Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
ON THE TYPOLOGY OF DONKEYS:
TWO TYPES OF ANAPHORA RESOLUTION*
PRITTY PATEL-GROSZ ([email protected]) & PATRICK GROSZ ([email protected])
Roadmap
 Theoretical Background
 A pragmatic analysis for weak donkey pronouns
 A syntactic analysis for strong donkey pronouns
1. Introduction
1.1
Theoretical Background
1.1.1
Preliminaries
 In this talk, we will use the descriptive terms “weak pronouns” and “strong pronouns”
to refer to binary contrasts on the following scale.
(1)
null pronoun > personal pronoun > demonstrative pronoun
weakest
strongest
 Concrete examples:
 German personal pronouns (weak) vs demonstrative pronouns (strong)
 Kutchi Gujarati null pronouns (weak) vs overt pronouns (strong)
*
The authors would like to thank Adam Albright, Luis Alonso-Ovalle, Mark Baltin, Sigrid Beck, Paula
Menendez-Benito, Rajesh Bhatt, Daniel Buering, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Gennaro Chierchia, Paul
Elbourne, Ev Fedorenko, Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox, Ted Gibson, Martin Hackl, Irene Heim, Sabine
Iatridou, Florian Jaeger, Kyle Johnson, Tom Leu, Alec Marantz, Steve Piantadosi, David Pesetsky, Masha
Polinsky, Uli Sauerland, Phillipe Schlenker, Florian Schwarz, Anna Szabolcsi, Igor Yanovich and the
audiences at CUNY Syntax Supper, MIT Ling-Lunch, MIT LF-RG and SNEWS UMass Amherst.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
1.1.2
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
The Semantic Typology of Anaphora
 Let us start with a working definition for our purposes (this is intentionally broad).

anaphora = a phenomenon where the meaning of one expression (e.g. an
anaphoric pronoun) is determined by the preceding context1
 Typically (but as we will see not necessarily) anaphoric pronouns have an explicit
linguistic antecedent which determines their meaning.
 It is generally assumed that anaphoric pronouns can be categorized into bound
pronouns, referential pronouns and certain other types that classify as neither. (We
will mark anaphors and their antecedents in bold type where applicable.)
(2) a. (syntactically) bound anaphoric pronouns
No male lawyer believes that he is stupid.
b. referential anaphoric pronouns (i.e. anaphoric referring expressions2)
John came to the party. He believes that the host is an idiot.
c. other types of pronouns, exemplified for “donkey pronouns” (Geach 1962)
Every linguist who owns a donkey thinks that it is intelligent.
 Our working definition for donkey pronouns, which are a type of e-type pronouns (cf.
Geach 1962, Evans 1977, Heim 1982):
Pronouns that co-vary with a quantifier without being syntactically bound.
1
2
See King (2009) for the most recent entry on anaphora in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
See Nesson, Roelofsen & Grosz (2008) for a recent discussion of anaphoric referring expressions.
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(3)
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
[Every linguist [who owns a donkey]] thinks that it is intelligent].
⇒ When quantifying over {Bill, John, Mary},
Bill thinks that Bill’s donkey is intelligent.
John thinks that John’s donkey is intelligent.
Mary thinks that Mary’s donkey is intelligent.
 We consider two current analyses of donkey pronouns3.
 A pragmatic analysis, dating back to Cooper (1979) (see also Heim & Kratzer
1998, Büring 2005):
Donkey pronouns receive their interpretation from the context (i.e. it is
pragmatically inferred). This is illustrated in (4).
(4) a. [Every person [who owns a donkey]] loves it.
“LF-Expansion”
b. [Every person7 [who owns a donkey]] loves the R3,<e,et>(x7,e).
g = [3 → λx.λy.y is a donkey owned by x]
c. [Every person7 [who owns a donkey]] loves the donkey owned by x7.
 A syntactic analysis, dating back to Parsons (1978) (see also Heim 1990):
The link between donkey pronouns and the antecedent is established syntactically.
