Introduction

Recent research shows that anaphoric elements pattern in at least two different ways: some of them obey a strict locality condition, and others do not. In the first case an anaphor requires an antecedent in a local domain and in the second case the binding domain is extended. Local domains and their extensions may vary from language to language. The goal of this chapter is to present a description of binding domains for Polish anaphors.

Polish is a Slavonic language. The group of Slavonic languages has hardly been investigated in the light of the binding theory developed in Chomsky (1981). Some of the facts to be discussed will be unexpected from the perspective of current theory. I trust that the conditions under which they can be accommodated will shed light on the nature of parametrization.

Section 2 of this chapter presents Polish binding facts. Section 2.1 gives some general background about Polish, and 2.2 about the Polish anaphoric/pronominal system. Anaphoric relations within simplex clauses are described in 2.3 and anaphoric relations across clause boundaries in 2.4 (clauses with tenseless complements) and 2.5 (clauses with participial complements). The NP as a binding domain will be discussed in 2.6.

Section 3 of this chapter discusses the binding theory for Polish. In 3.1 binding domains for anaphors are investigated, and in 3.2 domains for pronominals. In the last section (3.3) it will be shown how the binding theory applies to Polish.