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A Unified Analysis of Reflexives andReciprocals in Synchronous Tree Adjoining

Grammar

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED

BY

CRISTINA AGGAZZOTTI

TO

THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE SUBJECT OF

LINGUISTICS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

APRIL 2019

Dissertation Advisor: Stuart Shieber Cristina Aggazzotti

A Unified Analysis of Reflexives and Reciprocals in Synchronous Tree

Adjoining Grammar

ABSTRACT

Reflexives and reciprocals share a similar syntactic distribution so are often grouped together under the

term anaphor, even though they differ semantically. They are a challenging test case for any theory due to

their reliance on either context or another word, which can sometimes be non-local, to supply their meaning.

An approach that preserves the antecedent-anaphor dependency without requiring extra computational

power, and can additionally generalize these two phenomena into one mechanism, is desirable.

This dissertation provides one such unified analysis. Using the framework of synchronous tree adjoining

grammar, I present a parallel analysis for reflexives and reciprocals that captures their syntax, semantics, and

morphology. The analysis builds on a previous STAG analysis of reflexives by Frank (2008) to not only

provide the first STAG account of reciprocals, but also unify this account with one for reflexives. By

employing semantic operators, the analysis abstracts out the notions of reflexivity and reciprocity into a

formalization that captures the various possible readings of each anaphor. I also propose a novel extension

of the STAG framework in which the basic unit, a lexicalized elementary tree, is decomposed into smaller

units—morphological elementary trees. These word level trees obey the same rules to form lexicalized trees

as phrase level STAG trees do to form sentences. English reflexives are used as a test case but future work

will apply the analysis crosslinguistically to languages with morphologically richer anaphors.

Additional contributions include a clarification of the vast literature on reflexives in particular and a

corpus investigation into the distribution of reflexives and any differences across the reflexives. Through a

combination of corpus, computational, and theoretical work investigating the syntax, semantics, and

morphology of anaphors, this dissertation provides a comprehensive and versatile model of both reflexives

and reciprocals as unified phenomena.

iii

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii

LIST OF FIGURES x

LIST OF TABLES xii

1 THE LANDSCAPE: PRESENTING THE CHALLENGE 11.1 Goals and contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Three sides of anaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2.1 Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.2 Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.2.3 Morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.3 Synchronous tree adjoining grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71.4 Dissertation outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 THE FOREST: UNDERSTANDING THE DATA 102.0.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.0.2 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1 Survey of the range of reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.1.1 Reflexive anaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.1.2 Intensifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142.1.3 Override reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162.1.4 Previous taxonomies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.2 Corpus overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272.2.1 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272.2.2 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.3 Survey and corpus results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.3.1 A new reflexive taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282.3.2 Reflexive corpus findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362.3.3 Reciprocals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2.4 Summary and future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

3 THE TREES: INTRODUCING THE MODEL 433.0.1 Why STAG? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433.0.2 Notation and terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

3.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463.1.1 Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463.1.2 Previous work on reflexives in TAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523.1.3 The analysis of Frank (2008) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.2 Multiple link MCTAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593.3 A new analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.3.1 Frank’s analysis revised . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603.3.2 Comparison of analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623.3.3 Adding reciprocals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643.3.4 Anaphor properties in the analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.4 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

iv

3.4.1 Cataphora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673.4.2 Anaphors with object control verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683.4.3 Anaphoric arguments of ditransitive verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.5 Extensions with delayed tree-locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773.5.1 Anaphors in picture-DPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773.5.2 Anaphors in adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793.5.3 Anaphors with raising verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803.5.4 Anaphors with ECM verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 813.5.5 Anaphors with subject control verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823.5.6 Multiple anaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84


4 THE LEAVES: REFINING THE MODEL 874.0.1 Reciprocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 874.0.2 Notation and terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

4.1 The phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894.1.1 Extended readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 904.1.2 Weakened readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.2 Capturing extended readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 954.2.1 Simple cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964.2.2 Allowing for across-group readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 964.2.3 Allowing for within-group readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 974.2.4 Combining extended readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

4.3 Capturing reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 984.3.1 Reflexive readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 994.3.2 Reflexives as operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4.4 Capturing weakened readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1014.4.1 Unifying the analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064.4.2 Comparison with previous analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107


5 THE ROOTS: DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE MODEL 1095.0.1 Previous related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

5.1 Building up the framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1115.1.1 Morphology as syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1115.1.2 Derivational morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1145.1.3 Inflectional morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1195.1.4 Interplay between derivational and inflectional morphology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

5.2 Bracketing paradoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1315.2.1 Morphological bracketing paradoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1325.2.2 Attribute phrase bracketing paradoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

5.3 Capturing anaphors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1395.3.1 Brief history of the English reflexive form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1395.3.2 Current status of the English reflexive form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1405.3.3 Morphology of English reflexives in STAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141


v

6 BEYOND TREES: EXPANDING THE MODEL 1466.1 Future directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

6.1.1 Preliminary crosslinguistic expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1466.1.2 Machine learning approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

6.2 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

BIBLIOGRAPHY 164

vi

In dedication to my dog Hercules for helping me keep perspective, forcing me to gooutside, and reminding me to get excited about the little things

vii

Acknowledgments

A Ph.D. is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to pace yourself and take water breaks so you don’t burn

out, it’s more pleasant when you look at the scenery passing by and have others around you, and the

planning fallacy almost always ensures you go faster near the end. This was certainly true for me. I often

forgot that the key was endurance, but many people in various ways helped me remember.

On the academic side, this dissertation would not have been possible without my advisor, Stuart Shieber.

I serendipitously took his computational linguistics class in the spring of my first year and somehow became

one of the lucky ones to continue working with him ever since. His dedication to and care for his students is

clear. He has not only taught me how to critically examine issues from all sides, but has also served as an

invaluable resource and mentor for various decisions and obstacles I have encountered. I admire his

calmness and wisdom and think fondly of the anecdotal tangents we have gone on during meetings. He has

given me both technical and life skills, perhaps without even realizing, that I will carry with me in my future

endeavors. I would also like to sincerely thank Gennaro Chierchia, for not only being on my committee and

advising me in all things semantics, but for also being a caring almost fatherly figure in the department and

for permitting me to branch out from linguistics to pursue a non-standard path. I am also grateful to Bob

Frank, whose original STAG reflexive analysis kickstarted this entire dissertation, and whose insightful

comments and reflections from years’ experience pondering TAG have greatly improved this work. It was

very intimidating to have such brilliant and accomplished committee members, but my dissertation has

significantly benefited because of it.

Thank you as well to Kevin Ryan for his advice on Chapter 2 and to the Linguistics Department

administrators—Cheryl Murphy, Helen Lewis, and Kate Pilson—for doing more behind the scenes than we

will ever know. Additionally, thank you to the incredible undergraduate students with whom I had the

opportunity to work: Jennifer Hu, Brian Yu, Nicolas Sardella, Alan Dai, Anya Zhang, Elbert Gong, and

Simas Sakenis. I found myself time and time again being pleasantly surprised and impressed by their

questions and insights. Jennifer and Brian helped me implement and test my STAG reflexive analysis using

OCaml; Nick, Alan, and Anya annotated hundreds of reflexive sentences and significantly contributed to

developing and refining the taxonomy in Chapter 2; and Elbert and Simas ran and assessed all the various

machine learning models discussed in Chapter 6.1.2.

