Summary
It has been demonstrated that the reciprocal pronoun in Russian is a strict anaphor: it must have an antecedent in its governing category. The only respect in which the reciprocal is problematic for the formulation of Binding Theory assumed here is the absence of the i/i effect. The absence of the i/i effect is shared by the Russian reflexive pronouns, suggesting that the governing category is defined differently in Russian than in English. In particular, English imposes the requirement that the SUBJECT of a governing category not violate the ‘i-within-i’ well-formedness condition given in (29b), while Russian does not.
In contrast to the reciprocal, the Russian reflexive pronouns are long distance anaphors. The locality domain of reflexive binding in Russian is the minimal finite clause containing the reflexive, a larger domain than the governing category. As noted in several investigations of the topic (such as Rappaport 1983, Yang 1983, Giorgi 1984), long distance anaphora universally appears to be possible only if the corresponding anaphor requires that its antecedent be a subject. The locality domain of long distance anaphora varies considerably from language to language, and the basis for this variation remains to be explained. Two other distinctive properties of the Russian reflexives have been discussed: (1) the two reflexive pronouns do not exhibit the theta effect, and (2) the reflexive possessive svoj admits arbitrary reference. The present study raises the question as to why the Russian reflexives should have these properties. Further research should indicate the extent to which these properties are correlated with long distance anaphora in other languages.
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I would like to thank Leonard Babby, Lee Baker, Sandra Chung, Samuel Gutmann, Frank Heny, Richard Kayne, Joan Maling, Robert Rothstein, Carlota Smith, and Alan Timberlake for their comments on earlier drafts. Portions of this work have been presented in lectures at the University of Texas at Austin (April 1982; April 1984) and at the Conference on Government and Binding, Cornell University (July 1982). An earlier version has appeared as Rappaport (1983). The research reported here was partially supported by the Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin. Special thanks are due to the native informants I consulted during the preparation of this work, especially Vladimir Cherkasskij, Konstantin Gurevich, and Jurij Slezkin. The source of examples from literature or the press has not been indicated, because it is not relevant to this discussion; all such examples have been checked with informants.
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Rappaport, G.C. On anaphor binding in Russian. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 4, 97–120 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136266
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00136266