Volume 42, Issue 6

The article provides evidence from a number of languages that sentences which are structurally identical, and differ only in morphological number, display different binding options: 1st and 2nd person sentences allow instances of pronominal binding (e.g. “I am not thinking of me”) while structurally identical sentences in the 3rd person do not (e.g. “*He i is not thinking of him i ”). Such evidence presents a problem for existing versions of the binding theory. It is argued that the data under discussion can be accounted for in terms of a discourse “avoid ambiguity” factor operating on 3rd person, but not on 1st and 2nd person, pronouns. The article contends that the binding options of 3rd person pronouns are determined by both structural (syntactic) and nonstructural (discourse) factors, while the binding options of 1st and 2nd person pronouns are determined by structural factors alone, and in this sense only the latter represent a pure case of syntactic binding. It therefore follows that attempts at formulating structural (syntactic) constraints on binding should avoid 3rd person pronouns as the picture there is additionally complicated by the operation of a discourse factor (avoid ambiguity) and should deal with binding of 1st and 2nd person pronouns, as only they reflect structural conditions on binding. In reality, however, studies investigating anaphoric binding deal almost exclusively with instances of binding in 3rd person sentences, which may have negatively affected current formulations of locality constraints on binding.

It is well-known that both similarity and contrast play an important role in language. What is much less clear, however, is why one aspect of language is sensitive to similarity while another is under the sway of contrast. This article develops a theory that allows one to predict under which circumstances similarity wins out over contrast and vice versa. Five diverse areas of language, to wit language structure, change, use, acquisition, and loss are scrutinized in an effort to erect this theory on a fairly broad empirical basis. In all of these areas, the paradigmatic axis is found to generate similarity effects whereas the syntagmatic axis gives rise to both similarity and contrast. Whether similarity or contrast prevails on the syntagmatic dimension depends on the linear distance between the critical units. When these are very close together, contrast predominates. With increasing distance, however, contrast gives way to similarity, with a hypersimilarity effect occurring briefly in between. These results are interpreted within a model in which linguistic structure and change are understood as a response to processing strategies and biases. The representational side of the model provides a measure of determining similarity and contrast relationships between linguistic units, whereas the processing side is responsible for the strength of similarity and contrast in specific constellations. While the theory is detailed for the phonological domain, it holds the potential of being more widely applicable.

Most of the previous approaches to English agreement phenomena have relied upon only one component of the grammar (e.g. either syntax, or semantics, or pragmatics). This article argues that interrelationships among different grammatical components play crucial roles in such phenomena (cf. Kathol 1999 and Hudson 1999). The article proposes that, contrary to traditional wisdom, English determiner–noun agreement is morphosyntactic, whereas subject–verb and pronoun–antecedent agreement are reflections of index agreement (cf. Pollard and Sag 1994). The present hybrid analysis of English agreement shows the importance of the interaction of different components of the grammar in accounting for English agreement phenomena. In particular, once we allow morphology to tightly interact with the system of syntax, semantics, or even pragmatics, we could provide a solution to some puzzling English agreement phenomena. This allows a more principled theory of English agreement.

This article explores how the pragmatic notion of identifiability is encoded in Chinese. It presents a detailed analysis of the distinctive linguistic devices, including lexical, morphological, and position in sentence, which are employed in Chinese to indicate the interpretation of referents in respect of identifiability. Of the major determiners in Chinese, demonstratives are developing uses of a definite article, and yi ‘one’ + classifier has developed uses of an indefinite article, although morphologically and in some cases also functionally they have not yet been fully grammaticalized. What makes Chinese further different from languages like English is the interpretation in this regard of what are called indeterminate lexical encodings, which include bare NPs and cardinality expressions. They by themselves are neutral in respect of the interpretation of identifiability. For indeterminate expressions, there is a strong but seldom absolute correlation between the interpretation of identifiability or nonidentifiability and their occurrence in different positions in a sentence. Unlike the cases with several other languages without articles like Czech, Hindi, and Indonesian, the features of definiteness and indefiniteness cannot be obligatorily and uniquely specified for nominal expressions in Chinese. The findings in this article lead to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category defined in the narrow sense has not been fully developed in Chinese.