Séminaire avec Zahra Mirrazi (University of Göttingen)

We argue that when two syntactic variables are related and stand in a c-command relationship at LF, a characteristic ¾-pattern emerges: free/free, bound/bound, bound/free, and *free/bound. We show that a range of otherwise-disparate puzzles fall under this pattern, including Dahl’s Puzzle, SCO effects, the Nested DP Constraint, exceptional de dicto, de re blocking, and certain restrictions on fake indexicals.
 

We propose that these phenomena are uniformly derived from a minimality-style constraint, which we call Semantic Minimality: roughly, a variable may not be bound across a related free variable (building on Drummond 2014). The variables in question may range over individuals or over situations.

We define the notion of relatedness in terms of overlap in value, extending Reinhart’s (2006) notion of covaluation. The resulting picture is one in which the grammar deploys both individual and situation variables, and both are subject to the same binding-theoretic constraints.