A unified syntax for logophors and anaphors: evidence from verbal agreement in Tamil GLOW 36 Colloquium, Lund University, April 3, 2013 Sandhya Sundaresan, University of Tromsø [email protected], https://sites.google.com/site/sndhysndrsn 1 Overview Based on evidence from verbal agreement triggered under an anaphor, in the Dravidian language Tamil, I will argue that anaphoricity and logophoricity are built up from the same two dependencies: (i) a purely structural relationship, formalized as Agree, between the anaphor and a DP in the specifier of a Perspectival Phrase (PerspP) in the local phase of the anaphor, that “stands in” for its linguistic antecedent. (ii) a predominantly conceptual relationship, which is the equivalent of non-obligatory control (Williams, 1980), between the DP representing the linguistic antecedent and the DP in the [Spec, PerspP] of the anaphor’s local phase. + I will thus show that a unified syntactic treatment of logophoricity and anaphoricity is not only possible but empirically warranted. Before embarking on this task, however, I’d like to discuss the theoretical reasons why this is a goal worth pursuing. 2 The need for a better binding theory + It has been long recognized, particularly in the realm of nominal anaphora (see e.g. Clements, 1975; Kuno, 1987; Sells, 1987), that discourse perspective (mental and/or spatio-temporal) guides the nature of binding relations. This is nicely illustrated by the Icelandic minimal pair below (Sells, 1987): (1) Barniði lét ekki í ljós [CP að það hef-ði verið hugsað vel um child.def put not in light that there had-sbjv been thought well about sig{i,∗j}]. anaph “[The child]i didn’t reveal [CP that she{i,∗j} had been taken good care of].” (2)* Barnið i bar þess ekki merki [CP að það hef-ði verið hugsað vel child.def bore of it not signs that there had-sbjv been thought well um sigi]. about anaph “[The child]i didn’t look [CP as if shei had been taken good care of].” 1 Sandhya Sundaresan A unified syntax for logophors and anaphors As Reuland (2001, 345), describing these sentences, reports: “The difference in acceptability between [(1)] and [(2)] can be attributed to the fact that in [(1)] the report is made from the child’s point of view, i.e., it is the child, and not the speaker, who didn’t reveal that he/she had been taken good care of, whereas in [(2)], it is the speaker who reports that the child didn’t look as if he/she had been taken good care of.” • In other words, the linguistic antecedent of the anaphor in these structures must denote an individual who holds a perspective toward the (minimal) predication containing the anaphor. • This isn’t an isolated instance: parallels can be found in a wide range of languages ranging from other Germanic languages like Faroese (Strahan, 2010), Dutch and Nor- wegian (spatial anaphora patterns reported in Rooryck and vanden Wyngaerd, 2011; Lødrup, 2007, respectively) to non-Germanic ones like Italian (Giorgi, 2006), Japanese (Kuno, 1987; Oshima, 2007), Malayalam (Jayaseelan, 1997), and Chinese (Huang and Tang, 1991). + However, the traditional wisdom in the literature has been to treat perspective as a purely discourse-pragmatic concept, one that, furthermore, doesn’t feed into the core grammatical modules of syntax and semantics. + So strong is this assumption that evidence indicating that binding is sensitive to struc- tural constraints, like locality, minimality, and c-command (Chomsky, 1981; Pica, 1987; Huang and Tang, 1991; Progovac, 1993), has automatically been taken as evidence against the involvement of perspective. + Conversely, evidence supporting binding sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic factors, as in the case of the so-called “logophoric” phenomena, has automatically been taken as evidence against the involvement of structure. + This has led to a splitting up of binding phenomena into (at least) two categories: those that are structurally regulated and those that are conceptually driven. The problem is that such a strict dichotomy doesn’t seem to be empirically justified: (i) The “well-behaved” structural binding phenomena (involving e.g. anaphors that obey c-command and locality conditions) frequently also display the effects of thematic and discourse-pragmatic factors (Reinhart and Reuland, 1993; Kuno, 1987). (ii) Conversely, phenomena that have been treated as being predominantly conceptual/semantico- pragmatic manifest sensitivity to structural constraints (e.g. indexical pronouns may be variable bound (Kratzer, 2009)). (iii) Pro-forms, like logophors, whose distribution is putatively purely conceptually driven, as well as anaphors, whose distribution is putatively purely structurally driven, fre- quently look morphophonologically alike crosslinguistically. 