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Chapter 21 - Binding

The Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics of Reflexive and Nonreflexive Pronouns

from Part III - Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

By
Vera Lee-Schoenfeld
Edited by
Michael T. Putnam  and
B. Richard Page
Michael T. Putnam
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
B. Richard Page
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

This chapter discusses anaphoric elements, i.e., reflexive and nonreflexive pronouns, their syntactic distribution, their morphological structure, and how they get their reference (their semantics). While the main goal is to give a descriptive overview, the chapter also introduces two landmark theories proposed to account for the distribution of anaphoric elements: Chomsky’s (1981, 1986) classic Binding Theory and Reinhart and Reuland’s (1993) “Reflexivity” approach. The initial concern is with the basic complementarity of reflexive and nonreflexive pronouns in English and German but also with certain instances of noncomplementarity, including logophoric uses of reflexive pronouns in English. The chapter then deals with anaphoric elements in Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic, focusing on so-called SELF versus SE anaphors, and, where applicable, also on possessive reflexives. Special attention is paid to the comparison between Dutch zichzelf and German sich (selbst).

Keywords

Binding Theoryreflexivityanaphoric element‘non’reflexive pronounbinding domain‘non’complementaritylogophorSELF vs. SE anaphorpossessive reflexivelong-distance reflexive
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics , pp. 493 - 515
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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