Concretely, Elbourne (2001) models this as syntactic licensing of NP deletion:
(5) a. PF: [Every person [who owns a donkey]] loves it.
b. LF: [Every person [who owns a donkey]] loves the donkey. (NP-Deletion)
3
In this talk we will not consider approaches in Discourse Representation Theory (cf. Kamp 1981), File
Change Semantics (cf. Heim 1982) or dynamic semantics (cf. Chierchia 1992).
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1.1.3
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
On Formal Links and Anaphoric Islands
 The so-called formal link condition is often quoted as an argument in favor of a
syntactic analysis and against a pragmatic analysis.
 The formal link condition can be stated as follows:
A donkey pronoun must have an overt NP antecedent, which cannot be a sub-part of a
word (cf. Evans 1977, Kadmon 1987, Heim 1990, Chierchia 1992, Elbourne 2001).
(6) a. [Every man [who had a wife]] hugged her.
b.# [Every married man] hugged her.
(intended: ‘Every married man hugged his wife.’)
(7) a. [Every man [who owns a donkey]] loves it.
b.# [Every donkey-owner] loves it.
(intended: ‘Every donkey-owner loves his/her donkey.’)
 It can be viewed as an instance of the anaphoric island constraint:
An anaphoric element must have an overt NP antecedent, which cannot be a sub-part
of a word (cf. Postal 1969, Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991, Ward 1997).
(8) a. Max has lost his parents and he deeply misses them.
b. # Max is an orphan and he deeply misses them.
(orphan = ‘a child whose parents have died’)
(b-example from Postal 1969:206, quoted from Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
(9) a. Followers of McCarthy are now puzzled by his intentions.
b.# McCarthyites are now puzzled by his intentions.
(b-example from Postal 1969:213, quoted from Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
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1.2
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
Overview of Our Claims
 Claim 1: Weak donkey pronouns are not subject to grammatical licensing. They are
contextually resolved and thus subject to constraints on salience/accessibility.
 Claim 2: Strong donkey pronouns must be grammatically licensed, presumably
because they involve NP-ellipsis of the Elbourne (2001) style.
 Claim 3: The “formal link condition” is not a uniform phenomenon. It reflects
constraints on salience/accessibility of the intended antecedent in the case of weak
pronouns and syntactic licensing requirements in the case of strong pronouns.
2. Claim 1: A pragmatic analysis for personal donkey pronouns
Overview: Evidence that the “formal link” should be analyzed as a pragmatic
phenomenon for weak donkey pronouns. It is gradient (2.1) and follows from
independently motivated constraints on salience/accessibility of an antecedent (2.2).
 Postal (1969) argues for a (morpho-)syntactic anaphoric island constraint4.
 Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) argue that anaphoric islandhood should be analyzed
as a pragmatic phenomenon, i.e. as pragmatic infelicity (and not ungrammaticality).
 They base their argument on three premises:
(i)
The acceptability of anaphoric island violations is gradient.
(ii)
Their acceptability seems to be contextually/pragmatically determined.
(iii) If something is ungrammatical, context and pragmatics cannot improve it.
4
This constraint has later been linked to the idea of lexical integrity (cf. Levi 1978, Pesetsky 1979,
Kiparsky 1982, Simpson 1983, Mohanan 1986).
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Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
 Proposal: The same argument holds for violations of the formal link condition.
⇒ Section 2.1 illustrates the gradient acceptability of formal link violations.
⇒ Section 2.2 shows how formal link violations can be captured pragmatically.
2.1
The Gradient Acceptability of Formal Link Violations
Claim: Deviations in terms of the ‘formal link condition’ are gradient and not categorical.
 It has been observed as early as Anderson (1971) that anaphoric islandhood is
gradient and not categorical5, casting doubt on its status as a grammatical constraint.
(10) When Little Johnny threw up, was there any pencil-eraser in it?
(throw up = 'to emit vomit')
(Anderson 1971:46)
 Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) cast further doubt on the existence of a grammatical
anaphoric island constraint, based on various naturally occurring utterances6.
