41.

Pronouns
Daniel Büring
University of Vienna
Vienna (Austria)
daniel.buring@univie.ac.at
May 2009, bib updated & typos corrected July 2011, reference
added Aug 2016

1
41. Pronouns

1. Pronoun types and basic interpretation

2. The meaning of definite pronouns

3. Pronoun binding

4. Pronominal content

5. Binding theory

6. References

We introduce the main types of pronouns in natural language — indefinites,

definites, demonstratives, and reciprocals — and summarize current analy-
ses of their semantics. For definite pronouns, we discuss question of whether
pronouns are akin to variables or descriptions, in particular so-called pro-
nouns of laziness, paycheck pronouns and E-type pronouns. Pronoun binding
is analyzed in detail, including the questions of if and when semantic binding
becomes obligatory. For all these issues, different formal implementations, in-
cluding an explicit semantic for plural pronouns, are provided and discussed.
The article closes with a short overview of semantic approaches to Binding
Theory.

1. Pronoun types and basic interpretation

The class of pronouns in English includes expressions like he, she, it, us,
they, her, herself, ourselves, each other, here, there, now, someone, some-
where, this, that and these. It is a closed class of mostly one-word expressions
in the category DP or PP (perhaps among others), whose semantic content
is limited to basic features such as number, gender and person. Most, if not
all, languages have expressions of this type, but no definition of the term
will be attempted here, and examples will mostly be drawn from English.
We can cross-classify pronouns according to their ontological status — e.g.
personal (you, she, this, someone), temporal (now, then, sometimes), or

1
locative (here, there, somewhere); in each group we can distinguish definite
pronouns (you, she, this, now, then, here, there etc.) from indefinite ones
(someone, somewhere etc.); definites can be demonstrative (this, that) or
non-demonstrative, the latter in turn deictic (or indexical: you, now, here)
or non-deictic (she, then, there). Among the definite non-demonstratives
(indexical or not), English furthermore distinguishes reflexive pronouns (her-
self, ourselves), non-reflexive pronouns (she, her, our ), and reciprocals (each
other, one another ).
In what follows we will concentrate on personal pronouns, which have
received by far the most attention in the literature; many aspects of the
semantics of temporal and locative pronouns will be analogous, but their
details will hinge to a large extent on the chosen ontology for temporal and
locative expressions in general, which this article will be agnostic about.
In this section we will in turn discuss the three major classes indefinite,
definite, and demonstrative pronouns; discussion of reciprocals will be found
in section 4.3. Section 2. then details the semantics of definite pronouns,
followed by a treatment of pronoun binding in section 3.1. Section 4. is
concerned with the semantic content of pronouns (sometimes called ‘phi-
features’), followed by a short discussion of (the semantic aspects of) binding
theory in section 5..

1.1 Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns come in several series like the English some-, no- and
any-series, with each series having exponents for the major ontological cat-
egories, such as English -one/body, -thing, -where, -how etc. (Haspelmath,
1997, especially ch.3). We won’t discuss the peculiarities of the any-series
here (see article 71: Polarity items); the some- and no- series seem to have
the same denotation as the parallel quantified DPs like some person, no
thing etc. In a generalized quantifier framework, see example article 44:
Quantifiers,their interpretation would be along the lines of (1-a), and their
translation into second-order logic like in (1-b):

(1) a. [[someone]] = that function from sets of individuals to truth values

that maps any set of individuals p to True iff p contains one or
more people
b. someone ; λPet .∃xe [person0 (x)&P (x)]

Since indefinite pronouns can be modified by relative clauses as well as adjec-

2
tives, it seems plausible to analyze them as a determiner some/no/any plus
NP body, one, where, the latter of which can be modified. The Pron+AP
order may then be derived by movement of the N to D:

(2) a. nobody I know = [PDP no [NP body [RelCl I know ]]]

b. someone important = [PDP some [NP [AP important ] one ]]

Numerous arguments in favor of alternative semantic analyses for indefinite

DPs have been put forth in the literature, and these apply to indefinite
pronouns to varying degrees. Indefinite pronouns occur as antecedents in
donkey sentences (cf. section 2.2.2 below), where they appear to display
quantificational variabilty, suggesting they should perhaps be analyzed as
containing unbound variables:

(3) Mostly, if I call someone, they hang up on me.

‘most people who I call hand up on me’

On the other hand, they part ways with lexical indefinite DPs in generic
and adverbial sentences: (4-a,b) can be paraphrased roughly as ‘few/most
people/men have enough time’, but no similar interpretation is available
for (4-c) (replacing someone in (4-c) with one yields the reading in question;
we will not discuss generic pronouns in this article, see Moltmann, 2006):

(4) a. People rarely/usually have enough time.

b. A man rarely/usually has enough time.
c. Someone rarely/usually has enough time.

