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

[Martin Haspelmath]

On reflexives and other anaphoric pronouns, I would point to the 
following recent works (the last three of them rather generative):

Cole, Peter & Hermon, Gabriella & Yanti. 2015. Grammar of binding in the 
languages of the world: Innate or learned? /Cognition/ 141. 138–160. 
(doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.04.005 
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.04.005>)
Janic, Katarzyna & Puddu, Nicoletta & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2023. 
/Reflexive constructions in the world’s languages/. Berlin: Language 
Science Press. (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/284)
Middleton, Hannah Jane. 2020. /*ABA syncretism patterns in pronominal 
morphology/. /Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London)./ London: 
UCL (University College London). (PhD thesis.) 
(https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10105591/)
Müller, Stefan. 2021. Anaphoric binding. In Müller, Stefan & Abeillé, 
Anne & Borsley, Robert D. & Koenig, Jean-Pierre (eds.), /Head-driven 
Phrase Structure Grammar: The handbook/. Berlin: Language Science Press. 
(https://hpsg.hu-berlin.de/Projects/HPSG-handbook/)
Varaschin, Giuseppe. 2021. /A Simpler Syntax of anaphora/. 
Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. (PhD thesis.) 
(https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006153)

But this literature is not easy to get into, and I find the very notion 
of "binding" confused (it seems to presuppose the notion of c-command, 
which is based on tree structures that are themselves often argued for 
on the basis of certain anaphoric constructions).

It seems that Hornstein's (2024) book continues to assume that the 
generalizations of the GB [Government-Binding] era (the 1980s) were 
basically right. Compare this instructive 2018 blog post, where he says 
that "GB provided the first outlines of what a plausible [UG] might look 
like, one that had grounding in facts about actual [grammars]": 
https://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/2018/09/generative-grammars-chomsky-problem.html. 
Beyond that, Hornstein does not seem to have taken an interest in 
research on cross-linguistic diversity.

Levinson (1987; 1991; 2000) has of course pointed out that the 
complementarity that Hornstein presupposes is far from universal.

Martin

On 26.03.24 10:04, Adam James Ross Tallman via Lingtyp wrote:
> 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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> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
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-- 
Martin Haspelmath
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/
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