An Experimental Syntactic Study of Binding: A Case Study of Korean Long-Distance Anaphor caki

An Experimental Syntactic Study of Binding: A Case Study of Korean Long-Distance Anaphor caki ∗∗∗∗ Ji-Hye Kim a and James H. Yoon b aDepartment of English Literature and Language, SungKyunkwan University, Myongruyndong 3-53, Chongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea jkim38ster@gmail.com bDepartment of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 4080 FLB, 707 South Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A. jyoon@illinois.edu Abstract. This study investigates the binding behavior of the Korean anaphor ‘caki’, which has been regarded thus far as a long-distance anaphor (LDA). However, given that even local anaphors can be bound long-distance when they function as exempt anaphors in certain languages (Pollard and Sag 1992; Kim and Yoon 2009), we investigated the binding behavior of LD-bound ‘caki’, in order to determine whether LD-bound ‘caki’ differs from LD-bound ‘caki-casin’. In the experiment, subjects were required to rate the acceptability of Korean sentences representing various types of LD binding of ‘caki’ and to determine whether the sloppy or the strict reading was more prominent in elliptical VPs containing the anaphor. The results are discussed with respect to the typology of LDAs proposed by Cole, Hermon and Huang (2001). Keywords: long-distance (LD) binding, Korean binding, anaphor binding, binding of ‘caki’, strict vs. sloppy reading, VP ellipsis, logophoricity, exempt binding ∗ Acknowledgments: This study is a part of a dissertation project supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) dissertation grant (ID# 0616432). Copyright 2009 by Ji-Hye Kim and James H. Yoon 1 Introduction Pollard and Sag (1992) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993) argued that local anaphors can be LD- bound or be unbound in certain contexts as shown in (1). In sentences shown below, the English local anaphor himself is bound outside the minimal GC (cf. 1a, 1b) or unbound (cf. 1c) and yet the sentences are acceptable. (1) a. Bill remembered that [the Times had printed [a picture of himself] in its Sunday edition]. b. John thinks that [an article written by himself] caused the uproar. c. [Physicist like yourself] are a godsend. d. [Incriminating pictures of himself] worry Bill. The above researchers posit a distinction between core or grammatical binding on the one hand and exempt or logophoric binding on the other to explicate how local anaphors can sometimes occur in structures where the core constraints on anaphor binding—locality and c- command—are seemingly violated. The proposal that these researchers make is that not all anaphors are licensed grammar-internally. Anaphors that are licensed grammar-internally are called core/grammatical anaphors, while anaphors licensed by extra-grammatical mechanisms 250 23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, pages 250–259 are categorized as exempt anaphors/logophors. In the theory of Pollard & Sag (1992), an anaphor is exempt when it does not have a more prominent co-argument in its argument structure. However, in the presence of such a co-argument, the anaphor must be bound grammar-internally as a core anaphor. The bracketed NPs within which anaphors occur in (1)a- d above do not contain a more prominent co-argument (i.e., the Possessor), and hence, the anaphor is licensed as an exempt anaphor, freed …

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