Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation

Tanya Reinhart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134993604
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

First published in 1983, this book examines anaphora — a central issue in linguistic theory as it lies at the crossroads of several major problems. On the one hand it is believed that the same conditions that govern the interpretation of anaphora also govern syntactic movement rules but on the other, while anaphora is known to interact with various discourse and semantic considerations, it also provides a clear instance of the dependency of the semantic interpretation of sentences upon semantic properties of natural language. This book has two major goals: the first is a comprehensive analysis of sentence-level anaphora that addresses the questions posed above, and the second is an examination of the broader issues of the relations between the structural properties of sentences and their semantic interpretation within the hypotheses of the autonomy of syntax and of interpretative semantics shown by Chomsky.

1 Structural Relations and Restrictions

Since the earliest stages of transformational grammar, it has been observed that certain semantic properties of sentences of natural language are sensitive to the structural relations between nodes in the syntactic tree. Within the interpretative framework that I am assuming in this work, this means that the operations interpreting surface structures, or translating them into semantic representations, are governed by syntactic conditions. The questions are, first, what are the syntactic relations that are relevant for the operation of such rules, and next, whether we can find general conditions restricting the operations of all interpretative rules (which may apply independently of each other).

The syntactic relations proposed in the earlier transformational work as relevant for the operation of interpretative rules (or transformations like 'pronominalisation') include 'command', 'in construction with', 'clause-mate' and the linear relation 'precede'. The relation found most useful at this stage was 'precede and command' which was introduced in Langacker (1966) to handle 'pronominalisation', and was later applied to the analysis of the scope of negation in Ross (1967) and of quantifier scope, in Jackendoff (1972). I argue in the following chapters that, in fact, this relation has no linguistic relevance. This chapter, however, is devoted first (in Section 1.1) to the general characterisation of structural relations in terms of the syntactic domains they define. Next, I define (in Section 1.2) the syntactic relation c-command, which will be assumed in the following chapters. In Section 1.2, I address the second question I posed above and state the general conditions on interpretative rules which this book attempts to establish.

1.1 Syntactic Domains

Although they have not been stated this way, structural relations such as 'precede', 'command' or 'precede and command' can be best understood as defining the syntactic domain of a given node — roughly, the portion of the tree consisting of those nodes which a given node bears the structural relation to. Such relations can be, then, characterised and compared in terms of the domains they define. Structural conditions on sentence-level rules, which are based on these relations, restrict such rules to operate on two nodes just in case one of them is in the domain of the other. In the case of semantic interpretation rules, the domain of a given node corresponds to the portion in the syntactic tree in which the given node can effect the interpretation of other nodes. In the case of anaphora interpretation, for example, such restrictions state the environment in which the referential interpretation of one NP may depend on that of the other. In the case of quantifiers' scope the syntactic domain of a given quantified NP determines its potential scope.

We may illustrate this characterisation of structural relations with the relation 'precede and command'. Following Langacker (1966), who introduced the relation of command, this relation is defined as in (1):

1. (1) a node A commands a node B if neither A nor B dominates the other and the S node most immediately dominating A also dominates B.

Jackendoff (1972, p. 140) and Lasnik (1976) suggested a modification of the definition so that it makes use of the notion cyclic node rather than S. Within the 'Extended Standard Theory', certain NPs are considered cyclic nodes, so this modification allows them to participate in the determination of command relations. In its most common use in linguistic theory, this relation is combined with linear relations into the more complex relation 'precede and command'. Thus, the restriction on anaphora which was suggested by Langacker, and which was adopted in most studies of anaphora restrictions, states, roughly, that the pronoun cannot both precede and command its antecedent, or that no coreference is possible between a pronoun and a full NP which follows and is commanded by this pronoun. This restriction captures the difference between (2) and (3):

• (2) She denied that Rosa met the Shah.
• (3) The man who travelled with her denied that Rosa met the Shah.

In (2) the pronoun precedes and commands the full NP, hence they cannot be coreferential. In (3) the pronoun precedes, but it does not command the full NP, and coreference is permitted.

Characterised in terms of syntactic domains, 'precede and command' defines the domains stated in (4).

• (4) The domain of a node A consists of A together with all and only the nodes that A precedes and commands.

To exemplify some of the domain relations between nodes determined by (4), let us look at the abstract tree in (5). (Capital letters stand for any node; 'cy' stands for a cyclic node.)

The domain of node A includes all the other nodes in cy₁, since A precedes and commands all these nodes. This will be represented in the following way:

• (6) A / B, C, D, cy₂, E F

(6) is to be read: nodes B, C, D, etc. are in the domain of node A. Other domains in the tree (5) are given in (7).

• (7) B / C
• C / Ø
• D / cy₂, E, F, C
• E / F

As we see, node C has nothing in its domain, since although, like A, it commands all the nodes in cy₁, it does not precede them. Node E has in its domain only the node F, since it does not command the nodes A, B, C, or D of cy₁. B has in its domain only C, since in Langacker's definition, in (1), the relation of command holds between two nodes only if neither of the nodes dominates the other. Since in (5), B dominated D and cy₂, by definition (1), it does not command these nodes. An alternative formulation of the command relation which does not have this requirement is also possible. See Jackendoff {1972, p.312) for discussion.

