Journal of East Asian Linguistics

, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp 135–166 | Cite as

What makes long distance reflexives possible?

  • Yafei Li
Article
Received:
Revised:

Abstract

This paper has two goals. First, I argue that contrary to what has been assumed by many previous works, the two characteristics of long-distance reflexivization, long-distance binding and subject-binding, should not be treated as two inseparable consequences of a single LF operation. While long-distance binding indeed results from LF movement, subject-binding must be analyzed separately. Secondly, I show that it is not necessary to make the unjustified assumption that bare reflexives always involve X0-movement while compound reflexives move only as phrases. Given Huang's observation that there is no Subjacency effect at LF, the contrast between long-distance binding and local binding can be accounted for by uniformly moving N0 (=head of a reflexive) at LF regardless of the actual form of the reflexive. The only constraints are the independently motivated ones such as Lasnick and Saito's ECP and Li's theory of X0-binding.

Keywords

Actual Form Local Binding Theoretical Language Unjustified Assumption Distance Reflexive 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Yafei Li
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Morrill HallCornell UniversityIthaca

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