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Concept
Binding (linguistics)
Summary
In linguistics, binding is the phenomenon in which anaphoric elements such as pronouns are grammatically associated with their antecedents. For instance in the English sentence "Mary saw herself", the anaphor "herself" is bound by its antecedent "Mary". Binding can be licensed or blocked in certain contexts or syntactic configurations, e.g. the pronoun "her" cannot be bound by "Mary" in the English sentence "Mary saw her". While all languages have binding, restrictions on it vary even among closely related languages. Binding has been a major area of research in syntax and semantics since the 1970s, and was a major for the government and binding theory paradigm.
The following sentences illustrate some basic facts of binding. The words that bear the index i should be construed as referring to the same person or thing.
a. Fredi is impressed with himselfi. – Indicated reading obligatory
b. *Fredi is impressed with himi. – Indicated reading impossible
a. *Susani asked Arthur to help herselfi. – Indicated reading impossible, sentence ungrammatical
b. Susani asked Arthur to help heri. – Indicated reading easily possible
a. Suei said shei was tired. – Indicated reading easily possible
b. *Shei said Suei was tired. – Indicated reading impossible
a. Fred'si friends venerate himi. – Indicated reading easily possible
b. ?Hisi friends venerate Fredi. – Indicated reading unlikely
These sentences illustrate some aspects of the distribution of reflexive and personal pronouns. In the first pair of sentences, the reflexive pronoun must appear for the indicated reading to be possible. In the second pair, the personal pronoun must appear for the indicated reading to be possible. The third pair shows that at times a personal pronoun must follow its antecedent, and the fourth pair further illustrates the same point, although the acceptability judgement is not as robust. Based on such data, one sees that reflexive and personal pronouns differ in their distribution and that linear order (of a pronoun in relation to its antecedent or postcedent) is a factor influencing where at least some pronouns can appear.
Official source
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