(11) a. Patty is a definite Kal Kan cat. Every day she waits for it.
(Television advertisement for Kal Kan; January 28, 1987)
b. There’s a Thurber story about his maid …
(Michael Riley in conversation; September 7, 1988)
c. I refer you to the Schachter paper; he’s very proud of it …
(Mark Baker in response to a question at NELS; November 12, 1988)
 Our Question: Do we find analogous violations of the formal link condition in
donkey sentences? – The following observations suggest that we do.
5
6
Others confirmed this gradiency (e.g. Lakoff & Ross 1972, Corum 1973, Browne 1974, Watt 1975).
All the examples in (10) are quoted from Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991:451-452.)
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
 Observation 1 (non-experimental evidence):
 The status of the formal link condition as a grammatical constraint has been
challenged in the previous literature, based on examples like (12) and (13a-c).
(12)
[Every Siberian husky owner] needs to give it lots of exercise.
(Jacobson 2001)
(13)
a. [Every academy award winner] treasures it for the rest of his life.
b. [Every pet owner] in our building takes extremely good care of it.
c. [Every sadistic donkey owner I know] beats it for no apparent reason.
(Ward 1997:203)
 The existence of various naturally occurring grammatical examples confirm the
intutions of Jacobson (2001) and Ward (1997)7.
(14) a. Of course [every iphone owner] uses it for browsing.
(http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/14810.cfm)
b. Studies show that [an average 30' sports fishing boat owner] uses it 10-20 days
a year.
(http://www.gladiatorcharters.com/fractional.htm)
c. As a small business owner, I can tell you for a fact that [not every small
business owner] aspires to sell it out to a big company.
(http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/political-fix/political-fix/2007/12/initiativeagainst-trash-hauling-districts-to-start-jan-7/)
d. [Each website owner] will only see its own members.
(http://www.datingsitebuilder.com/how-to-start-your-own-dating-site.asp)
7
The examples in (14) were originally found by means of the google search engine and were are judged to
be well-formed (i.e. grammatical and felicitous) by native speakers of English.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
e. At $525, [ no gold owner] will use it to buy oil.
(http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/weber010506.html)
 Observation 2 (experimental evidence):
 Patel, Grosz, Fedorenko and Gibson (2009) carried out controlled experiments
which confirm this gradient acceptability.
 They propose that antecedents contained in words like N-less or N-owner are
more likely to license a donkey pronoun if they pick out unique individuals.
⇒ Example: The intuition is that shark-owner is more likely to pick out a unique
shark than fish-owner is likely to pick out a unique fish8.
 Off-line rating questionnaire 1-7 naturalness scale.
 24 items (of which: 12 N-less items, 12 N-owner items); 72 fillers.
(15)
Sample item for N-less
a. No NP antecedent & Unique
Every man who was fatherless had lost him in the war.
b. No NP antecedent & Nonunique
Every man who was friendless had lost him in the war.
c. Overt NP antecedent & Unique
Every man who was without a father had lost him in the war.
d. Overt NP antecedent & Nonunique
Every man who was without a friend had lost him in the war.
8
To determine which pairs were unique~nonunique pairs, we carried out a uniqueness norming study
(“Given that an X has at least one Y, how likely is it that that X has exactly one Y?”) – the difference
between unique entities and nonunique entities was strongly significant (p<0.001) for all items.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
(16)
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
Sample item for N-owner
a. No NP antecedent & Unique
Every fitness-addict who was a treadmill-owner had a special place for it in the
basement.
b. No NP antecedent & Nonunique
Every fitness-addict who was a dumbbell-owner had a special place for it in the
basement.
c. Overt NP antecedent & Unique
Every fitness-addict who owned a treadmill had a special place for it in the
basement.
d. Overt NP antecedent & Nonunique
Every fitness-addict who owned a dumbbell had a special place for it in the
basement.
 The results further confirm that violations of the formal link conditions are gradient,
and thus argue against treating the formal link condition as a grammatical constraint9.