On the personal side, I of course would not be where I am today if it weren’t for my parents, brothers, and

viii

family. Their encouragement to pursue my interests, regardless of how random, their pride in my

accomplishments, no matter how small, their much-needed reminders to relax, even when I thought all hope

was lost, and their constant ability to make me laugh (especially my brother Ryan), have pulled me through

life’s ups and downs.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have such amazing, diverse, supportive, and inspiring friends. They

have forced me to prioritize happiness and health, encouraged me to have (some form of) a work-life

balance, commiserated with me during times of frustration, and challenged me to think creatively and

critically about all topics. In particular I would like to thank my cohort—Aurore, Yuyin, and Julia—for

helping me through the coursework and for venting with me at our cohort dinners, and my academic mentor

and friend, Zuzanna, for advising and supporting me through countless academic and personal situations. I

also want to thank my travel partner and life coach, Julian, for the numerous adventures, experiences, and

life lessons—may there be many more to come. Special thanks to the other members of the “no fingerprints”

crew, Aaron—for making sure I have a constant flow of new music, for instigating adventures with me and

Julian, and for being a master at animal GIFs—and Robert, for having dance moves for days, for planning

incredible surprise birthday activities, and for boozy research lunches. I also want to thank the many strong

and admirable women in my life, including but in no way limited to Morgan, Kristina, Aviva, Rachel, Ava,

Anita, Amy, Catherine, Sarah, Robyn, Emma, Kat, Carina, and Tamara, as well as the fun and supportive

men, including but not limited to Andre, Fraser, Joey Sax, Greg, Gus, Sanjay, Suman, Drew, Roland, Gabe,

Pete, Etienne, Morgan, Ben, and Alex. The acknowledgements would not be complete without a tribute to

Carlo, for introducing me to a completely different perspective on life and challenging me more than anyone

else ever has, and the other members of the core “gruppo”, which started at orientation and will continue

throughout our lives: Sam, Jonas, Alex, David, Armin, Ivana, Dima, and Cesar.

And finally, although he will never realize it, I am deeply grateful for my dog Hercules, to whom this

dissertation is dedicated, for accompanying me on this journey (from both near and far). I met him the day I

found out I got into Harvard and he has been by my side ever since. He patiently listened to numerous

practice talks, quietly cuddled next to me as I worked at any hour of the day and night, and ensured I stayed

healthy by reminding me to take him outside for some fresh air and exercise. More than anything though, he

has shown me how to give equal treatment to anyone I meet, to have memory loss for the injustices against

me, and to give limitless love to those around me.

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List of Figures

1.1 Depiction of subplurality readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.1 Traditional taxonomy of reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232.2 Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) taxonomy of reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242.3 König and Gast’s (2002) taxonomy of reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262.4 New taxonomy of reflexive kinds and types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302.5 Distribution of reflexive kinds for each reflexive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3.1 Derivation of Noah saw Emma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483.2 Equivalent elementary predicate trees using TP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483.3 Derivation showing feature structures, Noah saw her. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.4 Derivation of quantifiers, No one saw Emma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503.5 Derivation of topicalization, Emma, Noah saw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523.6 Nesson’s (2009) STAG reflexive analysis using de Bruijn indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543.7 Storoshenko et al.’s (2008) multiple forms of the English reflexive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553.8 Frank’s (2008) reflexive analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573.9 Derivation of transitive sentence using the new reflexive analysis, Noah and Emma saw

themselves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633.10 Derivation including both reflexives and reciprocals, Noah and Emma saw themselves/each

other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653.11 Derivation of a cataphoric (topicalized) anaphor, Each other, Noah and Emma saw. . . . . . 693.12 Derivation of anaphors with object control verbs, Noah and Emma persuaded themselves/each

other to be happy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703.13 Derivation of both ditransitive subject coindexation word orders, Noahi showed himselfi

Liam./Noahi showed Liam himselfi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743.14 Comparison of derivations of ditransitive subject vs. object coindexation, Noahi showed

Liam himselfi./Noah showed Liam j himself j. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753.15 Derivation of ditransitive object coindexation, Noah showed Liami himselfi. . . . . . . . . . 763.16 Derivation of anaphors in picture-DPs using delayed tree-locality, Noah and Emma saw the

pictures/every picture of themselves/each other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783.17 Alternate elementary semantic verb tree to ensure proper variable binding . . . . . . . . . . 793.18 Derivation of anaphors in adjuncts, Noah and Emma sang to themselves/each other. . . . . 803.19 Derivation of anaphors with raising verbs, Noah and Emma seem to themselves/each other

to be happy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 823.20 Derivation of anaphors with ECM verbs, Noah and Emma want themselves/each other to be

happy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833.21 Derivation of anaphors with subject control verbs, Noah and Emma tried to see them-

selves/each other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833.22 Derivation of sentence with multiple anaphors, Noah and Emma introduced themselves to

each other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1 Graph depicting strong reciprocity, Noah, Liam, and Mason saw each other. . . . . . . . . . 884.2 Graph depicting weaker reciprocity, The plates are stacked on top of each other. . . . . . . 884.3 Depictions of extended/subplurality readings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 904.4 Depiction of weakened reciprocity, The medalists stood alongside each other. . . . . . . . . 101

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5.1 Base morphological forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1125.2 Derivation of do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1135.3 Unlexicalized interface tree sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1145.4 Derivation of redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1155.5 Derivation of doable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1165.6 Ambiguous derivational affix tree sets with underspecified feature values . . . . . . . . . . 1185.7 Tree sets for happy and -ness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1185.8 Derivation of unhappiness that succeeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1205.9 Derivation of unhappiness that fails due to feature clash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1215.10 Derivation of the number inflectional suffix, dogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1235.11 Unlexicalized interface verb tree set with tense links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1245.12 Tree sets for past tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1255.13 Derivation of past tense, walked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1265.14 Tree sets for future tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1295.15 Derivation of future tense, will walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1305.16 Morphological tree sets with INFL feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1315.17 Elementary trees for comparative suffix and comparative adjective with COMP and DEG

features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1345.18 Derivation of comparatives, happier and more apt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1365.19 Derivation of unhappier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1375.20 Word level and unlexicalized interface tree sets for the English reflexive, herself . . . . . . 1435.21 Derived reflexive tree set, herself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

6.1 Derivation of clitics, Noè ed Emma lo vedono. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1496.2 Derivations of reflexive/reciprocal clitics, Noè ed Emma si vedono./Noè ed Emma vogliono

vedersi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1516.3 Tree set for clitic + reciprocal pronoun, Noè ed Emma si vedono l’un l’altro. . . . . . . . . 151

xi

List of Tables

2.1 Reflexive anaphor syntactic environments found in corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322.2 Contingency table for distribution of reflexive anaphors vs. intensifiers for itself vs. non-itself 372.3 P-values for distribution of reflexive anaphors and intensifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382.4 P-values for distribution of reflexive anaphors and non-adnominal intensifiers . . . . . . . . 382.5 P-values for distribution of intensifiers and override reflexives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392.6 Contingency table for distribution of override vs. non-override reflexives for 3rd person vs.

non-3rd person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

4.1 The six reciprocal meanings according to Dalrymple et al. (1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 934.2 Eight possible combinations of three relation properties for reciprocals . . . . . . . . . . . 1054.3 The various forms of RECP4 with example sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

5.1 Syntactic category binary verbal and nominal features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

xii

1The Landscape: Presenting the Challenge

1.1 GOALS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

The focus of this dissertation is modeling reflexives (himself, themselves) and reciprocals (each other, one

another) in a unified way using the formalism of Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (STAG). Reflexives

and reciprocals, collectively called anaphors, form an unusual class of words across languages that

syntactically function like other noun phrases, but differ due to their varied meanings and lexical

composition. Early linguistic theories (Lees and Klima, 1963; Dougherty, 1970; Jackendoff, 1972;

Chomsky, 1981) claimed that both obeyed the same set of constraints and differed only in their meaning;

however, later work (Lebeaux, 1983; Everaert, 2008; Reuland, 2008) has revealed that reflexives and

reciprocals are complex phenomena with several interacting and sometimes conflicting features. Much

research has focused on reflexives or reciprocals individually but less has assessed both as parallel

phenomena.

From the perspective of processing, reflexives and reciprocals are a relevant and challenging phenomenon

because they participate in dependency relations that sometimes involve a non-local antecedent, which can

render some analyses computationally intractable. An approach that preserves the antecedent-anaphor

dependency without requiring extra computational power is thus desirable; an approach that can additionally

generalize two separate phenomena into one mechanism is even better.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to provide one such unified analysis of reflexives and reciprocals.

