Anaphoric Relations in English
T. A. Wasow, 1972
This thesis considers the problem of accounting for anaphoric relations within a generative grammar. Past approaches to this problem are modified in a number of ways: The concept of identity between constituents is examined and replaced. The notion of determinateness – encompassing roughly the concepts of specificity, referentiality, and genericness – is introduced and motivated. The idea that replacement or deletion transformations are involved in the derivation of anaphoric elements is rejected. Postal’s WH-constraint is considered and relegated to at most a marginal role. The relevance of Frege’s sense-reference distinction is discussed, leading to the discovery of a rather general constraint on the semantic relationship between anaphoric elements and their antecedents.
Thesis supervisor: Noam Chomsky
Title: Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Linguistics
Table of Contents
Chapter One Background material 8
0 Introduction 8
1 Goals 9
2 Extrinsic factors 10
3 Assumptions 14
3.1 Theoretical framework 15
3.2 Specific analyses 17
3.3 Anapornia 30
4 Summary 36
Footnotes 38
Chapter Two Definite pronoun anaphora 47
0 Introduction 47
1 The conditions on the rule 47
1.1 Past proposals 48
1.2 Revisions of past proposals 50
2 Ordering 62
3 Theoretical status 79
Footnotes 82
Chapter Three Other anaphoric relations 88
0 Introduction 88
1 The unity of anaphora 88
2 Existing arguments for deletion 94
3 An alternative 97
3.1 The empty structures hypothesis 98
3.2 Arguments against deletion 101
4 Summary 121
Footnotes 123
Chapter Four Some difficulties 135
0 Introduction 135
1 The facts 135
2 An analysis 138
2.1 The trace proposal 138
2.2 Some consequences 142
3 Postal’s analysis 147
3.1 The two-rule proposal 147
3.2 The WH-constraint 149
4 Summary 157
Footnotes 158
Chapter Five Sense, reference, and anaphora 166
0 Introduction 166
1 Sense and reference 167
2 Arguments for the novelty constraint 179
3 Conclusion 184
Footnotes 187
Epilog 192