 The average ratings over all conditions and subjects (on a 1-7 scale):
(17) Experiment 1 (32 subjects)
Experiment 2 (109 subjects)
No overt
referent
Overt
referent
Nonunique
3.80
4.69
Unique
4.24
4.76
No overt
referent
Overt
referent
Nonunique
3.04
3.35
Unique
3.17
3.47
 A logistic regression with random intercepts for participants and items yields the
following effects in both experiments10.
⇒
⇒
⇒
9
A significant main effect of Uniqueness
A significant main effect of having an Overt Referent
No interaction between the two conditions11.
(p < 0.05)
(p < 0.001)
Experiment 1 is quoted from Patel et al. (2009); experiment 2 is a follow-up study by the same authors.
These results are consistent with our claim and predicted by the hypothesis that uniqueness and presence
of an overt referent both contribute to the acceptability of donkey sentences, and that both are probabilistic.
11
The results for Experiment 1 show a non-significant trend for an interaction, not present in Experiment 2.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
 Overall Conclusion: These observations indicate that violations of the formal link
condition (like the anaphoric island constraint) are gradient and do not lead to
ungrammaticality.
2.2 The “Formal Link” as a Reflection of Salience/Accessibility
Claim: Effects of the “formal link condition” follow from factors that determine the
salience or accessibility of a possible antecedent.
 Proposal: Weak donkey pronouns are contextually resolved. Contextual (or
“pragmatic”) resolution requires an intended antecedent to be accessible/salient.
 Successful resolution is thus constrained by factors that determine the
accessibility/salience of a possible antecedent in the discourse context, such as:
⇒ Semantic transparency of a word that contains the antecedent
⇒ Syntactic position of a word that contains or implies the antecedent
⇒ Information-structural status of the intended antecedent
 In this section, we provide evidence that these factors are indeed relevant for the
acceptability of a donkey sentence with no overt NP antecedent.
 Factor 1: Semantic Transparency (Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
A key factor in determining the accessibility of an antecedent that is sub-part of a
word is the transparency of the word that contains it.
⇒ Consider (18a) versus (18b). Uncontroversially, cow-owner can be
decomposed into cow and owner, whereas cowboy is non-transparent.
(18) a. [Many men who were cow-owners] sold them during the financial crisis.
b.# [Every cowboy] knows that they can be difficult to look after.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
⇒ In a more subtle way, N-less words as in (19b) can be assumed to be less
transparent than N-owner words as in (19a)12, which also affects accessibility.
(19) a.
[Every researcher that was a computer-owner] had to shut it down during the
thunderstorm.
b. ? [Many graduate students that arrived computerless] had forgotten it at home
in a hurry.
⇒ (18) and (19) thus show that semantic transparency of the antecedentcontaining word correlates with acceptability of the donkey sentence.
 Factor 2: Syntactic Position (Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
Ward, Sproat & McKoon (1991) argue that modifiers are less accessible than
predicates13; they base this on the observation that postnominal adjectives are
more easily retrieved in later memory tests than prenominal adjectives, cf. (20).
(20) a. His intolerable aunt is hostile. ⇒ hostile more accessible than intolerable
b. His hostile aunt is intolerable. ⇒ intolerable more accessible than hostile
⇒ (21)-(22) illustrate this factor for donkey sentences without NP antecedent.
⇒ Native speakers share the intuition that the location of the intended antecedent
influences the acceptability of “formal link” violations, as shown in (21)14.
(21) a.
[Every man who was fatherless] had lost him in the war.
b. ?? [Every fatherless man] had lost him in the war.
12
Thanks to Alec Marantz for pointing this out to us.
They note that this observation is from Wilson & Sperber (1979).
14
Thanks to Sabine Iatridou for pointing out this fact.
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Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
⇒ In analogy, an implied antecedent seems to be more accessible if the NP that
implies it is in predicative position than if it is in modifier position.
(22) a.
? [Every woman who was a widow] had lost him in the war.
b. ??? [Every widow] had lost him in the war.
