Phases, Reflexives, and Definiteness

Abstract

This paper investigates a puzzling correlation between two seemingly disparate phenomena: the crosslinguistic distribution of reflexive possessives and definiteness marking. As observed in Reuland 2007, 2011 and supported here by additional crosslinguistic evidence, reflexive possessives are available only in languages that either lack definiteness marking or encode definiteness postnominally. Languages that have prenominal (article-like) definiteness marking, on the other hand, systematically lack reflexive possessives. I argue that such facts support a particular approach to reflexive binding-specifically, one that has the following properties: (i) binding domains are stated in terms of phases, (ii) in addition to CPs and vPs, DPs are phases, and (iii) DP is not universal. I closely examine another robust crosslinguistic correlation regarding definiteness marking-Bo skovi c's (2008) Left Branch Extraction generalization-and show how it directly follows from the key assumptions of the analysis. I situate my proposals within a broader context of the phase theory, arguing that the syntactic representation of (in)definiteness is the crucial factor in determining the phasehood status of nominal categories. I extend my analysis to the clausal domain and discuss it in the context of languages that allow reflexives in the subject position.

On the Syntax of Number in Romance

“…On the one hand, these examples show that the true determiner is basically the possessive (like in English), and that the article (which may or may not instantiate morphological number) is optional in Brazilian Portuguese (see Castro , Floripi , a.o.). On the other hand, since the possessive is the head of the D‐Poss complex unit (Despić ), it is the constituent that encodes plural marking at syntax . For these examples, as will be discussed below, we assume that the potential plural marking on the definite article in (26a,b) is the output of an operation of postsyntactic concord within the DP domain.…”

“…In order to account for these data, we consider that in a D‐Poss complex unit (Despić ) there is variation on whether the possessor or the article is the head, and therefore the constituent to which the pluralizer is adjoined. If the real Determiner is the possessor (like in English), the article may be omitted or may even not show plural marking, as illustrated in (38a,b,c), for which we postulate the structure in (40a) that locates the article is in Spec,PossP.…”

“…As seen above, in order to explain the fact that in Catalan possessive adjectives can follow the article and precede a nominal head, the author assumes Kayne (), for whom the possessive moves to a prenominal position. Picallo proposes that the possessor moves to the specifier of NumP, where it is placed between the D and the N. In our account, we assume a complex DP for possessive constructions (Despić ), where the possessor is the complement of D. In Catalan, the head of this D‐Poss complex unit is D, and the pluralizer is adjoined to D, as illustrated in (45).…”

Why is Reflexivity so Special? Understanding the World of Reflexives

“…Since Chomsky () introduced the notion of a phase as the key to our understanding of locality a variety of proposals have been presented exploiting this notion for an understanding of locality on binding, for example Lee‐Schoenfeld (), Quicoli (), Despić (), Charnavel & Sportiche (). Phases are local domains.…”

“… In some cases the nature of the mechanism that has to be involved can be reconstructed relatively straightforwardly. Despić (), for instance, develops a very insightful phase based analysis of cross‐linguistic variation in the distribution of dedicated anaphoric possessives. His analysis is quite easily compatible with an implementation in terms of a basic syntactic operation such as Agree. Charnavel & Sportiche () propose that, generally, the locality requirement expressed by Condition A of the canonical binding theory can be reduced to Phase Theory.…”