Finally, indefinite pronouns seem less prone to wide scope or specific inter-
pretations; (5-a) has a reading which is true even if only one specific relative
will bequeath a fortune on her, but the same reading seems less available for
(5-b) with an indefinite, arguing against an analysis of indefinite pronouns
in terms of choice functions (Reinhart, 1997; Winter, 1997):

(5) a. If some relative of hers dies, she’ll inherit a fortune.

b. If someone in her family dies, she’ll inherit a fortune.

Since the arguments and analyses here entirely parallel those in the discussion
of indefinite DPs in general, I refer to reader to article 42: Definiteness and
indefiniteness for more analytical options regarding the semantics of (the
determiner part in) indefinite pronouns.

3
1.2 Demonstrative pronouns
We briefly discuss here the English singular demonstratives this and that
on their individual-denoting use, ignoring plural demonstratives, and puta-
tive locative, temporal or propositional demonstratives; also, many languages
show an ostensibly demonstrative use of bare definite articles, e.g. German
der, die, das. Demonstratives display at least two properties that distinguish
them from non-demonstrative pronouns: a proximal/distal specification, and
a heightened sensitivity to speakers’ extralinguistic demonstrations (see arti-
cle 90 (Diessel): Deixis and demonstratives). To a first, crude approximation,
this/that are most naturally used when accompanied by a pointing gesture;
this additionally expresses closeness (in some sense) to the speaker, that lack
thereof:

(6) (pointing at a picture on the wall) This is a Picasso.

As Kaplan (1989b) famously points out, demomstratives appear to be directly

referential : (7) is not true even if there is a Pollock painting hanging opposite
the Picasso (note that the definite paraphrase in (7) seems true under these
circumstances):

(7) (pointing at a Picasso on the wall) If I were pointing to the opposite

wall, this would be a Pollock.
(can’t mean ‘. . . the picture I would be pointing to would be a Pollock’)

This is reflected in (8), where the referent of the demonstrative is fixed with
no regard to the world w of evaluation, but only to the context of utterance
(see article 100: Context dependency):

(8) [[this/that]]w,g = the unique proximal/distant object the speaker is ac-

tually pointing at at the time of utterance
(Or perhaps: intending to demonstrate, cf. Bach, 1992; Kaplan, 1989a)

Several things are worth noting, though: First, the sensitivity to demon-
strations is found equally with second, third, and first person plural non-
demonstrative pronouns:

(9) She/they/you/we (pointing at appropriate group) are better at the

game than she/they/you/we (pointing at different appropriate group).

Likewise, these appear directly referential in the same way:

4
(10) (pointing at a picture of Pollock, which is next to a picture of Picasso)
If I were pointing at the next picture, he would be a Spaniard.

One might conclude from this that we generally use demonstrative gestures
as a clue to discern speakers’ (actual) referential intentions, and that the
semantics shouldn’t distinguish demonstratives in that regard.
Second, demonstratives seem to allow for ‘special’ uses much like ordi-
nary pronouns (examples from Elbourne, 2008, p.462, based on the parallel
example and argument for non-demonstrative pronouns in Jacobson, 2000,
p.89):

(11) a. (A new faculty member picks up her first paycheck from her
mailbox. Waving it in the air, she says to a colleague:) Do most
faculty members deposit this in the Credit Union? (this = their
paycheck)
b. Every man who owns a donkey beats that and nothing else.

This in turn suggests that the meaning of demonstratives should include

some variable that can be locally, linguistically bound, be it in the form of an
index pointing to an individual in the assignment, or a situation variable (see
sec. 2.2.1). The semantic literature on simple demonstratives is rather scarce,
but the reader is referred to the rich literature on complex demonstratives,
among others Elbourne (2008); King (2001); Roberts (2002).

1.3 Non-demonstrative definite pronouns

Traditional grammars distinguish between the anaphoric, deictic and bound
uses of third person definite pronouns:

(12) a. Every soprano brought her union card. (bound)

b. Josh met a soprano. He liked her. (anaphoric)
c. (scenario: A woman walks in.)
She must be a soprano. (deictic)

A bound pronoun acts like a bound individual variable in quantificational

logic; crucially, no contextual information is necessary in order to inter-
pret (12-a) or the pronouns therein. This is different in the case of anaphoric
and deictic pronouns (12-b,c), where we need to know the (linguistic or extra-
linguistic) context in order to interpret the pronouns.