The analysis is unified in three main ways. First, reflexives and reciprocals are modeled in the formalism of

STAG, which utilizes syntactic-semantic tree pairs that undergo synchronized operations. Second, the

analysis merges these two phenomena semantically by abstracting out the notions of reflexivity and

reciprocity into parallel semantic operators. Third, using reflexives as a test case, the analysis extends the

formalism of STAG to encompass morphology by decomposing syntactic/semantic STAG tree pairs into

morpho-syntactic/morpho-semantic tree pairs of roots, derivational affixes, and inflectional affixes. Since

1

1.2. Three sides of anaphors

English reciprocals are fixed syntactic units, and thus morphologically impoverished, they are not a good

test case; however, many other languages represent both anaphors at the morphology level so even though

English is not the optimal language morphologically, dissecting the basic STAG elementary trees into

sub-level morphological components broadens the applicability of the analysis crosslinguistically to be able

to capture anaphors in languages other than English.

The primary contributions of this dissertation are to provide the first STAG analysis to capture both

reflexives and reciprocals, to formalize the semantic representation of reflexives and reciprocals in a way

that captures their various readings, and to extend the STAG framework to incorporate the morphological

composition of lexicalized elementary trees. Through a combination of corpus, computational, and

theoretical work investigating the syntax, semantics, and morphology of anaphors, I provide a more

comprehensive and versatile model of both reflexives and reciprocals as a unified phenomenon.

In this introductory chapter, I provide a brief overview of the main components of the dissertation. I first

introduce three of the sides of anaphors as a phenomenon—their syntax, their semantics, and their

morphology. Then, I motivate the use of the STAG formalism for modeling these three sides of anaphors,

but leave the detailed explanation of STAG itself to later in the dissertation. Lastly, I provide a more

systematic overview of the dissertation by chapter.

1.2 THREE SIDES OF ANAPHORS

1.2.1 SYNTAX

Anaphors have two main syntactic requirements. First, an anaphor must have an antecedent with which it

corefers in an appropriate location, generally preceding it in the sentence (Büring, 2005). Sentence (1a) is

grammatical because it obeys these constraints, whereas sentence (1b) is ungrammatical because the

anaphor is in an inappropriate structural relation with the antecedent.

(1) a. Noahi saw himselfi.

b. * Himselfi saw Noahi.

Second, an anaphor must agree in gender, person, and number with its antecedent, as shown in (2).

(2) a. * Noahi saw herselfi.

b. * Youi saw myselfi.

c. * Emmai saw [each other]i.

2

Chapter 1. The Landscape: Presenting the Challenge

Dougherty (1970) was one of the first to point out the syntactic similarity between reflexives and

reciprocals, observing that each other is governed by a simplex sentence condition paralleling that for

reflexivization (put forth by Lees and Klima (1963)), which constrains the anaphor to occur in the same

clause as its antecedent. Jackendoff (1972) expanded upon this idea by showing that the specific

environments in which reciprocals occur seem to be almost identical to those of reflexives. According to the

constraints on anaphors in general, both have the syntactic requirement of being bound by and coreferenced

with a local antecedent, so it makes sense that they would occur in similar environments.

(3) a. The women see themselves/each other in the mirror.

b. The children care about themselves/each other more than their caretakers.

c. Why would he mind that to *ourselves/*each other he looked like a fool?

d. The boss looks like he wants to strangle *yourself/*each other.

However, despite these similarities, there are a few important exceptions, which can be categorized into

two groups: environments that allow only reflexives and environments that allow only reciprocals. The first

group, in which reflexives appear but reciprocals do not, includes two main cases. The first case is when

reflexives function emphatically as intensifiers, as in (4a); reciprocals do not serve this purpose.1 I adopt the

term INTENSIFIER for this kind of reflexive to highlight that it serves to intensify the antecedent and can be

removed from the sentence without losing any information (other than emphasis).

(4) a. ...the performers themselves also should be considered as important factors in teaching

expression. (COCA)2

b. *...the performers each other also should be considered as important factors in teaching

expression.

The second case is when reflexives appear in positions prescriptively occupied by pronouns, which does

not usually occur for reciprocals, as shown in (5). There have been a variety of terms in the literature for this

kind of reflexive, including but not limited to untriggered, exempt, and logophoric, but each of these terms

describes a different subset of the instances of reflexive encompassed by this category. I adopt the term

OVERRIDE for this kind of reflexive to highlight the fact that the use of a reflexive in these environments

overrides the default use of a pronoun.

1In this dissertation, I only consider the contiguous lexical reciprocals each other and one another, and excludevariations such as each...the other, which can appear in different environments and take on additional meanings.

2This example and others labeled similarly are taken from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

3


(5) a. The first move came as a collaboration between Einstein and myself. (COCA)

The first move came as a collaboration between Einstein and me/*each other.

b. Many participants, including us/ourselves/*each other, saw fantastic results from using the

product.

c. After a long trial, the jury convicted the security guard, the nightclub owner, and

us/ourselves/*each other, the runners, of drug trafficking.

For the second group, Lebeaux (1983) pointed out three apparent exceptions in which reciprocals are

rated “considerably better” than reflexives: as the subject of a tensed clause (6a), as the subject of an NP

(6b), and as the subject of a “for-to” clause (6c). He claims that the difference in distribution lies in the

requirement of reflexives to occur in properly governed positions, whereas reciprocals can occur in

non-properly governed positions, as shown in (6).3

(6) a. John and Mary think that ?each other/*themselves will win.

b. John and Mary like each other’s/*themselves’ parents.

c. It would please the boys very much for each other/ ?themselves to win.

Chapter 2 is dedicated to not only clarifying the terminology in the literature, especially for the first

group, but also presenting an empirical approach to determining the similarities and differences in the

syntactic distributions of reflexives and reciprocals.

1.2.2 SEMANTICS

Although reflexives and reciprocals overlap in their syntactic distributions, they consistently differ in their

relation with the antecedent: reflexives indicate a relation between the antecedent parts and themselves,

while reciprocals indicate a relation among the antecedent parts. As a result, reciprocals must have a plural

antecedent over which to distribute, whereas reflexives can have either a plural or singular antecedent.

By way of example, consider the sentences in (7), identical except for the alternation between reflexive

and reciprocal. The canonical reflexive reading—DISTRIBUTIVE REFLEXIVITY—of the sentence in (7a) is

that the relation (here, saw) holds between each atom in the plural antecedent and itself: Noah saw Noah and

Emma saw Emma. In other words, the action is distributed among the atomic parts of the antecedent.

3Lebeaux (1983) uses plural reciprocal sentences and singular reflexive sentences, which does not set up a clearcontrast, so the sentences have been converted into minimal pairs in which the only difference is whether a reflexive orreciprocal appears.

4


(a) (b)

Figure 1.1: Schematic depictions of subplurality readings in the scenario of boys collectively lifting. (a) Inter-mediate (subplurality) reflexive reading of The boys lifted each other. (b) Corresponding across-group readingof The boys lifted themselves.

Similarly, the canonical reciprocal reading—STRONG RECIPROCITY—of (7b) is one in which the relation

holds between each atom in the antecedent and each other distinct atom: Noah saw Emma and Emma saw

Noah.

(7) a. Noah and Emma saw themselves.

b. Noah and Emma saw each other.

Other anaphoric readings exist as well. Reflexives can have two additional readings—cumulative and, for

antecedents of cardinality greater than two, intermediate (subplurality). CUMULATIVE REFLEXIVITY occurs

when the relation expressed by the verb holds of the entire plurality and itself—the action is true of the

cumulative group. For the sentence in (8), consider an (admittedly artificial) scenario in which a group of

boys is standing on a platform attached to a pulley system. The cumulative reading holds when the group of

boys cumulatively work together to lift their platform and thereby themselves as a whole.

(8) The boys lifted themselves.

