Forks in the Road to Rule I

Abstract

Introduction: Tanya Reinhart pioneered and developed a new and very influential approach to the syntax and semantics of anaphora. It originated in Reinhart (1983a, b) and underwent various later modifications, e.g., Grodzinsky & Reinhart (1993), Heim (1993), Fox (1998, 2000), Reinhart (2000, 2006), Büring (2005). The central innovation concerned the architecture of the theory. The labor traditionally assigned to Binding Theory was broken up into two very different modules. One component (the “real” Binding Theory, if you will) regulates only one type of anaphoric relation, namely variable binding in the sense of logic. A new and different mechanism, variously thought of as a pragmatic principle, an economy constraint, and an interface rule, takes care of regulating other semantic relations, particularly conference. The latter mechanism crucially involves the construction and comparison of alternative Logical Forms and their meanings.