Long-Distance Reflexives: Division of Labor between Morphology, Syntax and Discourse

Hoskuldur Thrainsson

One of the main tasks involved in accounting for long distance reflexives is to determine which of their properties can be attributed to their morphological characteristics, what is syntactic and which properties should be given semantic or discourse-related explanations. In this paper I try to look for ways of dividing the labor between morphology, syntax and semantics.

The points I want to argue for include the following:

a. The anaphoric properties of NPs cannot be adequatelyaccounted for by dividing them into anaphors, pronominals and R-expressions, as standard binding theory does. The typology is more complex than that.

b. Some of the binding properties of reflexives and other NPs have morphological explanations.

c. Some of the properties of long distance reflexives that we have tried to give syntactic explanations for are semantic or discourse-related and it is a mistake to extend syntactic accounts that far.

For a discussion of somewhat similar points the reader can be referred to Anderson 1986, Burzio 1991, and Thrainsson 1991, 1992, for instance.

Anderson, Stephen R. The Typology of Anaphoric Dependencies: Icelandic (and Other) Reflexives. In Lars Hellan and Kirsti Koch Christensen (eds.): Topics in Scandinavian Syntax, pp. 65-88. Reidel, Dordrecht.

Burzio, Luigi. 1991. The Morphological Basis of Anaphora. Journal of Linguistics 27:81-105.

Thrainsson, Hoskuldur. 1991. Long-Distance Reflexives and the Typology of NPs. In Jan Koster and Eric Reuland (eds.): Long-Distance Anaphora, pp. 49-75. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Thrainsson, Hoskuldur. 1992. A Note on Underspecification and Binding. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 1:73-90.