5
 Anaphoric uses, however, do not always involve more than one sentence:
her in (13-a) is anaphoric to Joan within the same sentence. One might
think that (13-a) involves a bound pronoun, but note that binding of her by
a true quantificational DP like every soprano is impossible in the structurally
identical (13-b); thus the relation between Joan and her in (13-a) must be
anaphoric coreference, not binding:

(13) a. What the doctor told Joan impressed her.

b. What the doctor told every soprano impressed her.
c. Claudia knows her password.

The case in (13-c), on the other hand, is less clear, since her can be bound
by every soprano in the structurally parallel (12-a); but it could also just
corefer with, and hence be anaphoric to, the subject Claudia (obviously not
an option with every soprano, which doesn’t refer to begin with). We will
return to this issue in section 3.3.

2. The meaning of definite pronouns

2.1 Pronouns as variable-like expressions
2.1.1 Pronouns as variables
The basic semantics of personal pronouns is often likened to that of variables
in predicate logic. A straightforward implementation of this idea will assume
pronouns to be indexed with a natural number, and have their interpretation
depend on an assignment function, i.e. a sequence of, or a function from
numbers to, DP meanings. The interpretation rule (14) (where i is a variable
over natural numbers, and g a variable over assignment functions) provides
a simple illustration:

(14) for any assignment function g, [[[pron X ]i ]]g = g(i) (≈ the i-th member
of g)

Rule (14) certainly oversimplifies, most clearly in ignoring any lexical content
of the pronoun (i.e. gender, person, number), which we will discuss in 4.1,
as well as types of pronouns that appear to have meanings more complex
than just individuals (see section 2.2). It can serve, however, to explicate
the deictic, anaphoric and bound uses of definite pronouns mentioned in 1.3

6
more formally.
We will discuss bound pronouns in much detail in section 3.. In a nut-
shell, the binder of a pronoun, for example a quantificational DP like every
soprano in (12-a) (every soprano brought her union card ), can manipulate
the assignment function in much the same way the quantifiers ∃ and ∀ do
in quantified logic. The interpretation of a sentence that contains bound
pronouns only will thus not, as a whole, depend on the assignment, which
plays an ancillary role only: [[(12-a)]]g is the same for any g.
This is different for sentences with non-bound, i.e. anaphoric and deictic
pronouns. For example, a sentence like Josh liked heri , for any assignment
g, is true iff Josh liked g(i); which proposition it expresses crucially hinges
on g, that is, the assignment here models an essential part of the context.
Specifying how this comes about is not part of the semantics of pronouns
proper, but we will give some indications in the next subsection (see article
38: Discourse Representation Theory, article 39: Dynamic semantics).
All of this of couse presupposes that all three usus of pronouns — bound,
anaphoric and deictic — involve the same semantics for the pronoun (here:
that of a variable, (14)). A common alternative view is that pronouns are am-
biguous between two or more interpretations for pronouns. Most commonly,
a distinction is made between bound pronouns, which are usually treated as
variables (or their equivalents in variable-free theories), and deictic pronouns,
which are treated differently; anaphoric pronouns are then usually grouped
with one or the other of those. We will return to some of these issues in
section 2.2, see also article 84: Accessibility and anaphora.

2.1.2 Assignments, discourse, and saliency

Given what was said so far, a pronoun like her can refer to any element in
the range of the assignment function, depending on its index. If we want the
semantics to model the range of available referents for pronouns, we need to
include a theory of how assignments are incrementally ‘build’ in a discourse.
As a first step, assume that assignment functions are partial, and that
their domain reflects the anaphoric options in a given context, i.e. which dis-
course referents (DRs), modelled by indices, are available at a given point in
the conversation. A pronoun like her7 , if unbound, will thus only be inter-
pretable in a context that has previously introduced the discourse referent 7
(and only if g(7) is female, see again 4.1 below). Discourse referents can be
introduced (i.e. indices can be added to the domain of an assignment) in at

7
least two different ways: Linguistically, by the use of full DPs, in particular
indefinites, and extralinguistically, by pointing to an object, or simply by
virtue of that object becoming salient.
One may wish to go further and model the intuition that, say, she can’t
usually refer to any female individual previously introduced, but will refer
to the most salient one. To do this, the context needs to provide an ordering
among the available DRs; since assignments are sequences, a straightforward
way of achieving this is to assume that the last element in the assignment is
more salient than the one before it, which in turn is more salient than the
one before it, etc. Using an indefinite, for example, will serve not only to
introduce a new DR, but also to make that DR maximally salient, i.e. put
it at the end of the list. Other linguistic devices, say marking a DP as a
topic, or referring to an existing DR using a definite description, may yield
the same effect, as will pointing to an object etc.
Using assignments in this way allows for a radically different semantics
of unbound pronouns, using lexical entries like (15):

(15) [[she]]g = the final (=most salient) female individual in the sequence
g

A semantics along these lines allows us to eliminate indices on free pronouns.

