[Lingtyp] Cross-linguistic research on "binding" domains and the (non)complementarilty of pronouns and reflexives

[Adam James Ross Tallman]

Hello all,

I apologize for the long title and obtuse topic :)

In a recent book praising the new advances of minimalist syntax Hornstein
called *The Merge Hypothesis* states

"Cross-linguistic work on binding has shown the complementary distribution
of reflexives and bound pronouns to be robust across natural languages, and
so deriving the complementarity has become a boundary condition on the
empirical adequacy of binding theories." (p.24)

I found this comment somewhat surprising because I thought
noncomplementarity between pronouns and reflexives had been shown by
Levinson (see "Pragmatic reduction of the binding principles revisited") at
least in some cases ... ?

I suppose though that this comment implicitly discards "marginal" or
"peripheral" cases. As we all know there is a well established methodology
for discarding outlier cases, and so we need not worry at all.

Anyways, I'm interested in the following:

1. Work on the (non)complementarity of reflexives and pronouns in languages
apart from English.

2. Typological (more than one language) work on this question showing how
the domains that licit pronouns and reflexives should be established.

best,

Adam



-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
Post-doctoral Researcher
Friedrich Schiller Universität
Department of English Studies
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