The SUBPLURALITY reading occurs when a relation holds of contextually salient subpluralities within the

whole antecedent. Using the same example, now consider several subpluralities of boys, each of which is

standing on its own platform. Each platform is attached to its own pulley system and each subplurality of

boys must (collectively) pull a rope to lift its own platform and thereby the group. The subplurality reading,

depicted in Figure 1.1(a), then indicates that the lifting relation holds of each subplurality of boys because

each group raises its own platform to lift themselves. (A distributive reading would also be possible in the

scenario in which each boy is on his own platform and individually lifts himself.)

Reciprocals can have even more readings, including multiple subplurality readings and various weakened

readings. One reciprocal subplurality reading, referred to as an ACROSS-GROUP reading (Gennaro

5


Chierchia, p.c.), occurs when the reciprocal relation holds across subsets of the domain of reciprocity. In the

sentence in (9), which is simply the reflexive version of (8), imagine once again that there are two

subpluralities of boys, each standing on a platform. This time, though, using the pulley system causes the

other platform (and the boys thereon) to be lifted, as depicted in Figure 4.3(b).

(9) The boys lifted each other.

A second subplurality reading occurs when the reciprocal relation holds over elements of some partition

of the antecedent. Fiengo and Lasnik (1973) identified this WITHIN-GROUP reading of reciprocals, using the

example (10a). Imagine a scenario in which there are many men, who can be partitioned into groups of two,

with reciprocal hitting between the members of each group. In this scenario, Fiengo and Lasnik (1973)

claim that (10a) is still true even if no hitting occurs between members of different groups. In such cases, the

antecedent is divided into subdomains, determined by context, and strong reciprocity holds within every

subdomain, as shown in (10b). (There are also cases in which both of these subplurality readings are

available for the same sentence.)

(10) a. The men are hitting each other.

b.

Many (Langendoen, 1978; Dalrymple et al., 1998; Beck, 2001, among others) have additionally pointed

out various weakened readings (separate from the subplurality readings), when strong reciprocity is relaxed

to varying degrees, so that not every element of the reciprocal domain must stand in the reciprocal relation

with every other element. Dalrymple et al. (1998) provide one account of these weakened readings.

Drawing on the work of Langendoen (1978) and Kánski (1987), Dalrymple et al. (1998) provide a taxonomy

of six possible meanings for reciprocals, ranging from strong to weak, as shown in (11).

(11) a. Strong reciprocity: The teammates refer to each other using nicknames.

b. Strong alternative reciprocity: The people buried in the cemetery are ancestors of each other.

c. Intermediate reciprocity: The pitchers sat alongside each other.

d. Intermediate alternative reciprocity: The students gave each other measles.

e. One-way weak reciprocity: The pirates stared at each other.

f. Inclusive alternative ordering: The planks are stacked on top of each other.

Chapter 4 focuses on providing appropriate semantic denotations to model the reflexive and reciprocal

relations and capture all of these possible readings.

6


1.2.3 MORPHOLOGY

In English, reflexives are morphologically complex, while reciprocals are morphologically impoverished.

English reflexives are superficially comprised of two morphemes: a pronoun and -self /-selves. In first and

second person, the pronoun resembles a possessive pronoun (my, your, our), and in third person the pronoun

takes the form of a personal pronoun (him, them).4 The origin, history, and current status of these two

morphological components are often contested, as described in detail in Chapter 5, but I adopt the following

explanation, as summarized by Sinar (2006).

The first morpheme of the English reflexive is a personal pronoun that syntactically agrees with its

antecedent in φ features and semantically plays the role of a bound variable pronoun. This pronoun is not

possessive because it originated across persons and number as a (dative) personal pronoun, and the

appearance of the first and second person pronouns as having a possessive surface form is due to extraneous

(phonological) circumstances. The second morpheme is self /selves, which originated as an intensifier in Old

English, but was reanalyzed as coreference and now serves as a two-place predicate denoting the identity

relation.

Reciprocals, on the other hand, I assume (for the present purposes) are a fixed syntactic form in English

and are not decomposable into individually meaningful morphemes. Thus, I consider their meaning to

derive solely from the phrase level so for morphology, I focus on reflexives instead. However, many other

languages rely on morphological representations of both reflexives and reciprocals to convey their meaning

so examining anaphors from this angle is still worthwhile for future crosslinguistic work.

Chapter 5 presents a historical account of the morphology of English reflexives and then shows how

reflexives can be used as a test case for morphological STAG, after building up the morphological STAG

framework.

1.3 SYNCHRONOUS TREE ADJOINING GRAMMAR

Any comprehensive account of reflexives and reciprocals should be able to capture the aforementioned

syntactic and semantic properties, ideally on both a syntax-semantics level and a morphology level.

However, the variety of syntactic environments in which anaphors can be found as well as the diverse range

of semantic interpretations they yield make anaphors a challenging test for any model.

One approach that has successfully handled linguistic phenomena whose syntactic and semantic

4Her has the same form as both a personal and a possessive pronoun, so is superficially ambiguous between the two.

7

1.4. Dissertation outline

derivations seem to diverge, and done so in a tractable way, is STAG. STAG utilizes syntactic-semantic tree

pairs, each containing one lexical head, that undergo synchronized operations to produce a unified syntactic

and semantic analysis of linguistic phenomena. Since anaphors require a referential lexical item, or

antecedent, to supply their semantic value, they depend on both syntax, in the form of distributional

constraints, and semantics, in the form of specific relations with the antecedent. Thus, STAG has the

potential to be an effective way of modeling both reflexives and reciprocals.

However, many languages represent reflexivity and reciprocity with morphemes, which requires

finer-grained flexibility than that provided by lexicalized STAG. Storoshenko (2010) provided the first

crosslinguistic analysis of reflexives in STAG, using Korean, Shona, and Plains Cree as representative

languages of different reflexive uses, and recognized the utility of representing a word’s morphological

components. Surprisingly, capturing the morphological makeup of STAG lexicalized elementary trees is an

unexplored aspect of STAG, but is necessary for modeling both reflexivity and reciprocity crosslinguistically.

Chapter 3 provides an in-depth description of STAG, incrementally building up the framework through

examples, and then presents a novel analysis that shows how STAG can not only capture the syntactic

distribution and semantic representation of both reflexives and reciprocals, but also do so in a unified way

through the use of semantic operators. Chapter 5 then extends this analysis down to a word level,

specifically using English reflexives as a test case.

1.4 DISSERTATION OUTLINE

The rest of the dissertation is laid out as follows. Chapter 2 describes and defines all of the various kinds of

reflexives and reciprocals in English. Reciprocals are fairly straightforward, so I focus on reflexives and only

briefly present reciprocals at the end. First, I provide an in-depth assessment of reflexives, including a

review of previous reflexive classifications and terminology. Then I propose a new taxonomy based on an

empirical examination of reflexives in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and highlight

particularly interesting insights from the data.

Based on this comprehensive understanding of the various kinds of reflexives and reciprocals, Chapter 3

presents a unified STAG analysis of both anaphors by employing interchangeable semantic operators, REFL

for reflexives and RECP for reciprocals. I start by building up the formalism from scratch. Then I present an

analysis of the canonical reflexive (distributive reflexivity), based on an extension of a previous preliminary

analysis of reflexives by Frank (2008), which is shown to immediately extend to capture the canonical

reciprocal (strong reciprocity). With this foundation, I test the analysis on a variety of syntactic

8


configurations.

Chapter 4 refines the semantic definitions of the operators, REFL and RECP, in order to capture readings

beyond the core notions of distributive reflexivity and strong reciprocity. First I present the various possible

readings for reciprocals and review a previous attempt at systematically identifying their interpretation,

namely that of Dalrymple et al. (1998). Using their account as a foundation, I build up RECP into a form that

captures all possible reciprocal readings then show how it straightforwardly extends to also capture the

reflexive readings in REFL.

Chapter 5 extends the current STAG framework by decomposing phrase level elementary syntactic and

semantic trees into a lower word level, namely morpho-syntactic and morpho-semantic elementary trees.

