Reflexives and tree unification grammar
Frederick Paul Popowich · ERA · 1988
Does for discussions concerning the grammaticality of various Dutch sentences (dank U); Hoski Thrainsson and Marius Olafsson for information concerning the grammaticality of reflexives in Icelandic constructions (kökk); Sven Hurum and his "secret sources in Norway" for details about Norwegian reflexives (takk); Elisabet Engdahl for information about Swedish sentences (tack); and all my friends for not running away when AbstractAlthough there has been a great deal of research into identifying the constraints responsible for the distribution of reflexive pronouns (like himself, herself, themselves), accounts of reflexivisation are often based entirely on syntactic factors.Furthermore, it is usually assumed that a reflexive and its antecedent (ie. the noun phrase to which a reflexive pronoun 'refers') must be from the same sentence, and the anaphoric relationship between a reflexive and its antecedent is often established based on a complete structural analysis of the sentence containing them.In this thesis, we propose a treatment of reflexives in which an anaphoric relationship between pronoun and antecedent can be established based on information contained in partial structures associated with linguistic expressions.There is no need to obtain a complete structural analysis before performing anaphora resolution, and information obtained from anaphora resolution can be used to constrain possible analyses.In presenting an account for the distribution of locally bound reflexives in English and of long distance reflexives in Icelandic, we will see that the same general treatment will be applicable to local as well as non-local reflexive anaphoric phenomena.Our first goal is to establish the constraints that are relevant for the distribution of reflexive pronouns.Then a declarative unification-based linguistic framework will be introduced in which these constraints can be stated.Within a declarative framework, constraints can be stated independent from any processing strategy.The basic grammar structures of this framework will be partial specifications of trees, and the framework will require only a single grammar rule to combine these partial specifications.Finally, we will illustrate how various phenomena associated with reflexive pronouns can be accounted for in this framework.We will provide an account for the distribution of reflexives appearing in complement clauses, picture-noun constructions, possessives, unbounded dependency constructions, prepositional phrases, and constructions where reflexives can have either 'sloppy' or 'strict' readings. NoteUnless specified otherwise, the various Norwegian sentences in this thesis are from Hellan (forthcoming), the Icelandic sentences were obtained from Hoskaldur Thrainsson, the Dutch sentences were supplied by Marc Moens, and the Swedish sentences were provided by Elisabet Engdahl.-XII -(1.9) *Jan haat zich.Jan hates REFL 'Jan hates himself.'(1.10) *Jdfl elskar sig.Jon loves REFL 'Jon loves himself.'For instance, if there is no semantic predicate for 'self-hate' (ie.self-hate(x)) then inherent reflexivisation is not allowed (1.9).Verbs that do not allow inherent reflexivisation generally allow independent reflexivisation.Associated with this class of reflexivisation is the compound reflexive form.This is illustrated in the following examples which are the independent reflexivised counterparts to (1.8-1.10).(1.11) Jon foraktet seg selv.Jon despised REFL-self 'Jon despised himself.' (1.12) Jan haat zichzelf.Jan hates REFL-self 'Jan hates himself.' (1.13) Jdn elskar sjálfan sig.Jon loves self-REFL 'Jon loves himself.'Independent reflexives do not have an intransitivising effect on the verbs in which they appear as arguments.In fact, they are not required to be arguments of a verb.Instead, they can appear in constructions like prepositional phrases and in other modifiers.(1.14) Jon fortalte meg om seg selv / *seg.Jon told me about REFL-self / *FL 'Jon told me about himself.' (1.15) Jan heeft me over zichzelf/ *zjch verteld.Jan has me about REFL-self / *pi told (1.16) JOn sag6i mr frá sjálfum sér / *sr.Jon told me about self-REFL I *REFLObserve that the simple reflexive is not allowed in these constructions.While the reflexive in inherently reflexive constructions acts much like a citic, the independent reflexive behaves more like an independent noun phrase.Semantically, the reflexive does not reduce the predicate associated with the verb.The distribution of inherent and independent reflexives is by no way complementary.Some verbs allow both types of reflexivisation.'7 Sells et.al.analytic, closed analytic, open synthetic, closed synthetic, open sample language Dutch, German