Apparent Exemption from Condition A: a Perspective-Based Theory
Isabelle Charnavel
March 2019
 

The goal of this article is to explain why anaphors are typically either subject to Condition A of Binding Theory or exempt from it, but with specific interpretive properties. Based on French data and crosslinguistic comparisons, I first show that such ‘exempt’ anaphors must be anteceded by logophoric, i.e. perspective, centers. Elaborating on, but modifying Sells (1987), I argue that they can be of two kinds: intellectual (attitude holders) and emotional (empathy loci), thus reducing logophoricity to mental perspective. Specific tests are provided to justify this classification. Next, the logophoricity of exempt anaphors derives from the following hypothesis: seemingly exempt anaphors are in fact bound by silent logophoric pronouns introduced by syntactically represented logophoric operators within their local domain. This hypothesis explains why exempt anaphors have to be anteceded by perspective centers (their interpretation is derived from their binder); it also accounts for the apparent exemption from Condition A, reanalyzed here as local binding by a silent logophoric binder. Ultimately, this means that plain and exempt anaphors are one and the same type of element subject to the same locality constraint, the apparent difference between them coming from the availability of implicit perspective coding in language.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/002683
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in Linguistic Inquiry (previously cited as "Exempt anaphors and logophoricity in French", Harvard ms. 2013, 2014)
keywords: exempt anaphor, condition a of binding theory, perspective center, logophoric operator, semantics, syntax
previous versions: v5 [April 2018]
v4 [November 2017]
v3 [January 2017]
v2 [January 2016]
v1 [August 2015]
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