Since no one to my knowledge has extended STAG down to the word level, I build up the framework by first

modeling derivational and inflectional morphemes as well as how they interact with each other. Then, I

discuss morphological and attribute phrase bracketing paradoxes. Lastly, I present reflexives as a test case,

since I assume that reciprocals in English are morphologically impoverished. Reflexives are broken down

into their morphological components that are shown to build up to form the phrase level analysis of

anaphors presented in Chapter 3.

Chapter 6 presents some preliminary investigations into future work, including extending the STAG

analysis to reflexives and reciprocals in other languages and using machine learning to glean more insights

into differences between reflexive and pronoun distributions. I conclude by summarizing the findings from

the previous chapters, building up to a coherent and unified view of the syntax, semantics, and morphology

of reflexives and reciprocals.

9

2The Forest: Understanding the Data

Anaphors as a type of noun phrase has been a popular topic in linguistics since early Generative Grammar.

Reflexives and reciprocals have often been grouped under the umbrella term of anaphor to simplify

descriptions and analyses; however, there are clear instances in which their distributions differ, as discussed

in Chapter 1. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the distribution of each anaphor in English.

For reflexives, the correct constraints on their distribution, and even the exact definition of a reflexive

itself, are still open questions. On the one hand, reflexives for the most part seem to be restricted to certain

environments and seem to share properties with reflexives in other languages. On the other hand, they also

seem to appear in unexpected places that question the coverage of the constraining theory. Reflexives are

further complicated by the possibility of differences across person and number. Moreover, the literature on

reflexives has become so expansive and diverse that it is often difficult to understand the differences among

theories and the exact definitions of the terminology used. Reciprocals, in contrast, are syntactically fairly

straightforward since they are restricted to plural antecedents, do not differ by person, and seem to appear in

predictable places overall. The challenge for reciprocals comes in the semantics, which I discuss in

Chapter 4.

Since the early Generative Grammar days, there have been a variety of attempts to describe the

distribution of both anaphors, but surprisingly few of these have approached the task from an empirical

angle. This chapter seeks to fill this void. Using the Corpus of Contemporary American English, I present

empirical findings on the distribution of reflexives and reciprocals. Since reflexives are more contentious

and diverse than reciprocals, this chapter focuses primarily on reflexives while reciprocals are only briefly

discussed at the end in Section 2.3.3.

The layout of this chapter is as follows. To begin, I define the terminology I use throughout the chapter

and mention the contributions provided. Section 2.1 provides a survey of the entire range of reflexives,

amalgamating previous theories and taxonomies and clarifying terminology often used loosely throughout

the literature. Interwoven into this survey is the motivation behind the terminology I choose to use. To test

10

Chapter 2. The Forest: Understanding the Data

these findings, I conducted a corpus analysis using the (currently) largest corpus of American English, the

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Section 2.2 describes the corpus data, the method used

to extract and statistically test differences across reflexives, and the annotation scheme for those reflexives.

Section 2.3 presents the results of combining the literature review with the attested data from the corpus.

First, I present a novel all-encompassing taxonomy of reflexives that not only incorporates many separate

research ventures but also categorizes reflexives in a different way from previous attempts in order to

provide an exhaustive and disjoint classification. The main motivation for mutually exclusive categories is

that reflexives can be clearly grouped according to their features, which enables more precise annotation

labels and statistical analyses of those categories to reveal insights on their behavior. Using this proposed

classification, I present some statistical findings on differences among reflexives themselves. Finally,

Section 2.3.3 turns to the distribution of reciprocals and Section 2.4 concludes by highlighting the

contributions of this chapter and suggesting areas for future work. Before going further, though, due to the

variety of terminology used throughout the field, it is worth defining some of the specific terms I use.

2.0.1 TERMINOLOGY

The terminology for describing reflexives and their uses varies widely in the literature. Not only do the

terms themselves vary, but the definitions of those terms across authors also vary, sometimes only subtly and

often not explicitly. Throughout this chapter, I provide analogous (or nearly analogous) terms, along with a

few authors who use those terms when possible, and I highlight the slight differences between the terms.

For the present purposes, I use the underspecified term REFLEXIVE (instead of, for instance, reflexive

pronoun) in its morphological sense to refer to all kinds of self -forms in English (myself, yourself, etc.),

regardless of their function or position in a sentence. I do not use reflexive pronoun to avoid an association

with or implicit relation to personal pronouns. Although I focus strictly on reflexives in English, I also do

not use the term self -form to avoid a bias toward considering strictly English aspects of reflexivity.

I distinguish three main kinds of reflexives, which also have a multitude of names in the literature, and

use the terms reflexive anaphor, intensifier, and override reflexive. Reflexive KIND refers to this high level

classification of reflexives, while reflexive TYPE refers to the next level of differentiation, the various types

of reflexives within those kinds (e.g. adnominal, biclausal, within a PP adjunct). REFLEXIVE ANAPHOR

refers to the most common reflexive that appears in a local configuration with its antecedent.1 An example

1The use of “anaphor” here requires these reflexives to be in an anaphoric dependency and coreferential with anantecedent, but does not exclude reflexives categorized as another kind from also being anaphoric.

11

of this kind is in (12a).2 INTENSIFIER describes emphatic reflexives that can be removed from the sentence

without losing any information (other than emphasis), as in (12b). Emphatic is not used here since reflexive

anaphors and override reflexives can also be used emphatically. Lastly, OVERRIDE REFLEXIVE is used in

lieu of the plethora of other terms, such “exempt”, “untriggered”, and “logophor”, because it seems to best

capture the distribution for this kind of reflexive. An example is in (12c). Evidence in support of these

terminology decisions as well as clarification of previous term definitions are provided in Section 2.1.

(12) a. The participants engaged themselves in the discussion and shared their opinions.

b. We are a little nervous because this is a lot of money, and it would really hurt us if we had to do it

ourselves.

c. ...the performing artists, such as yourselves, say this song is for someone I know who died of

AIDS.3

2.0.2 CONTRIBUTIONS

This chapter has three main contributions. The primary contribution is a novel comprehensive taxonomy

that categorizes reflexives according to a different metric than previously used in order to provide a disjoint

and exhaustive classification. Previous taxonomies have not succeeded in being both exhaustive and

disjoint: not exhaustive because the classification did not account for all appearances of reflexives, and not

disjoint because classes of reflexives overlapped in often unaccounted for ways. A taxonomy that is both

exhaustive and disjoint provides a descriptively adequate account of English reflexives that could reveal

other identifying features of each reflexive kind that went previously unnoticed, and could allow automated

labeling of reflexive data to expedite annotation.

This taxonomy, which is explained in detail in Section 2.3, comes from a combination of a survey of

previous work and a corpus study, which are the other two contributions. Specifically, this chapter goes

beyond other work because it does not simply list the environments in which reflexives appear or discuss

theoretical constraints on these environments; instead, it provides a broad survey of the previous literature

across the full range of reflexives and highlights the differences among the theories’ coverage.

In addition, through a corpus study, this chapter provides the first examination (to my knowledge) of

differences across individual reflexives (myself, yourself, etc.) and the first empirical test (to my knowledge)

2All examples throughout this chapter are taken from COCA, unless otherwise noted.3The reflexive here does not fall under reflexive anaphor because even though it is local to its antecedent, it is not in a

direct anaphoric, co-referent relation with its antecedent.

12


of the claim in the literature that override reflexives occur more frequently in first and second persons.

2.1 SURVEY OF THE RANGE OF REFLEXIVES

For the most part, there is a general consensus that reflexives in English can be divided into three main

kinds, or uses: reflexive anaphors, intensifiers, and override reflexives. This section first reviews each

reflexive kind in detail based on major works that have contributed to an understanding of that kind. Then, I

summarize four previous taxonomies of reflexives, all of which help build the foundation of the taxonomy

presented in Figure 2.4 in Section 2.3.1. The features discussed and the references included in this section

are by no means exhaustive.

