reflexives in subject position

[David Pesetsky]

At 10:30 AM -0800  2/17/00, cmanning at SULTRY.ARTS.USYD.EDU.AU wrote:
> On 17 February 2000, David Pesetsky wrote:
>  > Even in Japanese, the bimorphemic zibun-zisin is supposed to differ from
>  > zibun in requiring the nearest subject as its antecedent -- yet it is fine
>  > in nominative subject position, unlike Standard English -self forms.
>
> The emphasis here being on "is supposed to differ" -- while this
> putative requirement has been maintained in a number of formal syntax
> papers so that "Principle A" arguments can be made, it is of rather
> doubtful validity.  (This is briefly discussed on pp. 63-64 of Manning,
> Sag, and Iida, The lexical integrity of Japanese causatives in Levine
> and Green eds. Studies in Contemporary Phrase Structure Grammar.)

I don't have that book here.  What is the claim, that there is no effect of
intervening subjects, or that there is an effect, but it's more complicated?

-DP
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David Pesetsky  [pesetsk at mit.edu]
Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
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