(widow = a woman who has lost her husband)
⇒ (21) and (22) thus show that the modifier/predicate distinction is linked to the
acceptability of the donkey sentence.
 Factor 3: Contrast (Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
Discourse entities are more accessible when in contrastive opposition to some
other discourse entity, accounting for cases like (23).
(23)
For a SYNTAX slot I'd rather see someone with more extensive coursework in it.
(Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
Evidence that this also matters for donkey sentences stems from Riley (2007),
who contrasts the well-formed (24a) with the deviant example in (24b).
(24) a. If a man owns a horse he races it; if he owns a mule, he harnesses it up; but
every donkey owner beats it!
(Riley 2007)
b.# Every donkey owner beats it.
(Heim 1982, Chierchia 1992)
⇒ (24) thus shows that the informational structural status of the intended
antecedent is linked to the acceptability of the donkey sentence.
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
 Summary:
The acceptability of donkey pronouns without overt NP antecedent is linked to:
(a) semantic transparency of the word that contains the intended antecedent: (18)-(19)
(b) position of the word that contains or implies the intended antecedent: (21)-(22)
(c) information structural status of the intended antecedent: (24)
⇒ The factors in (a), (b) and (c) have all been argued to correlate with the
accessibility/salience of a discourse entity, as necessary for anaphora resolution.
(e.g. Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
 Overall Conclusion: The fact that donkey pronouns without overt NP antecedent are
sensitive to these salience-determining factors indicates that certain donkey sentences
(we argue: those with weak pronouns) are contextually (or “pragmatically”) resolved.
3. Claim 2: A syntactic analysis for demonstrative pronouns
In this section, we show that strong donkey pronouns are subject to a grammatical formal
link condition, in contrast to weak donkey pronouns.
 In this section we investigate strong pronouns in German and Kutchi Gujarati, and
argue that they are subject to a grammatical formal link condition.
3.1
Background: The Weak vs Strong Distinction
 As mentioned above, many languages select weak~strong pairs on a hierarchy as
given in (25).
(25)
null pronoun > personal pronoun > demonstrative pronoun
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Sinn und Bedeutung – Vienna, Austria
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
 We will look at the null vs overt distinction in Kutchi Gujarati and the personal vs
demonstrative distinction in German.
 The parallel distribution of these two pronoun pairs in German and Kutchi
Gujarati is illustrated in (26) vs (27)15. (‘#’ means dispreferred)
(26) a. Hans3 wollte
b. Hans3 wollte
mit Paul7 joggen, aber er3/#7
war krank.
mit Paul7 joggen, aber der7/#3 war krank.
Hans wanted with Paul
jog
but
he / this was sick
‘Hans wanted to go running with Paul. But he had a cold.’
(cf. Bosch et al. 2003)
(27) a. John3-nePaul7 saathe dhorva javu thu, pun (pro)3/#7
thandithi aavi
thi
b. John3-ne Paul7 saathe dhorva javu thu, pun i7/#3
thandithi aavi
thi
john-dat paul with run.inf go
aux but 3.sg.nom cold
came aux
‘John wanted to go running with Paul. But he had a cold.’
 It also seems that German demonstrative pronouns and Kutchi Gujarati overt
pronouns cannot be syntactically bound, which is another parallel.
(28) a. Jeder Mann behauptet, dass er / * der
every man claims
that he
heDEM
‘Every man claims that he is intelligent.’
intelligent
intelligent
ist.
is
(cf. Wiltschko 1998)
b. Batha manas kidhu ke pro / * i
every man
says that he
he
‘Every man said that he was intelligent.
15
hosiyar
che.
intelligent is
We use this facts to argue that the contrast between personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns in
German corresponds to the contrast between null pronouns and overt pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati. It is
beyond the scope of this paper to explain this distribution.
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3.2
Sept. 28-30, 2009
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
Evidence that Strong Pronouns are Subject to Grammatical Licensing
 There is a clear asymmetry between personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns
with respect to inferred antecedents.