2.1.1 REFLEXIVE ANAPHORS

The first category of reflexives is the reflexive anaphor, which tends to occur most frequently (reinforced by

the corpus findings in Section 2.3). Again, the term anaphor is used here, rather than the more general term

pronoun for instance, to highlight that these reflexives occur in an anaphoric dependency and thus must be

coreferential with an antecedent, but this does not prevent other reflexive kinds from also being anaphoric.

All previous literature tends to agree that this kind of reflexive, at the least, consists of local reflexives

appearing in argument position, usually as a coargument of the same verb as its antecedent. Following Stern

(2004) (who follows Kemmer and Barlow (1996) and Cresswell (1997)), the term ARGUMENT refers both to

entities selected by the verb, such as subjects and objects, and to any entity carrying its own semantic role,

such as objects of prepositions. In (13a), the reflexive is an argument because it is the object of the verb. In

(13b), the reflexive is also considered an argument, rather than considering the entire PP as the argument,

since the verb and preposition form a complex thematic unit that together select for a DP argument, which

here is the reflexive (Marantz, 1984).

Reflexive anaphors can also appear in slightly less local positions, such as in biclausal control

configurations (13c), or depending on the theory, within PP adjuncts of the verb (13d), as long as they are

coreferential with their antecedent. The perspective I adopt aligns more closely with the looser distribution

in that reflexive anaphors occur in a variety of argument and non-argument positions, but I postpone

discussion of their full distribution until describing the new taxonomy in Section 2.3.1.

(13) a. object of transitive verb: Meanwhile, John dragged himself from the river.

b. object of verb + preposition: For his own enjoyment, however, Prince usually relies on himself.

13

2.1. Survey of the range of reflexives

c. subject control: Shelter officials want to introduce themselves.

d. within predicate PP adjunct: A lot more people are feeling comfortable with themselves about

it...

2.1.2 INTENSIFIERS

The second main kind of reflexive identified in the literature is the intensifier. Following König and Gast

(2002), the term intensifier is used in lieu of emphatic since reflexive anaphors and override reflexives can

also be used emphatically.4 Intensifiers occur strictly as adjuncts (to either a DP or a VP), and can be

omitted without making the sentence ungrammatical. As the name suggests, their primary purpose is to

intensify or emphasize their antecedent, and as a result, they generally evoke alternatives to the denotation

with which they combine.

There are two main types of intensifier: ADNOMINALS, which are modifiers within a larger DP, and

ADVERBIALS, which are modifiers of a clause. (15) shows an example of each; in depth descriptions of each

follow. (The interested reader is directed to König and Gast (2002) for a review of (one perspective on) the

historical development of intensifiers and how they relate to reflexive anaphors.)

(15) a. adnominal: I myself am long, thin, pale-faced and blond.

b. adverbial: If so, they can fix the damage themselves.

2.1.2.1 ADNOMINAL INTENSIFIERS

Adnominals, also sometimes called appositives, occur directly after their antecedent and function as a

modifier within a larger DP. They generally add the meaning of no other than or no less than (Huddleston

and Pullum, 2002) or evoke alternatives to the antecedent (König and Siemund, 2000b).5 The antecedent

and its adnominal can occur in most structural positions, as shown in (16), but if the adnominal is separated

from its antecedent, the reflexive no longer modifies the DP and instead modifies the VP, so is considered an

4 To add to the confusion, older literature (Kuno, 1987; Zribi-Hertz, 1989) refers to some instances in argumentposition of what I call override reflexives, such as the one in (14), as “emphatic reflexives”. Thus, I avoid using that termaltogether.

(14) John thinks that Mary is taller than him/himself. (Zribi-Hertz, 1989)

5The exact meaning of adnominals, especially in contrast to the two meanings of adverbials, is very subtle and is leftfor future work.

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adverbial.6

(16) a. subject: Artists themselves often pass on out-dated knowledge about their own art forms.

b. object of verb: I’d still have a life of luxury because I appreciate life itself.

c. object of preposition: The long walk had refreshed him but he was unsure about the decision

itself.

2.1.2.2 ADVERBIAL INTENSIFIERS

Adverbials are slightly more complex. Instead of modifying a DP, they are clausal adjuncts and thus

crucially do not appear immediately after a DP but more freely appear throughout the clause. Generally,

adverbials can occur in central position, in between an auxiliary and a verb, or in final position, at the end of

a clause, as shown respectively in (18).7

(18) a. central: The harsh reality is that most are eaten by their unabashedly cannibalistic relatives before

they get big enough to themselves eat the smaller ones.

b. final: I guess I’m thinking about it myself.

Additionally, adverbials can have two different meanings. The usual distinction is that INCLUSIVE

adverbials can be paraphrased by “too” or “as well”, while EXCLUSIVE adverbials are paraphrased by

“alone”. Other sometimes clearer paraphrases include “either” or “as for (reflexive)” for inclusive

adverbials, as shown in (19a). For exclusive adverbials, a good test is to check if an optional by is allowed

before the reflexive, as in (19b). (See Storoshenko (2011) for a more fine-grained distribution and more

in-depth analysis of inclusive and exclusive adverbials.)

(19) a. inclusive: ...he does not directly have any intelligence experience himself.

paraphrase: As for himself, he does not directly have any intelligence experience.

6An opposing view is by Bickerton (1987), who claimed that a sentence-final intensifier was simply extraposed fromits original position next to the antecedent because otherwise the reflexive would not have a theta role. Choosing betweenthe two analyses is not relevant for the purposes of this dissertation, so I adopt the more recent conclusion in whichintensifying reflexives immediately following the DP they modify are adnominals and all others are adverbials. (SeeStoroshenko (2011) for more details on the two approaches and arguments in favor of the approach adopted here.)

7Huddleston and Pullum (2002) also include an “initial” case, in which the reflexive occurs at the beginning of thesentence, as in (17). However, these reflexives seem more cataphoric and thus may be better categorized as overridereflexives according to the diagnostics presented here; future work will determine their exact classification.

(17) Myself, I slid on out of there grinning like a jackass at how grateful the cowboy would be.

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b. exclusive: He had edited every word himself.

optional by: He had edited every word by himself.

However, the real difference seems to hinge on the adverbial’s relation to alternatives: inclusive

adverbials are agnostic about alternatives to the denotation to which the reflexive refers, while exclusive

adverbials exclude any possible alternatives. For instance, in (19a), the adverbial only indicates that the male

under discussion (he) lacks intelligence experience, but does not provide any information about anyone

else’s credentials. In contrast, in (19b), the adverbial (under the exclusive reading) indicates that he edited

every word and specifically implies that no one else did any editing.

The version of (19b) including by is sometimes classified separately as a predicate PP adjunct. However,

it seems logical to classify these particular manner adjuncts as intensifiers since they alternate with exclusive

adverbials in structure (including or omitting by) yet maintain the same meaning.8 Additional motivation is

discussed in Section 2.3.1.

Since inclusive and exclusive adverbials can appear in the same positions, the corpus study revealed that a

sentence can ambiguously have both an inclusive and an exclusive reading:

(20) You didn’t have the stomach to do it yourself.

inclusive: You didn’t have the stomach to do it either/too.

exclusive: You didn’t have the stomach to do it by yourself.

The definition of intensifiers I adopt follows the literature as described above. Intensifiers consist of both

adnominals, which are adjuncts occurring immediately after a DP, and adverbials, which are adjuncts to a

VP. Adverbials can further be divided into inclusive and exclusive, the latter of which alternates between a

manner adjunct version and a plain adverbial form. Intensifiers clearly differ from reflexive anaphors

because intensifiers cannot occur in argument position, but are restricted to adjunct positions instead. As a

result, intensifiers can be omitted from the sentence without altering the sentence’s grammaticality, while

reflexive anaphors cannot. Finally, intensifiers strictly serve as emphatics, generally to evoke a contrast,

whereas reflexive anaphors can be emphatic but are not required to be.

2.1.3 OVERRIDE REFLEXIVES

The final main kind of reflexive is the least understood despite the vast amount of literature devoted to trying

to define it. I refer to this kind as an override reflexive (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002), although a variety of

8This idea comes from Storoshenko (2008), who suggests that manner adjuncts have a “canonical” form, using by,and a “derived” form, in which by is omitted.

