qu: reconstruction effects

[Florian Jaeger]

Hello everyone,

are there any recent LFG accounts on binding in picture NPs or did that
get
out of focus/grammar? Here an example:

(1) Peter saw a picture of himself/him.
(2) Peter saw Mary's [who else] picture of himself/him.

(no judgments intended; though Keller & Asudeh clearly show that (1) is
ok/* and (2) is ok/ok)

I am aware of Asudeh, Keller, Runner et al. on the
experimental/theoretical
side and Dalrymple's discussion in her '93 book (I couldn't find anything
about it in the 2001 book; neither did I see anything about picture NPs in
Bresnan 2001).

I am especially interested in any discussion of reconstruction effects, as
in the examples below (we probably won't find reconstruction IN LFG =),
but
maybe discussion of it?):*

(3) Which picture of himself/him did Peter buy?

Some people have argued that the acceptability of an anaphor (confirmed by
an experiment I finished) in (3) is due to reconstruction of the fronted
wh-phrase in LF. This raises other problems (movement is not compatible
with certain order effects in which-phrases, Pesetsky 1982, but there are
problems with the interpretation of which-phrases if not moved, Reinhart
1990, etc.). So, some people have suggested something that allows
anaphoric
chains to be accessible to binding (e.g. Barss 1986, as cited by Cheng
1997). In other words, the whole story isn't that beautiful.

Thx a lot for your attention,

Florian

========================================

*Thx to Ash for bringing those examples to my attention.