From referentiality to syntactic dependencies

Gunsoo Lee

Ph.D. Dissertation, 1996

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to provide a proper correlation between the notion of referentiality and syntactic dependencies within the GB framework. In the first chapter, I take up the binding theory where crosslinguistic differences are markedly observed in terms of syntactic locality. I provide a unique approach by setting up an intralingual referential hierarchy of various anaphors and I then establish the correlation between the hierarchy and long distance binding. In the second chapter, using the same notion of referentiality, I correctly distinguish weak crossover contexts from 'weakest crossover' (Lasnik and Stowell (1991)). In the final chapter, my main concern is to derive the length of X(P) chains from the proposed definition of referentiality. First, I draw the analogy between A-bar dependency and long distance anaphora: referential argument wh-phrases show long distance A-bar dependencies whereas non-referential adjunct wh-phrases strictly show local A-bar dependencies, in the same manner that long distance anaphors in Korean may be regarded as referential and local anaphors as relatively non-referential. With the derived account for the argument-adjunct asymmetry in weak islands, other types of syntactic dependencies such as X0-chains and A-movement will be dealt with in a similar manner.