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other names are often used, including “exempt reflexive” (Pollard and Sag, 1992a), “untriggered reflexive”

(Parker et al., 1990), “locally free reflexive” (Baker, 1995), “long-distance-bound reflexive” (Zribi-Hertz,

1989), and “logophoric reflexive” or “logophor” (Cantrall, 1974; Kuno, 1987; Charnavel and Sportiche,

2016, among many others). Each of these names caters to a different aspect of this kind of reflexive yet none

seems to capture the entire distributional range. The remainder of this section is devoted to defining each

reflexive name above and the distribution captured, as defined by the authors cited.

2.1.3.1 EXEMPT REFLEXIVES

“Exempt” has been commonly used as an umbrella term for any reflexive appearances that are not expected

under Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory. Sometimes exempt reflexives are generalized to be all those that

appear in non-argument position (Pollard and Sag, 1992a). These reflexives are thus declared “exempt” from

the theory’s constraints on reflexives. However, neither of these descriptions is adequate to account for the

difference between reflexive anaphors and override reflexives (let alone distinguish these from intensifiers).

A key problem with the Binding Theory approach is that reflexives and pronouns are assumed to be in

complementary distribution (according to Conditions A and B). However, the acceptability of both a

pronoun and reflexive in (21a) shows that pronouns and reflexives do not always contrast. A problem with

considering exempt reflexives to be only those in non-argument position is that sometimes override

reflexives occur in argument position even if they are not bound by a local antecedent, as in (21b). Also,

intensifiers clearly appear only in non-argument position.

(21) a. In the darkness of the house, the woman could not make out any object or human form but sensed

its presence near herself (/her).

b. The fact that Paul had nominated myself for the position didn’t please Frank. (Huddleston and

Pullum, 2002)

2.1.3.2 UNTRIGGERED REFLEXIVES

“Untriggered” relates to the subset of override reflexives that are not coreferential with another DP, such as

those in (22), which are quoted in Parker et al. (1990). These sentences crucially do not contain an

antecedent for the reflexive. As a result, they tend to be most acceptable in first and second person since the

speaker or hearer can serve as a salient but covert antecedent. Untriggered reflexives do not describe the

same distribution as exempt reflexives because exempt allow the possibility of a sentence-internal

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antecedent, as in (21a), while untriggered do not. Additionally, the definition of untriggered reflexives

appropriately does not exclude those in argument position.

(22) a. Several of the employees and myself wrote to the chairman.

b. There are groups for people like yourself.

c. This is a photo of myself about five years ago.

2.1.3.3 LOCALLY FREE REFLEXIVES

“Locally free reflexives”, as defined by Baker (1995), refer to reflexives that do not have a syntactically

prominent local antecedent. In all of the sentences in (23), the reflexive is in a separate clause from its

antecedent, and thus the reflexive is locally free. Since the reflexive is still within the sentence, though, these

reflexives are not “untriggered”. Since the reflexive in each sentence can grammatically be replaced with a

pronoun and since the reflexive is sometimes in argument position, locally free reflexives do not define the

same distribution as exempt reflexives.

(23) a. Tom believed that [ the paper had been written by Ann and himself ]. (Ross, 1970)

b. John thinks that [ Mary is taller than himself ]. (Zribi-Hertz, 1989)

c. Mary complained that [ the teacher gave extra help to everyone but herself ]. (Keenan, 1988)

Baker (1995) additionally claims that locally free reflexives have a contrastiveness requirement, which

fits with his classification of this kind of reflexive as an intensified non-nominative pronoun. However, as

König and Siemund (2000a) point out, not all reflexives that are locally free exhibit contrastiveness:

(24) Bill said that the rain had damaged the pictures of himself. (adapted from Pollard and Sag (1992a);

quoted in Charnavel and Zlogar (2015))

2.1.3.4 LONG-DISTANCE-BOUND REFLEXIVES

“Long-distance-bound (LDB) reflexives”, as described by Zribi-Hertz (1989), are similar to “locally free

reflexives” in that they comprise those reflexives that are not locally bound; however, they differ by

appealing to logophoricity (which is discussed in detail in the next section), rather than intensification, and

considering different persons separately. In other words, a distinction is made between first and second

persons on the one hand, and third person on the other hand: although a reflexive must always have an

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antecedent within its discourse, only first and second persons can have an implicit antecedent whereas third

person reflexives must have an explicit antecedent. This contrast is exemplified in (25), in which (a) myself

lacks a lexical antecedent within the sentence and (b) himself is bound by he (or by a null subject for single

false step). (The corpus study probes further into differences among reflexives by person in Section 2.3.2.2.)

(25) a. Mary thought that [ a picture of myself ] would be nice on the wall. (Zribi-Hertz, 1989)

b. Watched as he was by countless enemies at home and abroad, [ a single false step would have

brought ruin and disgrace on himself ]. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed.; quoted in

Zribi-Hertz (1989))

2.1.3.5 LOGOPHORIC REFLEXIVES

Lastly, “logophoric reflexives” encode thought, speech, or perception from a subject of consciousness9

(Cantrall, 1974; Kuno, 1987; Zribi-Hertz, 1989; Reinhart and Reuland, 1993).10 In other words, if a

reflexive is bound by a conscious entity within the discourse, then it is a logophor. Logophors usually occur

in the subject position of a clause embedded under verbs of communication, cognition, psychological states,

or perception, as in (26a) (König and Siemund, 2000a); however, they can also appear in object position, as

in (23). Additionally, they can have an antecedent in a previous sentence, as in (26b), or no antecedent at all

(in first and second person) as long as they express some salient entity’s perspective, as shown in (25a).

(26) a. John said to Mary that physicists like himself were a godsend. (Kuno, 1987)

b. John was furious. The picture of himself in the museum had been mutilated. (Pollard and Sag,

1992a)

Due to the restriction of logophors to express a perspective, Zribi-Hertz (1989) states that the subject of

consciousness must be “human”, or in the case of itself as in (27), semantically human.

(27) But, aside from this, the familyi was keenly conscious of the way in which such an estrangement

would react on itselfi. (Zribi-Hertz, 1989)

9The term “subject of consciousness” is from Banfield (1979) and was adopted (and made popular) by Zribi-Hertz(1989).

10Reinhart and Reuland (1993) use the term “logophor” differently from the others cited, as a synonym for “exempt”,representing both “emphatic” (in Zribi-Hertz’s (1989) sense of the term as an argument position discourse focus reflexive;see footnote 14) and point-of-view non-argument position reflexives (in the logophoric sense as defined here). Due to theorigin of the term logophor by Hagège (1974) to describe certain pronouns in West African and Central African languagesthat express point of view, I use logophor to refer only to reflexives under the influence of someone’s perspective.

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Similarly, but in a more general sense, Charnavel and Sportiche (2016) claim that all logophors must be

“animate”.11 Although Charnavel and Sportiche (2016, footnote 16) do not explicitly define their use of the

word “animate”, they do admit that the distinction of animate versus inanimate is not precise enough since

non-animate terms can be used as a proxy for people. Indeed, taking animate to mean semantically alive,

conscious being is not enough, as (28) exemplifies. Here, the environment is exempt and the antecedent is a

company (clearly inanimate), so a reflexive should not be allowed under this definition. The acceptability of

the reflexive thus supports an extension of the concept of animacy beyond humans to also include entities

that express animate-like qualities. In (28), the inanimate antecedent AOL most likely represents the group

of people who work for the company, and those employees are the ones who will build the new business.

(28) AOL will even build a new business selling software tools to businesses like itself that want to rack

up sales on-line. (adapted from COCA)

However, there certainly does seem to be a contrast between the acceptability of animate (or human) and

inanimate logophors, evidenced by the sentences in (29) provided by Charnavel and Zlogar (2015):

(29) a. Anonymous posts about herself on the internet hurt Lucy’s feelings.

b. * Anonymous posts about itself on the internet hurt the camera’s sales.