2 GLOW 36 April 3, 2013 + In an elegant system, these crosslinguistically robust correlations would be treated, not as a coincidence or accident, but as the result of a principled mapping between discourse perspective and syntactico-semantic structure. + But such an approach would necessarily require giving up the assumption that per- spective is non-structural. The central goal of this talk is to demonstrate that a unified syntactic treatment of logophoricity and anaphoricity (in certain languages) is not only possible, but empirically warranted. 3 Evidence against structural involvement: conditions on antecedence + The involvement of structural restrictions on binding dependencies in a language like Tamil is, however, far from clear. + On the face of it, all binding dependencies in this language seem to be conceptually driven. 3.1 Exceptions to “well-behaved” antecedence Here is a “well-behaved” binding structure in Tamil: (3) Ramani Krishnan-kiúúærund˘uj [CP taan{i,∗j} paris- æ Raman[nom] Krishnan-abl anaph[nom] prize- acc Ãejkka-poo-r-aan-nn˘u] kaïãupiãi-tt-aan. win-go-prs-3msg-comp find.out-pst-3msg “Ramani found out from Krishnanj [CP that he{i,∗j} was going to win the prize.]” Such sentences suggest that a DP that qualifies as an antecedent has the following structural properties: (i) It is a syntactic subject, not an object. (ii) It c-commands the anaphor. + The problem is that there is a principled “exception” to each of the characteristics in (i)-(iii) above. + Such evidence comes from logophoric structures, binding under psych predicates, as well as “standard” cases of long-distance binding. 3 Sandhya Sundaresan A unified syntax for logophors and anaphors 3.1.1 The logophoric “exception” + In the so-called “logophoric” structures, the subjecthood and c-command restrictions on antecedence are trivially violated – since the antecedent is not clause-internally represented, to begin with. This is illustrated below: (4) Seetha-v˘ukk˘ui oïïum purija-læ. Taan{i,∗j} maúúum een ivvaíav˘u Seetha-dat anything understand-neg. anaph.nom alone why this.much kašúappaãa-ïum? suffer-must? Seethai didn’t understand at all. Why must she{i,∗j} alone suffer this much? • However, the standard wisdom (Reinhart and Reuland, 1993; Hicks, 2009; Rooryck and vanden Wyngaerd, 2011), is that logophoricity is an extra-grammatical phenomenon that is intrinsically different from anaphoricity. • As such, we might claim, the rules for anaphoric binding aren’t expected to apply to logophoric binding. 3.1.2 The psych predicate “exception” + The problem is that even non-logophoric binding involves exceptions to the antecedence conditions laid out in (i)-(iii). Consider the following psych-predicate structure: (5)[ CP [DP Taani avvaíav˘u eeõæ-jaaga ir˘und-ad˘u] [DP [DP anaph[nom] so poor-adj be-pst-3nsg.nom Raman-ooã-æ]i aïïaavæ] rombæ-vee baadi-jir˘u-kkir-ad˘u.] his-gen brother-acc very-emph affect-be-prs-3nsg “[DP Hisi having been so poor] has really affected [DP [DP Raman’si] brother].” • In (5), the antecedent Raman is a possessor contained inside the experiencer DP. • Regardless of whether this experiencer DP itself is analyzed as a “deep” subject or object (Beletti and Rizzi, 1988), as c-commanding or non-c-commanding, it is clear that the possessor DP Raman is not the clausal subject; nor does it c-command the anaphor. 3.2 Structural ill-formedness in “well-behaved” binding • One way of getting out of such problems would be to claim that binding under psych- predicates, like logophoric binding, is outside the purview of standard binding condi- tions. E.g. Minkoff (2003) treats instances of “backward” binding ((5)), as instances of logophoricity. 4 GLOW 36 April 3, 2013 • Another option would be to enrich the existing binding conditions to accommodate argument-structural sensitivity to the psych vs. non-psych distinction (Reinhart and Reuland, 1993). The problem with both approaches is that: + Logophoric binding, for all its surface similarities to anaphoric binding, must still be treated as an underlyingly distinct phenomenon. + Even the putatively well-behaved instances of binding involve principled violations of structural well-formedness. Specifically, long-distance binding in Tamil and other lan- guages, appears to violate syntactic conditions of locality, minimality, and determinacy. Non-locality: Long-distance binding in Tamil really is long-distance – in principle, ta(a)n can be bound by any superordinate subject regardless of how many clausal boundaries may intervene:1 (6)[ CP Raman Anand-kiúúæ [CP Seetha tann-æi Raman[nom] Anand-all Seetha[nom] anaph-acc kaappaatt-in-aaí-˘unn˘u] so-nn-aan-nn˘u] Krishnani save-pst-3fsg-comp] say-pst-3msg-comp Krishnan[nom] paar-tt-aan. saw-pst-3msg “Krishnani saw [CP that Raman told Anand [CP that Seetha saved himi.] ]” Non-minimality: (6) also shows that the antecedent may also bind ta(a)n across other DPs (potential antecedents and non-antecedents alike), in apparent violation of Relativized Minimality. Optionality: The choice of antecedent for the anaphor is not deterministic but can be cho- sen from a range of suitable candidates, both sentence-internally and in the discourse.