It will, however, need refinements to model cases of genuinely ambiguous
pronouns like she in (16):

(16) Norma hates Sally. She criticized her novel.

To allow for either interpretation, one must assume that the first sentence
can leave either Norma or Sally as the maximally salient female (to then be
referred to by she). Furthermore, her most naturally picks out that woman
she doesn’t, which would mean that the saliency ordering ‘flips’ somewhere
between she and her .
Saliency orderings along these lines have been used to model definite DPs.
Thus [[the dog]]g denotes the most salient dog under g, [[the neighbor’s dog]]g
the most salient among the neighbor’s dogs etc. (e.g. von Heusinger, 1997;
Peregrin and Von Heusinger, 2004). The view just sketched can thus be
straightforwardly adopted to a theory like the one we’ll develop in section 2.2
according to which, say, she is just a surface rendering of something like the
female person, picking out, again, the most salient female person under the
given assignment.

8
2.1.3 Pronouns in variable-free semantics
As is well-known, variables and assignment functions are eliminable. Accord-
ingly, it is possible to maintain the general idea that pronouns behave like
variables in quantified logic without actually eschewing the formal appara-
tus of indices and assignments, as is done most prominently in the work of
Anna Szabolcsi and Pauline Jacobson (Jacobson, 1999, 2000; Szabolcsi, 1987,
1992, 2003). It is important to stress that this question of implementation
is independent of the question whether all pronouns should be interpreted
uniformly, and in a term-like fashion.
The key ingredient of a variable-free semantics for pronouns is to treat an
expression E containing a free DP pronoun semantically parallel to one that
is a function from ordinary DP meanings to the type of meaning E would
have without any free pronouns in it. This is achieved in two steps. First, the
pronoun itself is interpreted as an identity function, for example the identity
function on individuals:

(17) [[her]] = λxe .x (defined only if x is female)

Note that this follows the characterization just given: The pronoun denotes a
function from ordinary DP meanings, type e, to ordinary DP meanings, type
e. The second step is a propagation mechanism that allows an expression E
containing pronouns to combine with any element it could ‘normally’ combine
with (i.e. if E didn’t contain pronouns), while ‘bequeathing’ its open argu-
ment slots onto the resulting expression. For example, her in (17) combines
with a transitive verb, resulting in a VP meaning like (18):

(18) [[likes her]] = λxe λye .y likes x (defined only if x is female)

This is a function from DP meanings to ‘ordinary’ VP meanings, type he,eti,

the same as that of a transitive verb (indeed this function is almost the same
as [[likes]]). The different distributional properties of, say, a transitive verb
and a VP with a free pronoun in it, in particular the fact that the expression
in (18) cannot combine with two DPs to form a sentence, is logged in the
syntactic category of the expression. In Jacobson system, likes Mary and
likes are of the (standard) categories S\NP and (S\NP)/NP, respectively
(‘S\NP’ is the category of an expression requiring an NP to its left to form
an S, i.e. a VP; ‘X/NP’ that of an expression requiring an NP to its right
to form an X; analogously for any two categories X, Y); likes her , on the

9
other hand, is of the category (S\NP)NP , i.e. a verb phrase with a free NP
pronoun in it (accordingly, the pronoun itself is of category NPNP ). Roughly,
syntactic combinatorics are ‘blind’ to superscripts, that is XY combines with
whatever plain X combines with, while the superscript and the semantic
argument position corresponding to it are propagated upwards by function
composition.
If an expression contains free, i.e. anaphoric or deictic, pronouns, it will
NP
end up being of category XNP or XNP etc. In particular, a sentence con-
taining a free pronoun will be of category SNP , and denote a function of type
he, ti. This may seem odd at first but is, as Jacobson points out, entirely
parallel to the idea that a sentence denotes a function from assignments to
truth values.
Bound pronoun uses are modelled by a rule that ‘swallows’ a superscript
category and identifies its semantic argument with an open ‘proper’ argument
position. (19) gives a very simplified version of such a rule, whose application
is illustrated in (20) ( | ranges over \ and /):

(19) [[z]] = λpe,he,αi λxe .p(x)(x); (X|NP)|(X|NP)NP

(20) a. [[likes her cat]] = λve λye .y likes v’s cat; (S\NP)NP
b. [[z(likes her cat)]] = [λpe,he,αi λxe .p(x)(x)](λve λye .y likes v’s cat)
(i) = λxe .[λve λye .y likes v’s cat](x)(x)
(ii) = λxe .x likes x’s cat; S\NP

This must suffice to illustrate the general treatment of pronouns in variable-

free semantics. For arguments in favor of a variable treatment and a thorough
formal treatment see Jacobson (1999).

