We examine two hypotheses regarding the role of theme vowels (ThVs) in Serbo- Croatian (SC): (i) that the various ThVs attested in SC are markedness-based realizations of the same syntactic feature specification, and (ii) that different ThVs carry different syntactic features. We focus on the two SC ThVs occurring with the highest number of bases: <a, a> and <i, i> (the ordered pair specifies the infinitive-stem and the present-tense-stem realization of the ThV). We show that if these ThVs are to be distinguished by feature specification, the best fitting analysis has <a, a> bearing only the categorial verbal feature, while <i, i> is additionally specified for the feature [SCALE], which contributes scalarity to the verbal predicate (Hay et al. 1999; Kennedy & Levin 2008). A corpus-based exploration shows that the stronger hypothesis (ii) encounters problems, the most obvious being that the regularities are only tendential, with a significant number of exceptions. If the ThVs carried different features, they would be expected to yield systematic patterns. We conclude that the weaker alternative (i) provides an empirically more accurate account and propose a specific model where at the interface with phonology, the aggregate degree of markedness of the context in which the ThV is realized is computed from a set of markedness hierarchies of the relevant phonological and semantic properties of that context (the latter mediated by the corresponding syntactic features). A mapping of the aggregate degree of markedness onto the morphological markedness hierarchy of ThVs determines the realization.

We explore the distribution of the pronoun sam ‘self’ with the reflexive sebe ‘oneself’ and the pronominal njega ‘him’ in Serbo-Croatian (SC), in contexts in which the resulting pronoun complexes sebe samog and njega samog are used as arguments in the (seemingly) local domain with their antecedent (e.g. Pera je kritikovao sebe/njega samog ‘Pera criticized himself’). We focus on the question of why the pronoun sam enables the use of the pronominal (njega in this case) in the local domain, in violation of Principle B of the canonical binding theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1986). Our analysis is based on the intensifying nature of the pronoun sam, as a result of which this pronoun imposes a focal status on the constituent it combines with, thus extracting it from its argument position into a higher hierarchical position in the structure. Following the proposal of Reinhart & Reuland (1993), binding conditions fail to apply in such contexts, as the pronoun no longer figures as a co-argument of its antecedent. We also look at the differences in the distribution of the pronoun complexes sebe samog and njega samog: the former combines only with (seemingly) local antecedents and passes tests that diagnose syntactic binding, while the latter combines with both local and non-local antecedents and passes tests that diagnose coreference. The observed and discussed facts favor Reinhart & Reuland’s (1993) theory of pronominal coreference to the classical approach proposed by Chomsky (1981, 1986).