This book presents a comprehensive picture of binding relations in Polish and specifically focuses on two problem areas: (a) subject orientation of reflexives, and (b) the fact that dative experiencers locally bind both reflexive possessives and pronominal ones. The analysis rests on current minimalist mechanisms such as Agree, Valuation and Move.
One of the well-known properties of Slavic languages is that they show subject-oriented reflexives. This book presents this phenomenon in Polish in great empirical detail and provides its up-to-date syntactic analysis, couched in the minimalist model of grammar. The analysis accounts for the fact that not only nominative subjects but also experiencers, both dative-marked and some accusative-marked, function as antecedents for reflexive elements. On the basis of empirical studies, the book explains why dative experiencers bind both reflexive and pronominal possessives in identical local configurations, while nominatve subjects bind only reflexive possessives. The authors investigate both long-distance binding relations in infinitives and contexts internal to nominal phrases. Extensive references are made to binding in other languages and alternative models.
Syntax - Minimalism - Binding theory - Slavic languages - Subject orientation in binding - Reflexive possessives - Dative and accusative experiencers as binders - Anaphor Agreement Effect - Empirical confirmation of binding data - Long-distance binding - Binding in the nominal domain - Review and discussion of current accounts of anaphoric binding
Jacek Witkos is Professor of Linguistics at the Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU), Poznan. He has authored over eighty publications on various aspects of Slavic morphosyntax.
Paulina Leska and Aleksandra Gogloza are Ph.D. students at AMU and Humboldt University, respectively, and Dominika Dziubala-Szrejbrowska reads English grammar at AMU Faculty of Modern Languages.
