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<Paper uid="C90-2013">
  <Title>tVIodeling syntactic constraints on anaphoric binding</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
1 General characteristics of syntactic
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> constraints on anaphoric binding The relation between an anaphor and its antecedent is semantic in nature. In the simple cases that we limit our attention to here, the two are coreferent. 1 This semantic relation is subject to syntactic constraints, however, and it is the statement of these constraints that we focus on.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In the LFG approach to these constraints proposed in Bresnan et al. (1985), 2 binding conditions are stated as conditions on f-structure configurations rather than conditions  see Sells (1985).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> tots are shown to influence anaphoric binding possibilities: the grammatical function of the potential antecedent (in particular whether or not it is a subject) and the characteristics of the syntactic domain in which the potential antecedent and the anaphor are found (for example, whether that domain is tensed or whether it has a subject). In Bresnan et al. (1985), anaphors are consequently annotated for both domain and antecedent constraints.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Some constraints are stated in positive terms: the antecedent must be tbund within a particular domain or have a particular function. In other cases the constraints are negative: the antecedent and the anaphor cannot both be part of a particular domain, or the antecedent cannot bear a particular grammatical function. Under such negative conditions, the a naphor is disjoint in reference from its antecedent.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Modeling binding constraints with
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> functional uncertainty F-structure relations are in some cases not characterizable as a finite disjunction over paths: for example, dependencies between ~fillers' and 'gaps' in, for example, relative clauses and whquestions. Functional uncertainty was developed for the analysis of such dependencies.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Kaplan and Maxwell (1988) and Kaplan and Zaenen (1989) develop a formal specification of relations involving disjunction over paths by allowing the argument position of functionM equations to denote a set of strings. Suppose (t is a (possibly infinite) set of symbol strings; then  (1) (fa) = v holds if and only if a. f = vande 6 a, or b. ((f s) Surf(s,a)) = v for some symbol s, where Surf(s, a) is the set of suffix strings y such that sy 6 a.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  An equation with a string-set argument holds if and only if it holds for some string in that set. This kind of equation is trivially unsatisfiable if .c, denotes the empty set. If a is a finite set, this \[brmula is equivalent to a finite disjunction of equations over the strings in a. Passing from finite disjunction to existential quantification enables us to capture the intuition of unbounded uncertainty as an underspecification of exactly which choice of strings in a will be compatible with the functional information carried by the ~;urrounding surface environment.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Kaplan and Zaenen (1989) require that a be drawn from the class of regular languages. The characterization of uncertainty in a particular grammatical equation can then be stated as a regular expression over the vocabulary of grammatical fllnction names.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Functional uncertainty can also be used in the case of negative constraining equations. In that situation, the requirement is that there be no path picked out by the regular expression that makes the equation true. That is, the negation of an expression involving functional uncertainty has the effect of negating an existentially quantified expression.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Kaplan and Zaenen (1989) consider only expressions of the form (f where a is a. regular expression. In expressions such as tihese, a represents a path through the f-structure f. We refer to paths of this type as PathIn, and to functional uncertainty of this type as outside-in functional uncertainty.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> In IIalvorsen and Kaplan (1988), expressions of the form (a f) are introduced. We will refer to the path in expressions of this form as PathOut, and to functionM uncertainty of this type as inside-out functional uncertainty. Expressions involving inside-out functional uncertainty are interpreted as denoting f-structures fi'om which f is reachable over some path in a.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> More formally: (2) (a f) = g e {hi 3s e a\[(hs) --~ f\]} (a f) denotes some f-structure g through which Lhere is a path in the set of strings a leading to f. The equation =~ is a constraining equation checking for the existence of such an f-structure. Relations between anaphors and their antecedents are also in some cases not characterizable as a finite disjunction of paths within f-structures; for this reason, the use of functional uncertainty in characterizing the anaphor-antecedent relation seems appropriate. In our view, modeling anaphoric binding constraints consists of specifying a set of f-structure paths relating anaphors with elements that are either possible or disallowed antecedents. We use inside-out functional uncertainty to characterize the relation between an anaphor and these elements.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> To illustrate, the antecedent of the Norwegian anaphor seg must be a subject outside of the minimal complete clause nucleus 3 in which seg appears; this antecedent can be at an indefinite distance away from the anaphor, as long as only the highest nucleus in the domain contains a tense marker (tIellan 1988; p. 73): (3) Jon bad oss forsoke i fPS deg til Jon/asked us to try to get you to PS snakke pent om seg talk nicely about himi Under an LFG analysis, the path between the antecedent and the anaphor in (3) contains three XCOMPs, as diagrammed in Figure 1. Assume that TA denotes the f-structure for seg, the structure labeled 9 in :Figure 1. The set of nested f-structures containing 9 is characterized by the</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> In Figure 1, this set consists of the structures labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4. The expression in (5) designates the subjects of these four f-structures, those labeled 5, 6, 7 and 8: (5) ((XCOMP* o.J svBJ) F-structures 5, 6, and 7 are the f-structures of the possible antecedents of seg: the subjects outside of the minimal clause nucleus in which seg appears. F-structure 8 is not a possible antecedent for seg, since it appears in the same minimal clause nucleus as seg; f-structure 8 will 3A clause nucleus is formed by any predicate (regardless of its syntactic category) and its dependents. A complete clause nucleus is a clause nucleus with a subject  be excluded from the set of possible antecedents for seg by a negative constraint.