Reflexive Binding and English Prosody

some work in this project

1. Ahn, Byron. 2017, May. (In Search of) Universals in Reflexive Syntax. Talk presented at Cambridge Comparative Syntax 6.

   abstract Handout Bib

   Given that “reflexivity” is known to be a heterogeneous class (local vs. long-distance; exempt vs. bound; subject-oriented vs. non-subject oriented; etc.), what are the prospects for true universals in reflexivity? In this talk, I focus on Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity (LSOR), its properties, and how to derive them.

   By studying the formal constraints on LSOR markers, as well as their varied crosslinguistic realization, I argue that: (i) for an LSOR derivation that involves a reflexive functional head on the clausal spine, (ii) an argument-saturating nominal moves to the specifier of that projection in LSOR derivations, and (iii) languages can vary in which of these components are observable.

   Given the apparently wide cross-lingusitic applicability of this derivation, this suggests that binding in LSOR is not simply a special type of normal binding conditions, but a separate phenomenon which is available across languages, due to what is made available by a shared universal linguistic competence.

   The question remains, then, what is the nature of precisely what it is that is made available by UG, and why children acquiring language in so many contexts readily acquire the same (or very similar) LSOR structures. In the context of the ReCoS research group, I engage with the idea of emergent parameters and suggest that we need to reconsider “reflexive” patterns as the result of a single learning path.

   @unpublished{Ahn-CamCoS6,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     howpublished = {Talk presented at Cambridge Comparative Syntax 6},
     title = {(In Search of) Universals in Reflexive Syntax},
     year = {2017}
   }

2. Ahn, Byron. 2016. Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces. Proceedings from the 50th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.

   abstract Paper Bib

   When a reflexive argument is bound by a local subject (Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity, LSOR), many languages employ a distinct morphosyntactic configuration for marking reflexivity, including: Dogrib (Na-Dené) ede, Italian (Romance) si, Japanese (Altaic) zibunzisin, Kannada (Dravidian) -koND, Russian (Slavic) sebe, and Shona (Niger-Congo) zvi.

   This raises an important and naive question: what is it about local subjects that gives them a privileged ability to license LSOR-marking? Upon further investigation, a second more informed question arises: why do only some local subjects (specifically, non-derived subjects) license LSOR-marking?

   I argue that reflexive anaphors move to a position near the subject, and this movement is done to locally satisfy the syntactic and semantic demands of a reflexive Voice⁰, REFL, which ensures (without stipulation) that the subject is not a derived one. With only REFL, its syntactic/semantic properties, and constraints on locality, we thus derive how the grammatical role of the antecedent may effect LSOR-marking.

   Additionally, this analysis derives the range of possibilities for morphosyntactic exponents of LSOR: including a unique anaphor, verbal affix, and/or special word-order. Specifically, REFL Voice⁰ can be realized (or not), it induces a (covert) movement that can result in a special word-order (or not), and anything it selects (including an anaphor) can be featurally-distinct and can thus have a unique form (or not). These are all purely instances of surface variation with the same formal underpinnings.

   As such, the subject-orientation puzzles presented by LSOR, as well as its possible morphosyntactic instantiations, are reduced to issues of locality and surface variation.

   @article{Ahn-CLS50,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     journal = {Proceedings from the 50th Annual Meeting of the {C}hicago {L}inguistic {S}ociety},
     title = {Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces},
     year = {2016}
   }

3. Ahn, Byron. 2015. Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in English. UCLA dissertation.

   abstract Thesis Bib

   Across languages, there is variability in the surface realization of reflexivity, according to various sets of properties. For example, there are languages (e.g. Greek, Lakhota) that seem to treat some of their reflexive clauses as being in a non-active voice, similar to a passive. There are also languages (e.g. French, Kannada) in which reflexivity is encoded differently depending on whether the antecedent is the subject or not. In this way, English seems to be different: reflexivity is apparently realized in a homogeneous way – filling an argument position with an anaphoric expression like themselves – regardless of clausal voice or grammatical role of the antecedent.

   This homogeneity is an illusion. Despite using a single set of anaphoric expressions for reflexivity in various situations, reflexive anaphors in English fall into two classes: those that exhibit exceptional prosodic behaviors, and those that do not.

