Quantificational binding does not require c-command

Monday, 17 November 2008, Colloquium

Chris Barker, NYU.

Abstract

For the past 25 years, the field has labored under the assumption that a quantificational binder must c-command any pronoun that it binds. This is despite well-known systematic counterexamples, including binding out of DP (“Everyone’s father loves her”) and donkey anaphora (“If John sees a donkey, he beats it”). I consider how the c-command requirement became the standard wisdom, survey a wide variety of counterexamples, both well-known and new, and conclude that we should abandon the c-command requirement, at least for quantificational binding.