 German has three paradigms of demonstrative pronouns (der/dieser/jener), one
of which (the der paradigm) corresponds to the definite determiner.
⇒ In addition to the personal pronoun (ihn ‘him’ in (29)), all German
demonstratives can be used anaphorically in donkey sentences.
(29) Jede Linguistin, die einen Esel
hat,
every linguist
who a
donkey has
liebt ihn /
loves him
den
DEM
/ diesen
this
/
jenen.
that
‘Every linguist who owns a donkey loves it / that donkey.’
 Strikingly, all of these demonstrative pronouns require an overt NP antecedent16.
(30) Jede Linguistin, die eine
every linguist
who a
füttert
feeds
?
?
ihn /
him
Eselbesitzerin
donkey-owner
ist,
is
*den / ??diesen / *jenen meistens erst spät am
Abend.
*that
this
*that
usually only late at.the evening
‘Every linguist who’s a donkey-owner, usually feeds it late at night.’
 This also holds for cases where the antecedent is not a sub-part of a word. Again,
the personal pronoun is possible, but a demonstrative pronoun is impossible.
16
Note that diesen (in contrast to den) improves if the intended antecedent is sub-part of a word. This might
be a meta-linguistic effect, related to the primarily indexical nature of diesen ‘this one’.
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Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
(31) a. Wenn ich schwanger werde, werde ich es / *das / *dieses auf jeden Fall
if
I pregnant become will I it / *DEM / *that in any case
behalten.
keep
‘If I get pregnant, I’ll definitely keep it.’
(based on Roelofsen 2008:92)
b. Hans hat so sehr geblutet, dass es / *das / *dieses durch den
H.
has so much bled
that it / *DEM / *that
through the
Verband gedrungen
bandages soaked
ist
is
und
and
sein Hemd verschmutzt
his shirt stained
hat.
has
‘John bled so much it soaked through his bandage and stained his shirt.’
(based on Anderson 1971:46)
c. Manche Männer sind schon für mehr als zwanzig Jahre verheiratet, und
some
men
are already for more than twenty years married
and
wissen
know
noch immer nicht, was ihr /*deren
Lieblingsfrühstück ist.
still always not
what her *that.one’s favorite.breakfast is
‘Some men have been married for more than twenty years and still don't know
what her favorite breakfast is.’
(based on Roelofsen 2008:122)
 Even in borderline cases, where the baseline example with ihn ‘him’ is quite
marked, native speakers still notice a clear contrast, as shown in (33).
(32) Fast jede Frau,
die 1945
almost every woman who 1945
hatte
had
OK
ihn /
him /
OK
den /
DEM
OK
keinen Mann mehr
hatte,
no
husband anymore had
diesen im
Krieg verloren.
that.one in.the war
lost
‘Almost every woman who didn’t have a husband anymore in 1945 had lost him in
the war.’
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Sept. 28-30, 2009
(33) Fast jede Frau,
die 1945
almost every woman who 1945
hatte
had
?
?
Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
eine Witwe war,
a
widow was
ihn / *den / * diesen im
Krieg verloren.
him / *DEM
* that.one in.the war
lost
‘Almost every woman who was a widow in 1945 had lost him in the war.’
 In analogy, the strong donkey pronoun in Kutchi Gujarati can occur in a regular
donkey sentence, and is in fact preferred over the weak (null) pronoun17, cf. (34).
(34) Formal Link Condition satisfied
ji manas
if man
jena
who
passe pathni che, gare aave,
poss wife
is
home comes
tho pro
ene / #pro
then 3.sg.nom 3.sg.acc
bak bharave
hug makes
‘If any man who has a wife comes home, he hugs her.’
 Yet again the strong pronoun ene cannot occur in a donkey sentence that violates
the formal link condition, whereas a weak donkey pronoun is possible, cf. (35).
(35) Formal Link Condition violated
ji penelo manas gare aave,
if married man home comes
?
tho i
pro / *ene bak bharave
then 3.sg.nom 3.sg.acc
hug makes
‘If a married man comes home, he hugs his wife.’