   This exceptionality can be directly observed in two domains: the distribution of "default" phrasal stress, and the distribution of a certain focal accent. From the results of investigations on these issues, I show that the distribution of exceptionally behaving reflexive anaphors is structurally constrained. This implicates that there must a be syntactic account for these prosodic properties.

   Assuming that syntactic structure plays a near deterministic role in prosody (an assumption going back to even the earliest generative work on phrasal stress; Chomsky and Halle 1968:25), I argue for a more refined syntactic structure of reflexivity. Briefly, I demonstrate a sub-class of reflexive anaphors in English undergo a syntactic movement (to a reflexive VoiceP). This movement, along with independently motivated mechanisms for placement of phrasal stress and focal accents, derives the heterogeneous prosodic behaviors of reflexives in English. Crucially, this analysis does not require the prosodic component to have any stipulations for specific (classes of) words, in line with a Minimalist approach to the Syntax-Prosody Interface.

   This model of reflexivity simultaneously reduces the amount of theoretical machinery necessary to achieve descriptive adequacy, while also enhancing the model’s predictive power. Moreover, this research has broad theoretical implications, beyond just reflexives in English. This theory is able to unify the various morpho-syntactic instantiations of reflexivizing functions – across languages – as being related to the Reflexive VoiceP. It also establishes a core set of properties that define clausal reflexivity, each of which are the result of the formal properties of the reflexive Voice head. Finally, it provides direct support for the hypothesis that syntactic and prosodic structures are maximally isomorphic, with prosodic cues in the signal giving direct evidence for otherwise invisible in syntactic structure.

   @phdthesis{Ahn-PhDThesis,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     school = {UCLA},
     thesis = {https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002359},
     title = {Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in {E}nglish},
     year = {2015}
   }

4. Ahn, Byron. 2014, April. Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces. Talk presented at CLS 50, University of Chicago.

   abstract Handout Bib

   When a reflexive argument is bound by a local subject (Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity, LSOR), many languages employ a distinct morphosyntactic configuration for marking reflexivity, including: Dogrib (Na-Dené) ede, Italian (Romance) si, Japanese (Altaic) zibunzisin, Kannada (Dravidian) -koND, Russian (Slavic) sebe, and Shona (Niger-Congo) zvi.

   This raises an important and naive question: what is it about local subjects that gives them a privileged ability to license LSOR-marking? Upon further investigation, a second more informed puzzle arises: only some local subjects (specifically, non-derived subjects) license LSOR-marking.

   I argue that reflexive anaphors move to a position near the subject, and this movement is done to locally satisfy the syntactic and semantic demands of a reflexive Voice⁰, REFL, which ensures (without stipulation) that the subject is not a derived one. With only REFL, its syntactic/semantic properties, and constraints on locality, we thus derive how the grammatical role of the antecedent may effect LSOR-marking.

   Additionally, this analysis derives the range of possibilities for morphosyntactic exponents of LSOR: including a unique anaphor, verbal affix, and/or special word-order. Specifically, REFL Voice⁰ can be realized (or not), it induces a (covert) movement that can result in a special word-order (or not), and anything it selects (including an anaphor) can be featurally-distinct and can thus have a unique form (or not). These are all purely instances of surface variation with the same formal underpinnings.

   As such, the subject-orientation puzzles presented by LSOR, as well as its possible morphosyntactic instantiations, are reduced to issues of locality and surface variation.

   @unpublished{Ahn-cls50-refl,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     howpublished = {Talk presented at CLS 50, University of Chicago},
     title = {Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces},
     year = {2014}
   }

5. Ahn, Byron & Dominique Sportiche. 2014. Bind Locally Indeed. In Carson T. Schütze & Linnaea Stockall (eds.), Connectedness: Papers by and for Sarah VanWagenen, Vol. 18, 61–69.

   abstract Paper Bib

   We present new evidence supporting the generalization encoded in rule H, a rule defended in Fox (2000): this rule encodes an economy principle on pronominal binding according to which a closer binder bleeds binding by a more distant one if both would yield the same semantic representa- tion. The evidence we discuss is based on how English reflexive pronouns behave in two different cases: one involving focus and one involving the (non)availability of phrasal stress.