2.1.4 Resumptive pronouns

Gaps corresponding to displaced constituents (‘traces’) usually receive an
interpretation identical to bound pronouns, e.g. as bound variables. The dif-
ference between gaps and pronouns, then, is a purely syntactic one (roughly
whether there has to be an antecedent, and whether that antecedent can
bear its own thematic relation to an element in the clause or not). Given
that, the existence of resumptive pronouns, i.e. pronouns that occur in the
thematic position of a dislocated element (in the position where a trace might
be expected) is unproblematic from a semantic point of view.

10
2.2 Pronouns as descriptions
In this subsection we will contrast the ‘pronouns as variables’ view outlined
in the previous subsection with one that essentially assumes pronouns to
have the logical form of definite noun phrases, call that the ‘pronouns as
descriptions’ view. To motivate this view, consider the examples in (21):

(21) a. I know this woman. She (‘this/the woman’) is a famous soprano.

b. Bill owns some sheep. Harry vaccinates them (‘the sheep (Bill
owns)’).
c. This year the president is a Republican, but one fine day, he
(‘the president’) will be a member of the Green party.
d. Mary, who deposited her paycheck at the ATM, was smarter
than any woman who kept it (‘her paycheck’) in her purse.
e. Every farmer who owned a donkey had Lucy vaccinate it (‘the
donkey (he owns)’).

(21-a,b) involve referential pronouns; while the paraphrase in terms of a

definite may be suggestive, there is no obstacle to assuming instead that
the pronuns are simply individual variables. This is different in (21-c–e).
Here, the pronouns aren’t referential. Rather, they denote functions: from
world/times to the president in/at that world/time; from women to their
paychecks; from farmers to the sheep they own. These functions, it seems,
are provided by the linguistic context.
And even (21-b) is not straightforward on the pronouns-as-variables view,
as pointed out in Evans (1980): Plural pronouns anaphoric to quantificational
DPs have a ‘maximum interpretation’. For example, (21-b) is judged false
unless Harry vaccinates all of Bill’s sheep. This follows if we interpret them
synonymous with Bill’s/the sheep. A theory that has them denote a (plural)
individual variable has to employ additional means to ensure that an utter-
ance of Bill owns some sheep triggers the introduction of a discourse referent
including all the sheep Bill owns, rather than some sub-group thereof (see
e.g. Kamp and Reyle, 1993).

2.2.1 Pronouns of laziness and paycheck pronouns

Historically, pronouns that stand for a literal repetition of a full definite
DP, e.g. (21-a) and (21-c)/(22-a), are called pronouns of laziness (Geach,
1962). In case these DPs contain bound pronouns, (21-d)/(22-b) one of-

11
ten finds the term paycheck pronouns (Karttunen, 1969); finally pronouns
in configurations like (21-e), whose content seems ‘distilled’ from a previ-
ous sentence, but that don’t have a literal DP antecedent go by the name
of ‘donkey pronouns’ or — especially for those researchers who eschew the
pronouns-as-descriptions view — E-type pronouns (Evans, 1977, 1980). We
will now develop an implementation of the idea that in all of these cases the
pronouns are indeed essentially definite descriptions.

For concreteness, let us model these pronouns as bona fide definite DPs of the
general form the NP . Interpreted at world/time w, t, they denote the unique
(singular) or maximal (plural) element in the extension of NP at w, t. NP
consists of a lexical head, e.g. the nouns woman, sheep, president, paycheck
plus an appropriate number of unpronounced individual variables (one for
paycheck , zero for the others). This whole complex DP is spelled out as an
appropriate pronoun if the content of N is contextually recoverable; thus the
pronouns in examples (21-c) and (21-d) are grammatically represented as
in (22):

(22) a. [[he the president]]g,w,t = the president at w, t

b. [[it the paycheck of vn ]]g,w,t = g(n)’s paycheck at w, t
(where vn will be bound by any woman in (21-d))

Pronouns of laziness, including paycheck pronouns, then simply involve N(P)-

ellipsis under identity; the definite determiner is spelled out as a pronoun if
and only if everything in the NP following it is unpronounced. (Alternatively,
we could assume with Postal, 1970; Elbourne, 2001, that pronouns are def-
inite determiners (with additional feature specifications) followed by ellided
NPs.) In the following subsections we will explore to what extent this view
can be extended to other uses of pronouns.

2.2.2 Donkey sentences

Extending the pronouns-as-descriptions approach to donkey pronouns runs
into several problems, as pointed out famously in Heim (1982), most vexing
among them the uniqueness problem (cf. Egli, 1983): If he in (23-a) is inter-
preted as ‘the unique man who is in Athens’, we wrongly predict (23-a) to
imply that there is only one man in Athens; likewise, (23-b) is predicted to
be infelicitous, since its assertion contradicts that there is ‘the unique sage
plant that (s)he bought’:

12
(23) a. If a man is in Athens, he is not in Rhodes.
b. Everyone who bought a sage plant here bought eight others
along with it.
c. No father with a teenage son would lend him the car on the
weekend.