 Conclusion: Weak pronouns are pragmatically resolved, strong pronouns must be
syntactically licensed by an overt NP antecedent.
17
We are glossing over the form of the subject pronoun, which tends to choose the shape opposite of the
object pronoun’s shape, in what looks like an OCP effect.
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⇒ This contrast between weak and strong pronouns is reminiscent of the distinction
between (pragmatically controlled) deep anaphora like do it and (syntactically
licensed) surface anaphora like do so18, cf. Sag & Hankamer (1984).
(36) Mary is a heavy smoker – even though her doctor keeps telling her not to do it /
*do so.
(Sproat & Ward 1987, quoted from Ward, Sproat & McKoon 1991)
4. Claim 3: Two Mechanisms for Resolving Donkey Anaphora
We propose an analysis based on Wiltschko (1998). Weak pronouns and strong pronouns
have a different structure19. Specifically, only the latter contain an elided NP.
 Wiltschko proposes that personal pronouns have less structure than demonstrative
pronouns, as sketched below20. Crucially, only demonstratives contain an elided NP.
(37) a. German demonstrative pronoun:
b. German personal pronoun:
4.1
[DP d- [φP er [NP Ø] ]]
[φP er]
Analyzing Strong Donkey Pronouns
 As shown in (37), we assume that strong pronouns contain an elided NP. The elided
NP-site must be syntactically licensed by association with an overt NP antecedent.
Evidence for such an elided NP comes from the following contrast.
(38)
18
a. Ein Mädcheni kam zur
Tür herein. Siei / esi war schön.
a
girl
came to-the door herein she it was beautiful
‘A girl came through the door. She was beautiful.’
Thanks to Kai von Fintel for pointing this analogy out to us.
The idea that weak pronouns have a different structure from strong pronouns was also explored in
Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) with a different empirical scope.
20
We use the label φP from Déchaine & Wiltschko (2002) instead of Wiltschko’s (1998) AgrDP.
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Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
b. Ein Mädcheni kam zur
Tür herein. Dasi / *diei
war
schön.
a
girl
came to-the door herein itDEM sheDEM was beautiful
‘A girl came through the door. She was beautiful.’
(Wiltschko 1998:163-164)
⇒ Gender mismatch is allowed for (weak) personal pronouns, but not for (strong)
demonstrative pronouns, as the latter contain an elided NP Mädchen, which is
morphologically neuter (cf. das Mädchen vs *die Mädchen).
 The relevant contrast for our purposes is given in (39) versus (40).
(39) a. Jede Linguistin, die einen Esel
hat, liebt den.
every linguist
who a
donkey has loves DEM
‘Every female linguist who owns a donkey loves it.’
b. Jede
Linguistin, die
einen Esel
hat, liebt [DP d- [φP en [NP Esel]]].
z-----------------m
licensing of NP-deletion
(40) a. *Jede Linguistin, die eine Eselbesitzerin ist, liebt den
every linguist
who a
donkey-owner is loves DEM
‘Every female linguist who’s a donkey-owner loves it.’
b.
Jede Linguistin, die eine Eselbesitzerin ist, liebt [DP d- [φP en [NP Esel]]].
z-------=---------m
licensing of NP-deletion fails
 We assume an Elbourne (2001) style semantics for (39a). The minimal situation in
which a female linguist owns a donkey is expanded into a situation in which the
unique linguist loves the unique donkey in that situation.
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Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
Analyzing Weak Donkey Pronouns
 Given that no grammatical licensing requirements hold for weak donkey pronouns,
we conclude that they do not contain an empty NP site.
(41) a. Jede Linguistin2, die eine
every linguist
who a
Eselbesitzerin
donkey-owner
ist, füttert [φP ihn ]
is feeds
him
meistens erst spät am
Abend.
usually only late at.the evening
‘Every linguist who’s a donkey-owner, usually feeds it late at night.’
b. if successfully resolved in the pragmatics:
[φP ihn]
the donkey owned by x2 (where x2 is bound by every linguist)
 The main question here is how this pragmatic resolution takes place. We assume
that weak donkey pronouns are interpreted as containing functions of type <e,e>.