   @incollection{Ahn-Sportiche-BindLocally,
     author = {Ahn, Byron and Sportiche, Dominique},
     booktitle = {Connectedness: Papers by and for {S}arah {V}an{W}agenen},
     editor = {Sch\"utze, Carson T. and Stockall, Linnaea},
     pages = {61--69},
     series = {UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics},
     title = {Bind Locally Indeed},
     volume = {18},
     year = {2014}
   }

6. Ahn, Byron. 2013, July. Universality and Subject-Oriented Reflexivity. Talk presented at the ICL 19, Geneva, Switzerland.

   abstract Handout Bib

   Reflexive anaphors are not a homogeneous class – there are local, long-distance, exempt, subject-oriented, non-subject oriented (perhaps among others) – and each different subtype exhibits different properties. I focus on Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity (LSOR), its properties, and how to derive them. In approaching LSOR, I pose two puzzles.

   First, a naive one: why do subjects license LSOR? Second, a more informed one: why only some subjects (i.e. non-derived subjects) possible licensers of LSOR?

   I propose a novel solution to these puzzles which has two main components: (i) a semantic reflexivizer (associated with a unique grammatical Voice head, REFL), and syntactic movement of the anaphor (triggered by that same semantic reflexivizer in REFL).

   In addition to solving these puzzles, this analysis correctly predicts the variation one finds in LSOR marking across languages. It also suggests that binding in LSOR is not simply a special type of normal binding conditions, but a separate phenomenon which is universally grammatically active, due to what UG makes available to all languages.

   @unpublished{Ahn-icl19,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     howpublished = {Talk presented at the ICL 19, Geneva, Switzerland},
     title = {Universality and Subject-Oriented Reflexivity},
     year = {2013}
   }

7. Ahn, Byron. 2012. External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity. Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona 20.

   abstract Paper Bib

   A sentence like Johnny burned himself, with the sole focal stress on the reflexive anaphor, can be felicitously interpreted as a response to a subject-question like Who burned Johnny?. This is unexpectedly felicitous, given previous accounts of focus in question-answer pairs. Critically, this phenomenon is limited to a subclass of reflexive anaphors. Though commonly accepted theories of focus and reflexivity would not predict this to be possible, by amending the syntactic representation of reflexivity, this phenomenon and its particular constraints are entirely predictable on the basis of normal rules of syntax-prosody mapping. This analysis gains independent support from the distribution of phrasal stress with regard to reflexive anaphors, as well as from the realization of reflexivity of other languages.

   @article{Ahn-WCCFL29,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     journal = {Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona},
     title = {External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity},
     volume = {20},
     year = {2012}
   }

8. Ahn, Byron. 2012, January. The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress. Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR.

   abstract Handout Bib

   Syntactic structure has long been recognized as playing a crucial role in calculating Default Sentential Stress (DSS). Reflexive pronouns introduce an apparent problem: they tend not to bear DSS where other DPs would ("Remy SAW himself"/"Remy saw MARIE"). However, reflexives do not always avoid DSS; manipulating syntactic context, a reflexive can bear DSS (e.g., "Remy saw Marie and HIMSELF"). Based on such data, I argue against a string-positional account of DSS (e.g. SPE’s Nuclear Stress Rule). Moreover, I present evidence for the existence of subject-oriented reflexives in English, and motivate substantial revisions to Binding Theory.

   @unpublished{Ahn-lsa2012,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR},
     title = {The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress},
     year = {2012}
   }

9. Ahn, Byron. 2011, May. Explorations of Voice, Identity and the Self. Poster presented at Parallel Domains: A workshop in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, University of Southern California.

   abstract Handout Bib

   In earlier research, reflexive anaphors (unlike bound pronominals) have been said to lack a strict interpretation in VP Ellipsis (e.g. Williams 1977, Kitagawa 1991). However, more recent work (e.g. Fox 1993, Fiengo & May 1994) have shown that strict interpretations are indeed possible. I explore when strict interpretations are available, and show that they are restricted in just the same ways that Active/Passive voice-mismatch is constrained (Kelher 2002, Merchant 2007). To account for this, I propose an analysis that involves a special VoiceP for reflexives, so that strict interpretations are a type of voice-mismatch: Reflexive/Active mismatch. This analysis finds support in the distribution of default sentential stress, in the distribution of certain focus accents, as well as in crosslinguistic data from Romance and Finnish.

   @unpublished{Ahn-wpd2011,
     author = {Ahn, Byron},
     howpublished = {Poster presented at Parallel Domains: A workshop in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, University of Southern California},
     title = {Explorations of Voice, Identity and the Self},
     year = {2011}
   }