Similarly, Rooth (1987) points out that (23-c) is understood to quantify over
all fathers, not just those that have a unique teenage son.
Heim (1982) instead develops an account in keeping with the pronouns-
as-variables view, on which these pronouns are bound individual variables in
logical forms like (24) (variables corresponding to pronouns underlined for
clarity) ; crucially, adverbial as well as adnominal quantifiers are taken to
unselectively bind n-tuples of variables (see article 38: Discourse Representa-
tion Theory and article 39: Dynamic semantics on how such logical formulae
are built):

(24) a. for all x, if x is a man in Athens, x is not in Rhodes.

b. for all x, y, if x bought y here and y is a sage plant, x bought
eight other sage plants along with y
c. there are no x, y such that, if x is a man and y is a teenage son
of x, x lends y the car on the weekend.

Various researchers have argued that the pronouns-as-descriptions view, too,

can be modified to handle such cases. For starters, note that (25), where the
pronouns have been replaced by definite DPs, provide intuitively accurate
paraphrase for the exemples in (23):

(25) a. If a man is in Athens, that man is not in Rhodes.

b. Everyone who bought a sage plant here bought eight others
along with that sage plant.
c. No father with a teenage son would lend his son the car on the
weekend.

This suggests that the problem lies with the assumption that definite DPs
strictly require uniqueness of their referent among the elements in [[NP]].
Heim (1990), building on work in Berman (1987), suggests instead that def-
inites in general, and E-type pronouns in particular, refer to the unique ele-
ment in [[NP]] in a given situation (see article 37: Situation semantics, article
42: Definiteness and indefiniteness). Situations are parts of worlds, but cru-

13
cially contain fewer things than the world they are part of. Take (23-a)/(25-a):
The conditional is interpreted as a universal quantifier over minimal situa-
tions described by the antecedent clause, i.e. situations that contain a man in
Athens. Crucially, each such minimal situation contains only one man (else
it wouldn’t be minimal), and now the man who is in Athens can refer to the
unique man in Athens in that situtation, cf. (26-a); (26-b,c) sketch a parallel
treatment for (23-b)/(25-b) and (23-c)/(25-c):

(26) a. for every situation s, if s is a minimal situation containing a

man in Athens, then s can be extended to a minimal situation
s0 containing the unique man in Athens in s not being in Rhodes
b. for every person y and minimal situation s of y buying a sage
plant here, there is an extension s0 of s in which y buys eight
other sage plants along with the unique sage plant he buys in s
c. for no man x and minimal situation s of x having a teenage son
in s is there an extension s0 of s in which x lets x’s unique son
in s borrow the car on the weekend

A necessary assumption of this approach, seen in (26-b,c), is that DP quan-

tifiers such as everyone. . . or no man. . . quantify over pairs of individuals
and situations. Generally, where the unselective binding approach has quan-
tifiers quantify over n-tuples of individuals, the situation approach uses pair
of individuals and situations. On virtually all ontologies for situation seman-
tics, we can find, for every n-tuple of individuals, an appropriate situation
that contains only those individuals; on the other hand, for every situation,
we can presumably find an appropiate tuple of entities that are unique to
it ((23-a)/(25-a), for example, should more realistically be interpreted as
quantfying over occasions of men being in Athens, which can be thought of
as temporally limited situations, or pairs of individuals and time intervals).
Thus, the two approaches are more similar (conceptually and empirically)
than might appear at first, differing essentially only in how they spell out
the notion of what Lewis (1975) calls a case.

2.2.3 The Formal Link problem

Expanding on such situation-based approaches, Elbourne (2001, 2005) ar-
gues that the descriptive content of E-type pronouns is indeed poorer than
hitherto assumed. For example, the pronoun in (21-e) would, in a standard
E-type approach be ‘the unique donkey he owns in s’, where s is a minimal

14
situation of a farmer owning a donkey. But given such a minimal situation,
the simpler description ‘the unique donkey in s’ would identify the same don-
key. Assuming poorer descriptions like that allows Elbourne to argue that
all descriptive pronouns involve simple NP ellipsis, thereby solving a second
problem for E-type approaches to donkey pronouns, called the problem of the
formal link since Kadmon (1987). The problem can be put as follows: What
makes, for example, the meaning ‘wife of x’ available for the E-type pro-
noun in (27-a), but not (27-b), given that neither contains an NP-antecedent
meaning ‘wife of x’ ?

(27) a. Every man who has a wife should bring her along.
b. #Every married man should bring her along.

