This volume is a collection of original articles on the nature of the anaphoric systems in a variety of languages and from a number of different perspectives. The aim of the editors is to provide a new impetus to the study of long-distance anaphors, a phenomenon with ramifications that are rather puzzling from the perspective of the binding theory in its canonical form (as in Chomsky (1981)). All of the contributions are concerned with extending that theory in a manner that is as restrictive as possible. Some of the solutions solidly remain within the domain of the structural binding theory. In other cases, developing a restrictive theory required recognizing different components in binding, and assigning a specific role to pragmatic factors. Many of the articles converge, however, in important respects, leading to considerable simplification of the overall picture. The patterns found in the languages covered are so consistent that they cannot be accidental (although one would certainly wish to investigate a larger number of languages).

Most of the articles originated as contributions to a workshop on long-distance anaphora organized by the Department of Linguistics of Groningen University, 18–20 June 1987. The editors added a first chapter in which the main results of the volume are put together. The original plans were for this chapter to be written by the editors together with Tanya Reinhart, who participated in the workshop as a discussant.