But this is not always the case, especially for sentences explaining mathematical concepts, as exemplified in

(30). Here, the author is discussing the sigmoid function, claiming that there is a simple polynomial

relationship between the derivative of sig(t) and sig(t) itself. The antecedent of the reflexive is sig(t), but it

is not explicitly stated in the sentence. This reflexive is clearly exempt and inanimate, in any sense of the

word. Although these examples are rare, they do exist, providing more evidence that animacy might not be

sufficient to account for this third kind of reflexive (at least in English).

(30) This simple polynomial relationship between the derivative and itself is computationally easy to

perform. (Wikipedia entry (since changed); quoted in Zwicky (2007))

meaning: This simple polynomial relationship between the derivative of sig(t) and sig(t) itself is

computationally easy to perform.

There are two more reasons that the term logophoric reflexive does not seem appropriate for describing

the disjoint set of reflexives not captured under the terms reflexive anaphor and intensifier (as defined

11Charnavel and Sportiche (2016) in fact go further, claiming that animacy is a necessary condition for all exemptreflexives and thus all exempt are in fact logophoric.

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here).12 First, any local, argument position reflexive anaphor can also be logophoric if it expresses

someone’s point of view. In (31a), the sentence is expressing the viewpoint of Noah, and himself refers to

Noah, so the reflexive is a logophor; however, since the reflexive is locally bound by its antecedent, this

reflexive is in fact a reflexive anaphor, not an override reflexive. Second, not all override reflexives are in

fact logophoric. In (31b), the reflexive is not in a local configuration with its antecedent and the statement

containing the reflexive comes from the perspective of a third party—the solicitors—who are not the

referent of the reflexive. The sentence is not logophoric since the reflexive does not refer to the one

presenting a perspective.

(31) a. logophoric reflexive anaphor: Noahi thinks that hei should introduce himselfi. (constructed)

b. non-logophoric override: He goes because of ‘an irretrievable breakdown’ between the board of

the company and himself, according to the official announcement issued by Irwin Mitchell, the

company’s solicitors. (British National Corpus; quoted in König and Siemund (2000a): 22c)

Therefore, a logophor differs from an exempt reflexive because a logophor can be in an argument or

adjunct position, while an exempt reflexive is generally considered to only be in an argument position. A

logophor differs from an untriggered reflexive because a logophor can have a local (or non-local)

antecedent, whereas untriggered refers only to reflexives lacking an antecedent. A logophor differs from a

locally free reflexive because a logophor does not have to have an antecedent in the sentence and it does not

have to evoke a contrast. Finally, even though long-distance-bound reflexives are fundamentally the same as

logophors since both rely on point of view (according to the definition used here), long-distance-bound

reflexives are separated here since they cannot be locally bound, while logophors can be free, non-locally

bound, or locally bound.

In sum, despite the variety of names, none of these terms describe the same distribution of reflexives and

none succeed in describing all reflexives that fall outside the scope of reflexive anaphors and intensifiers (as

defined here). Having reviewed the subtle differences among the other names, I now present the motivation

for using the term override reflexive.

12Zribi-Hertz (1989) may not in fact have intended long-distance-bound reflexives to be an all-inclusive account of thiscategory of reflexive; later, Zribi-Hertz (1995) states that “logophoricity should not be regarded as a necessary propertyof locally-free himself ”.

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2.1.3.6 OVERRIDE REFLEXIVES

The term override reflexive, as used in Huddleston and Pullum (2002), was coined to represent cases in

which a reflexive overrides the default pronoun to appear in a position in which it otherwise would not. This

explains why this category of reflexives allows (with minor exceptions to be discussed in Section 2.3.1) a

pronoun to also appear without a change in meaning. In fact, the acceptability of replacing a reflexive with a

pronoun is the primary test I use for categorizing this kind of reflexive: if a pronoun is also acceptable in this

position and does not change the meaning, the reflexive is an override reflexive. Huddleston and Pullum

(2002) list the following environments and corresponding examples for override reflexives:

(32) a. coordination: Ann suggested that the reporter pay both the victim and herself for their time.

b. comparatives: They were all much better qualified than myself.

c. inclusion/exclusion: Everybody, including yourself, will benefit from these changes.

Liz couldn’t understand why nobody except herself had complained.

d. as for: As for myself, it doesn’t worry me which one they choose.

e. how about: I enjoyed it—how about yourself?

f. complement of be: The only one they didn’t invite was myself.

g. complement of a preposition in predicative complement function: All Ann’s novels are really

about herself.

h. nominative complements (pic-DPs): The Lord Mayor sighed. The portrait of himself newly

presented to the gallery had been hung in an obscure alcove.

The benefit of the term override reflexive over the other terms is that override reflexives only depend on

whether or not a pronoun can equally appear in lieu of the reflexive without a change in meaning. By not

relying on syntactic configurations, contrastiveness, or logophoricity, reflexives can be cleanly divided into

disjoint but exhaustive kinds, as I show in Section 2.3.1. With a clearer understanding of the terminology for

the three kinds of reflexives, the next section reviews previous attempts to create a taxonomy of reflexives.

2.1.4 PREVIOUS TAXONOMIES

The original classification of reflexives (and reciprocals) was Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory. Since

then, others have defined finer-grained classifications, particularly focusing on reflexives since they are more

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Reflexives

Exempt from Cond. A

Override

Abide by Cond. A

IntensifierReflexive Anaphor

Figure 2.1: One version of the traditional taxonomy of reflexive kinds

complex. In this section, I first present the traditional Binding Theory view and then discuss three of the

other reflexive taxonomies—that of Huddleston and Pullum (2002), König and Gast (2002), and

Storoshenko (2008).

2.1.4.1 TRADITIONAL VIEW

Much of the early work on reflexives focused on whether or not a reflexive was captured under (some

version of) Binding Theory. If the reflexive fell within the scope of the appropriate domain, it was

considered a “true” reflexive; if it did not abide by the binding constraints, it either motivated an adjustment

to the binding conditions (picture-DPs), or was considered “exempt” from Binding Theory and disregarded.

One version of this traditional taxonomy, based on Chomsky’s (1981) Binding Theory, is shown in

Figure 2.1. At the higher level (boxed labels), reflexives are split between those that abide by Condition A

and those that are exempt from Condition A (by being grammatical but not abiding by the constraints of

Condition A). A reflexive abides by Condition A if it is bound (c-commanded) in its binding domain, which

(for the present purposes) is the smallest clause containing the reflexive, its case assigner, and a higher

subject. The lower level of classification has more variation across sources depending on the aspect of

reflexivity being investigated. Here, the reflexives that abide by Condition A are divided into reflexive

anaphors, which are required to be an argument that is in an anaphoric, co-referent relation with its

antecedent, and intensifiers, which appear in adjunct position but are still local and thus bound. Those

exempt from Condition A are a collection of any reflexives that do not fit the right constraints and are

referred to as override reflexives or logophors, among many other terms.

2.1.4.2 HUDDLESTON AND PULLUM (2002)

Huddleston and Pullum (2002) categorize reflexives primarily according to structural position. Figure 2.2

displays a hierarchical representation of their reflexive kind classification. Reflexives are first divided into

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Reflexives

Complement use

Basic

Mandatory Inadmissable Optional

Override

Optional

Emphatic use

Figure 2.2: High-level representation of Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002) classification of reflexives

either complement use (complement of a verb or complement of a preposition) or emphatic use (adjunct in

clause structure or modifier in DP structure). Examples of the former are in (33) and of the latter are in

(34).13

(33) a. complement of verb: Rhiana feeds herself now.

b. complement of preposition: Liz talks to herself.

(34) a. adjunct in clause structure: Rhiana wrote the report herself.

b. modifier in DP structure: Liz herself presented the prize.

Complement use reflexives can be further divided into basic reflexives and override reflexives. Basic

reflexives comprise mandatory reflexives (35a), inadmissable reflexives (35b), and optional reflexives (35c).

(35) a. mandatory: Anni blames herselfi/*heri for the accident.

b. inadmissable: Anni realizes that they blame *herself

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