For the application of the coreference rule, the only domains which are relevant are those of NPs. Stated in terms of syntactic domains, the precede-and-command restriction is, roughly, the one given in (8). (We shall return to alternative formulations in Section 2.1.2 of Chapter 2.)

• (8) A pronoun cannot be interpreted as coreferential with a non pronoun in its domain.

We can examine now examples of domains of NPs, and the operation of (8) in some actual trees — those underlying the sentences (2) and (3)

In (9a) the domain of the subject, NP₁, consists of all the nodes in S₁ (since NP₁ precedes and commands them), hence NP₂ is in the domain of NP₁. The coreference restriction (8) thus applies to these two NPs, and blocks coreference in the case where NP₁ is a pronoun and NP₂ is not (as in sentence (2)). If we check now the domain of NP₂, we see that it consists only of the VP of S₂. NP₁ is not in the domain of NP₂ (since NP₂ neither commands nor precedes NP₁), hence the restriction (8) does not apply, and sentences in which NP₂ is a pronoun and NP₁ is not allow a coreference reading.

In (9b ), on the other hand, neither of the nodes NP₁ and NP₂ is in the domain of the other: NP₁ has nothing in its domain and NP₂ has only the VP of S₂ in its domain. Hence the restriction on coreference does not apply (coreference between NP₁ and NP₂ is not restricted) and we can get the coreference reading on either order of the pronoun and antecedent.

To summarise this concept of syntactic domain, we may look back at (6): the nodes (A, B, C, D, cy₂, E, F) constitute a domain; in other words (cy₁) is a domain — the domain of A. Thus, in tree (5), we have the domains (A, B, C, D, etc.); (B, C); (C); (D, cy₂, E, F, C), etc. In tree (9b), some of the domains defined are the nodes dominated by NP₄, which is the domain of NP₅, the nodes dominated by S₁ — the domain of NP₄, and the nodes dominated by the lower S₂ — the domain of NP₂.

The interest in this type of characterisation for structural relations lies in whether the domains defined this way have broader linguistic relevance, e.g. whether they correspond to indepently recognised syntactic units and whether there exist several linguistic rules that are constrained to operate within these domains. It takes little effort to see that the domains defined by (4) are quite arbitrary, and they may be chunks of the tree which are not constituents. Given a tree like (5), there is no intuitive sense in which B and C, for example, can be considered to constitute a domain. The reason why these domains are arbitrary is that their definition ition is sensitive to linear order. By this definition, given a sentence S, we can start at any arbitrary node and consider it together with all the nodes to its right which are dominated by S as constituting a domain. Given a sentence like Ben introduced Max to Rosa in September, for instance, the domains picked out are, first, the domain of the subject {the whole sentence) and secondly the domain of the verb (the VP, including the PPs). Since these domains are also constituents, their linguistic relevance is obvious. However, the same definition also yeields the domains [Max to Rosa in September], [to Rosa in September] and [Rosa in September]. If such arbitrary chunks of the tree constitute a syntactic domain, it is hard to see what general content the notion of domain could have.

However, in the following chapters I will argue that the relation 'pre cede and command' — and, more generally, linear relations — in fact play no role in restricting the semantic interpretation of sentences, and that the structural restrictions on anaphora and quantification which are based on such relations are, independently, empirically incorrect. We can tum now to domains defined by an alternative structural relation.

1.2 C-Command

1.2.1. The structural relation for whose linguistic relevance I shall argue in the following chapters is constituent command (hereafter c-command), which was introduced in Reinhart (1976).¹ Its simplified definition is given in (10) and we shall return to its precise formulation in Section 1.2.2.

• (10) Node A c (constituent)-commands node B iff the branching node most immediately dominating A also dominates B.

The linguistic need for a relation like (10) has been observed before for problems other than corefenmce: (10) is similar to (the converse of) the relation in construction with which was suggested by Klima (1964) to account for the scope of negation. (In (10), node B would be in construction with node A.) But by Klima's definition, in construction with holds only if neither A nor B dominates the other. The relevance of in construction with for the treatment of 'backward pronominalisation' has been observed by Culicover (1976).² The relation c-command is also close to the relation superiority suggested by Chomsky (1973), the difference being that superiority is asymmetric — nodes A and B cannot be superior to each other. Thus, sister nodes are excluded from the superiority relation, while definition (10) includes sister nodes (i.e....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1. Structural Relations and Restrictions
• 2. Coreference of Definite NPs
• 3. Prepositional Phrases and Preposed Constituents
• 4. A Survey of Functional Approaches to Definite NP Anaphora
• 5. Bound Anaphora
• 6. The Indexing System of Interpretative Semantics
• 7. The Interpretation of Pronouns: A Restatement of the Anaphora Problems
• 8. Unsolved Problems of Anaphora
• 9. Other Interpretative Rules
• 10. The Psychological Reality of the C-Command Conditions
• References
• Index