A Minimalist Approach to Some Problems of Long Distance Anaphora of Reflexives
Yong-Suck Kim (UCI/Hansung University)
The main goal of this study is to argue that a variety fo types of
long-distance anaphora of (Korean) reflexive nominals and their
relevant phenomena of blocking effect and subject-orientation must be
captured by means of what we call 'Attract-[Ref],' proposed as a
feature-checking device for the reflexives morphemes along the line
of Chomsky's (1994, 1995, 1996) minimalist program. That is defined
as follows:
(1) T attracts [Ref] to put it into a checking relation with its
[R] sublabel.
[Ref] is the reflexive feature intrinsically assigned to reflexive
morphemes, and [R] is the referential morpheme optionally assigned to
T, which is in the relation of SPEC-head agreement with the
referential DP. To make the 'Attract-[Ref]' computation more
predictive, we argue that (Korean) reflexive nominals must be
analyzed as DP and hence classified into four different tpes, as
shown in (2), according to their lexical or morphological
properties.
(2) a. DP b. DP c. DP d. DP
/ \ / \ / \ |
D N(P) D N(P) D N(P) D
| | | | | | |
ku casin caki casin pro casin caki
him self/ ziji
ta ziji/ etc.
These four types of reflexive nominals can be all defined as bound
anaphor with reference to their binding properties, as illustrated in
(3).
(3) John(i)-i caki(i/*j)/casin(i/*j)/caki casin(i/*j)/ku casin(i/*j)/ku(*i/j)-(l)ul
John -Nom self self self self he self he -Acc
salanghan-ta.
loves -SE
'John loves himself.'
The bisectional discrimination in the recent literature between
XP- and Xo-reflexives falls out as being incomplete and therefore
misleading. It comes to light that a large part of empirical
problems, widely observed in Korean, to the current LF head movement
hypothesis suggested in Pica (1987), Cole, Hermon and Sung (1990),
Sung (1990), Cole and Sung (1994) and Cole and Wang (1996) among
others are due to simply applying this bisectional discrimination to
all reflexives in human languages. For instance, a sort of serious
problem concerning the long-distance anaphora of reflexive nominals
and their relevant blocking effect can be examplified by Korean
example of (4).
(4) John(i)-i [Mary(j)-ka [ney(k)-ka caki(i/j/*k)/casin(*i/*j/k)/cakicasin(i/j/*k)/
John -Nom Mary -Nom you -Nom self self self self
ku casin(i/j/*k)/-(l)ul salanghan-ta-ko] sayngkakhan-ta-ko] malhayss-ta.
he self -Acc loves -SE-COMP thinks -SE-COMP said -SE
'John said that Mary thought that you loved yourself/herself/himself.'
In case of Chinese, reflexives can be bisectionally discriminated simply depending upon whether the pronominal D head c-selecting the unique N-reflexive, ziji is overtly realized as pronoun or covertly as pro, but in case of Korean, having a full-fledged system of reflexives, a further detailed discrimination must be effected by the morphological parameter: having D-reflexive caki as well as to N-reflexive casin. The English-like languages, identified as non-pro-drop languages without D-reflexive, have only typical XP-reflexives in (2a).
The general cases of long-distance anaphora of Xo-reflexives and
their subject- orientation, nicely tackled by the LF head movement
hypothesis, follow straightforwardly from the analyzability of the D
head of Xo-reflexives as LF clitic, which is clitic- climbing at LF.
On the other hand, the blocking effect of long-distance anaphora,
exibited by the casin-type X0-reflexives in
(2c), can be captured in terms of the interation of 'F-Control
Principle' in (5) and 'Feature-Mismatch Condition' in (6).
(5) The phi-feature of pro c-selecting reflexive morpheme must
enter into a checking relation with the phi-feature sublabel of
T.
(6) The mismatch between two features in the checking relation cancels the derivation.