According to Elbourne, the pronoun in (27-b) is simply the wife, yieding the
meaning ‘the unique wife in s’, where for each man x, s is a minimal situation
containing, roughly, x and his wife. Ellipsis of NP (i.e. the use of a pronoun)
now can be assumed to require that NP have a syntactic antecedent, as is
the case in (27-a); consequently, ellipsis of NP is impossible for lack of an NP
antecedent [NP wife] (the formal link) in (27-b). Note that this argument
would not go through if (27-a) would need to be ‘the wife of his’, which
doesn’t have an NP antecedent in (27-a) either.

2.2.4 Alternative implementations of the ‘pronouns as descrip-

tions’ view
It seems controversial at present whether all instances of ‘non-standard’
pronouns, including donkey-pronouns, should be analyzed as definites, or
whether other analytical options such as unselective binding should be used as
well. But it appears that some kind of descriptive pronouns will be required
to model pronouns of laziness as in (21-c) and especially (21-d). This doesn’t
mean that the very implementation used above has to be used. One may as-
sume, for example, that rather than containing deleted lexical nouns, descrip-
tive pronouns contain a variable over n-ary relations (e.g. Heim and Kratzer,
1998). For example, instead of the paycheck vn we’d have the Rm vn , where
Rm is the m-th variable over relations, which gets assigned the value ‘pay-
check’ (λx.λy.y is a paycheck of x) by the context in question. Assignment
functions as part of the context, then, keep track of an inventory of ‘nominal
relations’ that can serve as antecedents to (the N-part inside) descriptive pro-
nouns (see e.g. van Rooij, 1997), just as we assumed for individual referents

15
above (including the possibility of ordering them by salience etc.). Going
that route, one can also assume that the variable in question is indeed sim-
ply a function from e.g. people to (the intension of) their unique paycheck
(Cooper, 1979); as a limiting case, instead of he the president in (21-c)/(22-a)
one then simply has a variable expression hen that is assigned the function
from world/times or situations to the president at that world/time/situation
as its value; sample logical forms are given in (28):

(28) a. [DP the [paycheck vn ]] NP ellipsis

b. [DP the [Rm vn ]] relational variable
c. [DP Pm vn ] functional variable

These approaches may be empirically indistinguishable, especially if one

spells out the theory of NP ellipsis along the lines of e.g. Merchant (2004),
where ellipsis of a constituent α is itself licensed by an operator that requires
a silent anaphoric argument; that argument in turn must denote the same
as α. So deletion of, say, paycheck is licensed by virtue of an operator whose
argument is a silent anaphoric pronoun that denotes the meaning of paycheck
— effectively R from (28-b).

2.2.5 Bound pronouns as descriptions

Given that descriptive pronouns of some sort seem necessary, is it possible,
on the other hand, to give up the idea that definite pronouns are variables
ever, and use only descriptive pronouns? Referential anaphoric pronouns
would simply be pronouns of laziness, cf. (21-a), but what about ordinary
bound pronouns, as in (29)?

(29) Every girl played her trumpet.

There are two ways to achieve a bound pronoun interpretation here: The
first uses the idea, introduced above, that every girl quantifies over pairs
consisting of a girl and a situation, namely for each girl x the minimal sit-
uation containing x. Her in (29) is then interpreted as ‘the unique girl in
s’, cf. (30-a). The second takes the pronoun to be something like ‘the IDn ’
or ‘the girl IDn ’, where for any n, [[IDn ]]w,g =def λx.x = g(n) (cf. Elbourne,
2005); thus, if n is bound by every girl , we get (30-b) as the meaning for (29):

(30) a. for every girl x and minimal situation s containg girl x, s can
be extended to a situation in which x plays the unique trumpet

16
 of the unique girl in s
b. for every girl x, x played the unique trumpet of the unique y
that is (a girl and) identical to x

See Elbourne (2005, 2008) for discussion of these options and critical discus-
sion.

3. Pronoun binding
In this section we discuss a particular implementation of the semantics and
syntax of pronoun binding. For concreteness, we adopt the ‘pronouns as vari-
ables’ view, but mutatis mutandis, our discussion carries over to variable free
treatments, as well as either of the adoptions of the ‘pronouns as description’
view to bound pronouns sketched in 2.2.5 above.

3.1 Bound v. free pronouns

The clearest examples of bound pronouns are pronouns whose antecedents
are non-referring expressions such as no one, every stork, fewer than two
sopranos etc.:

(31) No soprano forgot her hat.

