Backward Anaphora

Backward Anaphora Hyeran Lee Institute of continuing Education Kyung Hee University, Suwon #1 Seocheon-ri, Giheung-up, Yongin-si, Kyunggido, South Korea 449-701 ghyeran@hotmail.com Abstract This paper aims to account for the backward anaphora that seem to be against the c-command requirements in the anaphor-antecedent relations. It was claimed that the binding conditions should apply at LF for the backward binding cases involving phych-verbs and causatives. Under the recent development of minimalism where the concept of levels disappears to adopt a cyclic derivation, the data that show the backward binding phenomena have not been discussed in the area of the binding theory. In this paper, I argue that the backward binding cases can be incorporated into the core binding phenomena with the general assumptions on the thematic prominency. It is discussed how the dependency between NPs involving backward anaphora is determined by the thematic prominency. The Agree operation takes place between the probe T and the goal with the uninterpretable u[a] and [prominent] feature, by which an anaphor is valued, producing a proper interpretation. 1� Introduction The binding theory has been discussed as a dependency relation between NPs. It attempted to clarify how an anaphor is related with its antecedent. The different binding conditions were proposed by Chomsky (1981) to explain the different phenomena of the binding facts. This has been developed into the LF-movement theory that accounts for both the long-distance anaphors and locally bound anaphors in a unified way (Chomsky 1986, Battistella 1989, Cole, Hermon, and Sung 1990, Pica 1991 and Cole and Wang 1996). Along the same line, a covert anaphor movement is changed into feature checking with minimalism (Chomsky 1992, Yang 1994, 1996, Lee 1997, Kim 1999). Another proposal was made by Reinhart and Reuland (1993) based on the semantic properties of predicates. Their work is meaningful in that not only NPs but also predicates come into play in the binding phenomena. These approaches could not provide an explanation for the residue of the anaphoric phenomena, i.e. backward anaphora, but only partially account for core constructions. In this paper, I will focus on the backward anaphors that have been a problem in the area of the binding theory. To deal with such cases, I claim that the dependency relation between NPs is determined by the thematic prominency. 2� Previous Studies The c-command requirements in the binding relations are essential to form the binding theory. In Chomsky (1981), all the binding conditions were defined by the word "bound" and the word "bound" was defined by the notion of c-command. It has thus been claimed that the NPs that are not bound within the local domain or do not satisfy the c-command requirements are not anaphors but something else. McCawley (1972) and Katada (1991) argue that they are reflexive pronouns. Clement (1975), Maling (1984), Sells (1987) and Reinhart and Reuland (1989; 1993) argue that they are emphatic pronouns or logophors which make reference to the individual whose speech, thought, or feelings are reported to other individuals. According to this line of …

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