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Chris Barker Colloquium

Chris Barker
NYU

Quantificational binding does not require c-command

Friday, October 17, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26

Party at 7:00 pm at the Potts house

Abstract

For the past 25 years, the field has labored under the assumption that a quantificational binder must c-command any pronoun that it binds. This is despite well-known systematic counterexamples, including binding out of DP ("Everyone's father loves her") and donkey anaphora ("If John sees a donkey, he beats it"). I consider how the c-command requirement became the standard wisdom, survey a wide variety of counterexamples, both well-known and new, and conclude that we should abandon the c-command requirement, at least for quantificational binding.

But how could a grammar work in which binding ignores c-command? I will describe a formal system developed in joint work with Chung-Chieh Shan (Rutgers) based on continuations. I show how the system provides analyses of binding out of DP while still accounting for a range of crossover facts. Finally, I show how this approach allows for a new account of donkey anaphora on which the indefinite antecedent ("a donkey") takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun in the same manner as any quantificational binding relationship.