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> More schematically, the set of possible antecedents of an anaphoric phrase can be char- null acterized by an expression of the form in (6): (6) ((PathOut TA) Pathln)  (PathOut TA) picks out the set of f-structures which contain the anaphor and in which the antecedent must be located. PathIn characterizes the functional role of the antecedent. It is a general constraint on antecedent-anaphor relations that the the antecedent must f-command 4 the anaphor; for this reason, the PathIn is always of length one. The PathIn, then, consists of (and constrains) the grammatical function borne by the antecedent.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> Conditions on the binding domain are formalizable as conditions on the PathOut, since the PathOut characterizes the domain in which both the anaphor and its antecedent are found. ~Ve will look in detail at one such constraint; before doing so, however, we make a simplifying assumption about the semantics of the anaphor-antecedent relation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> In the simple cases we are considering here, the relation is be represented as identity between the semantic content of the anaphor and its antecedent. Elaboration of this representation would require us to introduce the LFG mechanism of projections (HMvorsen and Kaplan 1988), which is beyond the scope of this paper.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> Here we will use the informal notation in (7): (7) &lt; cr &gt; ((PathOut \]'A) PathIn)=&lt; a &gt;TA 4Bresnan (1982) defines f-command as follows: for any functions GF1, GF2 in an f-structure, GF1 f-commands GF2 iff GF1 does not contain GF2 and every f-structure that contains GF1 contains GF2.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="15"> to indicate that the semantics of the anaphor, &lt; a &gt; TA, is to be identified with the semantics of its antecedent. The material in angle brackets stands for the mapping (not further specified) between the syntax and the semantics.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="16"> To prevent the anaphoric element from being contained in its antecedent, we formulate the constraint in (8), where TANT stands for the f-structure of the antecedent: (8) -1 \[(TANT GF +) = ~'A\] The effect of this constraint is very similar to the i-within-i condition in Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981). It has been argued that this constraint should be relaxed (see e.g. Hellan (1988)) but the correct analysis of putative counterexamples is not clear. We will assume here that the constraint can be maintained. null We now describe how to model a domain constraint that holds of some anaphors: some anaphors must be bound within the minimal complete nucleus -- the minimal nucleus containing a subject.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="17"> Let F1 designate an f-structure containing the anaphor. We can characterize F1 in the following way: (9) F1 = (GF + TA) where GF denotes the set of grammatical function labels.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="18"> For F1 to be a valid binding domain for anaphors subject to this constraint, it; must not contain any smaller f-structure that properly contains the anaphor and a subject. That is, FI must be the smallest complete nucleus. We will define DPF ('domain path f-structure') as any of the f-structures that contain the anaphor and are properly contained in FI:</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="20"> It is these intermediate f-structures that must n.ot contain a subject:</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="22"> The constraint that an anaphor must be bound within the minimal complete nucleus can, then, be stated as follows: (\].2) a. &lt; o&amp;quot; &gt; (F1 GF) =&lt; cr &gt;TA b. -~CDPF1 SUBJ) These two equations ensure identity between the semantic content of the anaphor and its antecedent, where the an.tecedent is the value of some GF of an f-structure F1 that contains the anaphor. There may not be a f-structure DPF1 that is properly contained in F1 which has a subject. null % Examples of anaphoric binding We now illustrate the use of these binding constraints with some of the conditions that have been proposed for English, Marathi, and Scand inavian pronouns and reflexives, s The English retlexive pronoun was described in Bresnan et al. (1985) as having to be bound in the minimal complete nucleus, as illustrated by the following contras t: (11.3) a. Hei told us about himself/.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="23"> b. We told himi about himselfi.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="24"> c.*Hei asked us to tell Mary about himself/. As discussed in Section 2, this pattern of grammaticality judgments can be modeled by the constraints given in (9) through (12).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="25"> The an.tecedent of the Marathi reflexive ,~:wataah must be a subject, but may be at an iadefinite distance from the anaphor, so long as the antecedent and the anaphor appear in the same minimal tensed domain. Th.is req,irement can be translated into the following path specification. null (~14) a. &lt; o &gt;(F~ SUBJ) = &lt; cs &gt;TA SData are from Bresna.n et al. (1985), ttellan (1988), and D~flrymple (in prep.).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="26"> b. -~(DPF1 TENSE) = + where F1 and DPF1 are as defined above According to these equations, the antecedent of the anaphor must be contained in an f-structure F1; further, there must not be an f-structure DPF1 properly contained in F 1 that has a TENSE attribute with value +.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="27"> A more interesting ease arises when a binding relation is subject to both a negative and a positive constraint. An example is the Swedish anaphor honorn sjiilv. Its antecedent must appear in its minimal complete clause nucleus, but it must be disjoint from subjects. This anaphor occurs Micitously within the following sentence: (15) Martin bad oss bergtta fhr honom Martini asked us to talk to him/ om honom sjglv about himself/ Conditions on honom sjiilv do not prohibit Martin and honom sjiilv from being interpreted as coreferent, though Martin bears the grammatical function suBJ. This is because Martin appears outside the binding domain of honom sfiilv and is thus not considered when either positive or negative binding constraints are applied.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="28"> In our framework, two constraints are required for honom sjiilv. One, (16)a, states the positive constraint: the domain in which the antecedent of honom sjfilv must be found. The other, (16)b, states the negative constraint: honom sjhlv must be disjoint from the subject in that domain.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="29">  The negative constraint rules out coreference only between the anaphor and the subject of the minimal complete clause nucleus; it does not prevent coreference between the anaphor honom zjiilv and a subject Martin outside the binding domain. In general, negative binding constraints do not hold in a larger domain than is specified by the positive equation.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 75
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> For the Norwegian anaphoric form hans, the only specifications are negative (Hellan(1988), Bresnan et al. (1985)); it must be disjoint from the immediately higher subject. We can encode this requirement as:  This is the same negative requirement as was illustrated above, in example (16). As no positive requirement is given, no antecedent relation is imposed. It is assumed that another module, presumably the discourse component, will supply a referent for the pronoun.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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