Barriers and the Theory of Binding* Gisbert Fanselow

o

General Remarks and Overview

In the past ten years, considerable progress has been made towards the goal of unifying the locality conditions of various subsystems of UG. At present, three major approaches may be distinguished within this research programme: while the theories developed by Kayne (1983), Koster (1984a, 1987) and Pesetsky (1982) express generalizations about local domains in terms of quasigeometric properties of tree configurations and directionality of government, local domains are fixed in terms of specific properties of subtrees in the two approaches implicit in the Barriers-framework, viz. the status of L-marking of a given category (cf. Chomsky 1986a), and extensions of a relativized concept of minimality (cf. Rizzi 1990, Fanselow 1988a, 1989a). The goal of this paper is to argue that the local domain for anaphoric binding is reducible to a relativized and feature-based concept of minimality as well. The discussion will lead to a question that arises in the context of recent proposals such as Aoun (1985), Bouchard (1984) or Chomsky (1986a,b): is it possible to find a uniform formulation for the principles of UG? The paper argues that this question can be answered positively, at least for the ECP, Binding Theory's Principle A, the Case Filter, and the identification conditions for pro and PRO. Such a unification, however, appears to presuppose a principled distinction of three levels of representation (D-structure, S-structure and LF) and might also have to rely on a strictly derivational concept of certain syntactic rules. In section 1, the status of Principle A of the binding theory in Chomsky (1986a,b) will be discussed briefly. section 2 identifies a number of problems that arise in any attempt to subsume the local domain of anaphoric binding under the 'traditional' concept of barriers. In section 3, these observations will be related to further problems of the L-marking account of barriers. It will be argued in sections4 and 5 that these problems can be overcome in terms 'This article is a completely rewritten version of the talk presented at the Oberkirch workshop. For helpful comments, I am indebted to Sascha W.Felix, Peter Staudacher, and two anonymous reviewers for the present volume. A more elaborate treatment of anaphoric binding in terms of relativized minimality can be found in Fanselow (1 990b). 217

H. Haider et al. (eds.), Representation and Derivation in the Theory of Grammar © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991

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GISBERT FANSELOW

of a relativized and feature-based minimality condition. section 6 deals with some 'long-distance-binding' phenomena in Icelandic, while section 7 argues that data from Italian and German necessitate a reformulation of the ECP in terms of a Principle of Full Specification. We relate this principle to the Case Filter and the identification conditions for PRO and pro in section 8. The final section is dedicated to a discussion of the implications the approach developed here will have for a number of issues such as the nature of the relation between levels of representation.

1

The ECP and Principle A in the 'Barriers'Framework

Chomsky (1986a:68-ffi) has demonstrated that reference to lexical or f)government can be eliminated from the definition of the term 'proper government', which is central for the ECP (2): (1) a properly governs

f3

iff a antecedent-governs

f3.

(2) ECP: A non-pronominal NP must be properly governed. Subject and adjunct WH-traces depend on antecedent-government for obvious reasons, so the elimination of lexical or f)-government from (1) does not have any consequences for these. Object WH-traces as in (3) are antecedent-governed by a trace adjoined to VP which is motivated on independent grounds (d. Chomsky 1986a:7f). (3) whoi did [IP you [VP ti [vp invite ti)]) The situation is more complex for NP-traces. According to the definition of barrierhood given in (4)-(7), the subject John cannot antecedent-govern its trace in (8) directly, as the VP-node intervening between the two categories constitutes a barrier.

(4) Barrier (by L- Marking) For any maximal projections ~,