Locally Bound 3rd-Person Pronouns in Afrikaans

Abstract

This thesis discusses the binding behavior of pronouns in object position in Afrikaans. In Afrikaans, 3rd-person pronouns in object position can, under certain circumstances, be bound by the subject. This violates condition B of the standard Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981). The aim of this thesis is to find an explanation for why pronouns can be locally bound in Afrikaans (as opposed to many other languages). Reuland (2011) presents a theory that explains the binding behavior of pronouns and anaphors within the Minimalist Program (MP), as the result of the morphosyntactic features pronominal elements consist of and the way these interact with their environment. He shows that pronouns cannot be locally bound in many languages, because they get into a syntactic dependency with the antecedent that violates the Principle of Recoverability of Deletion (PRD). The idea put forward here is that the formation of a syntactic dependency between the pronoun and the antecedent in Afrikaans is blocked, because pronouns in direct object position have some additional structure. Consequently, no violation of the PRD results if a pronoun is locally bound.