Abstract
Subjunctive clauses of many Romance and Slavic languages show subject obviation phenomena; that is, the requirement that a pronominal subject of a subjunctive clause be disjoint in reference from the matrix subject. Most of the previous explanations of the phenomenon stipulated that the anaphoric nature of subjunctive Tense leads to an extension of the binding domain of the subject pronoun to include the matrix clause, thus leading to the pronoun being locally bound in violation of Principle B. Using evidence from Russian, we show that the domain extension approaches cannot be correct. We argue for an analysis in which the subjunctive Complementizer is an operator which moves at LF to bind the events of the matrix and the subjunctive clauses. The resulting configuration creates a violation of Principle B with respect to the subjunctive AgrS which is coindexed with the subjunctive subject. Our approach can explain all of the known facts and makes strong cross-linguistic predictionsthat we show to be correct.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Avrutin, Sergey: 1994, ‘The Structural Position of Bound Variables in Russian’, Linguistic Inquiry 24, 709–727.
Avrutin, Sergey and Maria Babyonyshev: 1994, ‘Obviation in Subjunctive Clauses — Evidence from Russian’, Proceedings of the Second Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp. 1–24.
Borer, Hagit: 1986, ‘I-Subjects’, Linguistic Inquiry 17, 375–416.
Bouchard, Denis: 1983, ‘The Avoid Pronoun Principle and the Elsewhere Principle’, NELS 13, 29–36.
Brecht, Richard: 1974, ‘Tense and Infinitive Complements in Russian, Latin and English’, in Richard Brecht and Catherine Chvany (eds.), Slavic Transformational Syntax, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, pp. 193–218.
Chomsky, Noam: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht.
Chomsky, Noam: 1986, Barriers, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Chomsky, Noam: 1991, ‘Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation’: in R. Freidin (ed.), Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 417–454.
Chomsky, Noam: 1992, ‘A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Inquiry’, in K. Hale and J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–52.
Einarsson, Stefán: 1949, Icelundic, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
Finer, Daniel: 1985, ‘The Syntax of Switch-Reference’, Linguistic Inquiry 16, 35–55.
Harley, Heidi: 1995, Subjects, Events, and Licensing, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Heim, Irene: 1992, ‘Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation: A Reinterpretation of Reinhart's Approach’, unpublished manuscript, MIT.
Jeanne, LaVerne: 1978, Aspects of Hopi Grammar, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Johnson, Kyle: 1985, ‘Some Notes on Subjunctive Clauses and Binding in Icelandic’, in D. Archangeli, A. Barss and R. Sproat (eds.), in Papers in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 6, Cambridge, MIT, pp. 102–134.
Kempchinsky, Paula M.: 1986, Romance Subjunctive Clauses and Logical Form, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA.
Padilla, Jose: 1990, On the Definition of Binding Domains in Spanish, Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Picallo, Carmen: 1984, ‘The Infl Node and the Null Subject Parameter’, Linguistic Inquiry 15, 75–102.
Progovac, Ljiljana: 1993a, ‘Subjunctive: The ‘Misbehavior’ of Anaphora and Negative Polarity’, Linguistic Review 10, 37–59.
Progovac, Ljiljiana: 1993b, ‘Locality and Subjunctivity-like Complements in Serbo-Croatian’, Journal of Slavic Linguistics 1, 116–144.
Roinhart, Tanya: 1983, Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation, Croom Helm, London.
Reinhart, Tanya: 1986, ‘Center and Periphery in the Grammar of Anaphora’, in Barbara Lust (ed.), Studies the Acquisition of Anaphora, Vol. 1. Dordrecht, Reidel, pp. 123–151.
Rizzi, Luigi: 1986, ‘Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of Pro’, Linguistic Inquiry 17, 501–557.
Rizzi, Luigi: 1990, ‘On the Anaphora-Agreement Effect’, Rivista di Linguistica 2, 27–42.
Thráinsson, Höskuldur: 1979, On Complementation in Icelandic, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, published by Garland.
Travis, Lisa: 1994, ‘Event Phrase and a Theory of Functional Categories’, in Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistic Association Meeting, Calgary, Canada, pp. 67–87.
Terzi, Arhonto: 1992, PRO in Finite Clauses: A Study of the Inflectional Heads of the Balkan Languages, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, CUNY.
Watanabe, Akira: 1993, AGR-Based Case Theory and Its Interaction with the A-bar System, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Avrutin, S., Babyonyshev, M. Obviation in Subjunctive Clauses and AGR: Evidence from Russian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 15, 229–262 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005732301928
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005732301928