(In)Direct Binding
In: Syntax, Band 6, Heft 3, S. 213-236
ISSN: 1467-9612
Abstract. This paper provides a syntactic configuration for the licensing of donkey anaphors that is common to virtually all other cases of variable binding, viz. c‐command. To achieve this, I am led to refine the notion of "adjunct"; in particular, the status of the if‐clause in conditionals. I argue for the well‐foundedness of such an attempt by establishing a detailed parallelism between donkey anaphors and parasitic gaps. It is shown that recent accounts of parasitic gaps in terms of sideward movement (Nunes 1995, 2001) can also capture the core properties of donkey anaphora. If correct, the arguments presented here strengthen the derivational approach to syntactic relations pursued in much recent work, and the recent attempts to capture rules of construal via movement operations (Hornstein 2000, Kayne 2002, Boeckx 2001).