Weak Crossover and the Absence of Traces

[Yehuda N. Falk]

At 11:26 23/10/00 -0700, you wrote:
>We would be very interested in comments on the proposal sketched below.
>
>  - Mary, Ron, and Tracy

Interesting idea, but I think I see a problem.

The essence of the proposal, if I understand it correctly, is that
binding-theory prominence (or rank) in terms of linear precedence is based
not on the f-precedence relation holding between the anaphor and its
antecedent, but f-precedence defined on coarguments which contain the
anaphor and antecedent.

>   Coargument linear prominence: a relation of prominence among
>   coarguments defined in terms of f-precedence; an argument A of a
>   predicate is more prominent than its coargument B if A f-precedes B.
>
>It is generally accepted that basic prominence relations are defined
>on coarguments for thematic prominence and syntactic rank, which are
>traditionally defined only for coarguments of a single predicate.  Our
>proposal differs from previous ones in that linear precedence between
>coarguments is taken to be the relation that is primarily relevant for
>defining linear prominence.  Relative to the basic coargument
>relations of prominence, we define indirect prominence relations for
>elements contained in coarguments:
>
>   Thematic/syntactic/linear prominence: A is more
>   thematically/syntactically/linear prominent than B if the f-structure
>   for A is the same as or contained in some A', the f-structure for B is
>   the same as or contained in some B', and A' outranks B' in coargument
>   thematic/syntactic/linear prominence.

It seems to me that this will pose a problem for the LFG account of
precedence effects in anaphora in languages like Japanese and Malayalam.

Japanese (Kameyama)

*[Kare no  imooto o]  [Taroo ga]  sewasiteiru       (koto)
   he   GEN sister ACC  Taro  NOM  be.taking.care.of (that)

  [Imooto o] [Taroo ga]  sewasiteiru       (koto)
  sister ACC  Taro  NOM  be.taking.care.of (that)

  '...(that) Taro_i was taking care of his_i sister'


Malayalam (Mohanan) [diacritics omitted]

  [awan anaye        nulliyatinE seesam] [kutti] uraNNi
   he   elephant.ACC pinched.it  after    child  slept
   'The child_i slept after he_j pinched the elephant.'

  [anaye        nulliyatinE seesam] [kutti] uraNNi
   elephant.ACC pinched.it  after    child  slept
   'The child_i slept after he_i,j pinched the elephant.'

Under the standard LFG approach, the grammaticality of the sentences with
the null pronouns is due to the special f-precedence properties of
non-c-structure elements (either no f-precedence or vacuous mutual
f-precedence, depending on which definition you use). But this is based
crucially on the f-precedence ban being stated in terms of the anaphor
itself. If you move up to the level of the coargument of the intended
antecedent (bracketed), you no longer have any f-precedence difference
between the overt and null pronouns.

This difficulty does not hold in Sag's analysis, which provided the
inspiration for Mary/Ron/Tracy's idea. Quoting from Sag:

Linear Precedence Condition
No pronoun p may precede a constituent whose STORE contains the binder of p.

Syntactic Rank Condition
If a constituent C contains a pronoun p, then C's synsem may not o-command
[=be higher on the functional/relational hierarchy than] any synsem whose
STORE contains the binder of p.

There is an asymmetry between Sag's two conditions: syntactic rank is based
on elements containing the anaphor and its antecedent, but linear
precedence rank is based on the *anaphor itself* and an element containing
the antecedent. But then I think that if you were to introduce this
asymmetry your explanation of the German (5) would fail. (I'm not going to
work out whether it's a problem for Sag's analysis.)

And a historical note:

>Thus, our new definition of prominence accounts for weak crossover
>without assuming traces, allowing a return to the earlier traceless
>LFG account of long-distance binding.

Of course, the earliest LFG account of long-distance dependencies (Kaplan
and Bresnan 1982) was traceful. :)


                           Yehuda N. Falk
       Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
                     Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel
                        msyfalk at mscc.huji.ac.il
      Personal Web Site    http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msyfalk/
     Departmental Web Site    http://atar.mscc.huji.ac.il/~english/

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