Matrix unloaded: binding in a local derivational approach

Abstract

The central question I address in this article is a theoretical one: is it possible to integrate binding into a local derivational syntactic approach, and what would the theoretical consequences of such an enterprise be? The answer to the first question is positive: I thus develop an approach to binding that takes into account both the crosslinguistic variation we encounter in the field of reflexivity and universal generalizations that can be observed with respect to binding. The theory I propose basically works as follows: (i) Binding corresponds to feature checking between binder and bindee (=:x); (ii) The concrete realization of x is determined during the course of the derivation in an optimality-theoretic competition. In the beginning, x is equipped with a realization matrix that contains its possible realizations (anaphoric or pronominal specifications); (iii) After the completion of each phrase, optimization takes place and might restrict x's realization matrix depending on the respective language and the domain that has been reached. As a result, anaphoric specifications might be deleted; (iv) When checking takes place, the optimal realization matrix of x is mapped to PF, where the concrete realization of x is finally determined in a postsyntactic process.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 28 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.