For concreteness sake, we implement this in terms of Chierchia (1992)21,22:
(42) a. John doesn’t have a car anymore. He sold it last month.
b. LF: John doesn’t have a car anymore. He sold f(John) last month.
f<e,e>: a function from people into the car they used to have
⇒ Chierchia emphasizes the pragmatic nature of this analysis, as f is contextually
given. Nevertheless, he assumes that such constructions involve a formal link;
he stipulates it in terms of a coindexation between pronoun and antecedent.
21
Chierchia’s proposal is based on Cooper (1979) and Engdahl (1986), and also makes reference to Heim
(1990) who rejects such a proposal.
22
Chierchia (1992) assumes a “mixed account for anaphora” much in the spirit of the current proposal. He
assumes three types of semantically bound pronouns, (i) syntactically bound pronouns, (ii) dynamically
bound pronouns, and (iii) e-type pronouns that are pragmatically resolved.
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Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
(43) Chierchia’s coindexation restriction on e-type pronouns (to be rejected)
In a configuration of the form NPi … iti, if iti is interpreted as a function, the range
of such functions is the (value of the head) of NPi.
(Chierchia 1992:159)
⇒ This coindexation accounts for the observation of formal link violations, as in
(44), and also for the matching in φ-features, e.g. gender and number as in (45).
(44)
* Every donkey-owner beats it.
(Chierchia 1992)
(45) a. John doesn’t have a wife anymore. She / *He / *They divorced him last year.
b. LF: John doesn’t have a wife anymore. f(John) divorced him last year.
f<e,e>: a function from people into the wife they used to have
 We reject Chierchia’s coindexation requirement based on our conclusion that the
formal link condition is pragmatic rather than grammatical.
⇒ It follows that we lose Chierchia’s account for the feature matching
requirement illustrated in (45a).
⇒ To account for this feature matching requirement, we assume that φ features
are syntactically represented in the φP and interpreted by the semantics as
presupposition triggers (Heim 1991, Sauerland 2004, Kratzer 2009).
(46) a. [Every man who was fatherless] had lost [φP him] in the war.
b. LF: [Every man who was fatherless]2 had lost [φP [singular] [masculine] f(x2)]
in the war.
f<e,e>: a function from people into the father they used to have
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Pritty Patel-Grosz & Patrick Grosz
c. truth conditions:
||(46b)|| is defined iff f(x2) is singular and masculine; if defined, ||(46b)|| is true
iff every man who was fatherless had lost his father in the war.
 In our rendering, such donkey sentences are truly pragmatically resolved, as the
success in determining an appropriate function f<e,e> depends only on the context,
and is not constrained otherwise.
 Finally, for purposes of uniformity, it can be shown easily how the present analysis
can be reinterpreted in terms of situation binding rather than individual binding:
(47) a. [Every Siberian husky owner] needs to give it lots of exercise.
(Jacobson 2001)
b. individual variable binding:
LF: [Every Siberian husky owner] 2 needs to give f(x2) lots of exercise.
f<e,e>: a function from people into the Siberian husky they own
c. situation variable binding:
LF: [Every Siberian husky owner] 1 needs to give f(s1) lots of exercise.
f<s,e>: a function from minimal situations s1 into Siberian huskys that are
owned by someone in that situation s1.
5. Conclusion
 The language faculty employs (at least) two strategies of anaphora resolution in
donkey sentences: A pragmatic analysis and a syntactic analysis.
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 Their distribution is governed as follows:
⇒ Weak pronouns are resolved pragmatically.
⇒ Strong pronouns are resolved syntactically.
 It follows that the formal link condition is not a uniform requirement.
 In the case of weak pronouns, the appearance of a formal link condition is due to
pragmatic constraints on the inference to implied antecedents.
 In the case of strong pronouns, the formal link condition is a syntactic condition
on the licensing of NP deletion.
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