat ik de jongen bewonder.
Jan thinks that I the boy admire
Data like (380) were accounted for by means of Binding Theory, which found its
classical formulation in the so-called binding conditions proposed in Chomsky
(1981). Although alternative proposals have been formulated since then, we will
take the somewhat simplified formulation of these conditions in (381) as point of
departure for our discussion.
(381) • Classic Binding conditions
a. Reflexive and reciprocal personal pronouns are bound within their local domain.
b. Referential personal pronouns are free (= not bound) within their local domain.
c. Referential noun phrases like Jan or de jongen ‘the boy’ are free.
Let us start by clarifying some of the notions used in these conditions. A noun
phrase is said to be bound when it is coreferential with a c-commanding antecedent.
The notion of c-command refers to an asymmetric syntactic relation between the
constituents in a sentence. Although the relation is generally defined in structural
terms, it also seems possible to express it by means of the hierarchy in (382), where
A > B indicates that A c-commands B and everything that is embedded in B.
(382) C-command hierarchy:
subject > direct object > indirect object > PP-complement > adjunct
We will apply the notions of binding and c-command to the examples in (380). We
can say that the reflexive pronoun zichzelf in (380a) is bound by the noun phrase
Jan given that the latter is a subject and the former a direct object. We can also say
that the referential pronoun hem in (380b) is bound by matrix subject Jan given that
the latter c-commands the direct object sentence that contains the pronoun (recall
that A > B indicates that A c-commands B and everything that is embedded in B).