To achieve binding of her (by assumption an individual variable) by no so-

prano, we introduce a binding operator β, defined in (32), closely modelled
on the z-operator from section 2.1.3, which binds any free occurrence of
pronouns with a given index to the next open argument of a function (see
Büring, 2005a, ch.3 for more on this rule and its pedigree). A logical form
and derivation for (31) is then as in (33):

(32) [[β i α]] =def λxe .[[α]]g[i→x] (x)

(33) a. [[ no soprano ] [ β 2 [ forgot [ her2 hat ]]]]
b. (i) [[forgot her2 hat]]g = λye .y forgot g(2)’s hat
(ii) [[β 2 [forgot her2 hat]]]g = λxe .[[forgot her2 hat]]g[2→x] (x)
= λxe .[λye .y forgot g[2 → x](2)’s hat](x)
= λxe .x forgot g[2 → x](2)’s hat
= λxe .x forgot x’s hat

17
3.2 Structural conditions on pronoun binding
Rule (32) above imposes a structural condition on the binder–bindee rela-
tion: the bindee must be contained in the sister constituent to the binder;
if this isn’t the case, β applies vacuously. This corresponds to the syntactic
condition that a binder must c-command its bindee (α c-commands β if ev-
ery node that dominates α dominates β, α doesn’t dominate β and α isn’t
the root of the phrase marker).
There are two empirical generalizations we may try to tie to this c-
command requirement. First, the scope generalization: the putative binder
has to be able to take scope over the pronoun position. Take (34): ev-
ery man in (34-a) can’t scope over a schnapps (which would yield as many
schnappses for us as there were men who left); unsurprisingly him in (34-b)
can’t be bound by every man either:

(34) a. Once every man left we drank a schnapps.

b. Once every man left we talked about him.

But secondly, there are examples in which the putative binder clearly can
take scope over the position in question, yet is unable to bind a pronoun
therein; (35-a) can describe a scenario in which there are as many pictures as
there are desks, but (35-b) can’t mean that each picture showed the owner
of the desk it was standing on:

(35) a. A picture was standing on every desk.

for every desk x, there is a picture y standing on x
b. A picture of its owner was standing on every desk.
not: for every desk x, there is a picture of x’s owner on x

It seems, then, that scoping over a pronoun’s position is a necessary, but

not a sufficient condition for binding that pronoun. In addition, the binder
apparently has to sit in the position where it receives it’s thematic role.
Call this the a(rgument)-command generalization; for example, the adjunct
DP every desk in (35) can scope over the matrix subject (say via a covert
movement step to a scope position), but it is unable to bind into the subject
from that (non-thematic) position.
Wh-movement patterns analogously: Even within its overt c-command
domain a wh-expression can only bind pronouns in positions lower than its
original thematic position (the so-called weak cross-over effect:

18
(36) a. Who did you tell that he won?
for which x is it true that you told x that x won?
b. Who did his father tell that Mary won?
not: for which x is it true that x’s father told x that Mary won?

Assuming the generalization to be correct, the c-command requirement on

binding imposed by the semantics of β in (32) is too lenient. We need to
stipulate in addition that β cannot be adjoined to positions that are created
by wh-movement or covert scoping movement; it can only apply to lexical
predicates (cf. again the z-rule in 2.1.3, as well as Büring, 2004, and 2005a,
ch.4).

There are, however, notorious counter-examples to the a-command require-

ment, such as binding out of DP and binding by an object into an adjunct
(often collectively called indirect binding):

(37) a. Whose mother loves him?

b. Every senator’s portrait was on his desk.
c. Somebody from every city despises it/its
d. We will drink no wine before its time.

In keeping with the scope generalization, the binders in (37) can take seman-
tic scope over the pronoun positions: in (38) for example, an indefinite in
the place of the pronoun in (37-b) takes scope below the universal (there are
as many glasses of schnapps as there are senators):

(38) Every senator’s portrait sat next to a glass of schnapps.

But clearly, every senator in (37-b) receives its thematic role within the
subject DP, from where — according to the a-command generalization — it
shouldn’t be able to bind the pronoun.
Analyzing these examples then involves two steps: First, let the binders
scope over the pronoun position, presumably by whatever scoping mecha-
nisms one employs in (35-a). Second, explain why such scoping results in a
configuration that allows binding, unlike in (35-b). This has been done in at
least three different ways in the literature: First, by refining the definition of
a position from which binding is possible (the a-command condition) to in-
clude derived scope positions of the kind found in (37), but not (35-b) (Shan
and Barker, 2006; Higginbotham, 1983; May, 1988). Second, by replacing

19
the c-command condition by one that allows the quantified DPs in (37) to
bind from their surface, thematic position (Hornstein, 1995). And third, by
assuming that there is no binding relation between the quantified DP and the
pronoun, but rather that the pronoun is an E-type pronoun whose argument
is bound by the DP that c-commands the pronoun; (37-c) for example, would
get be analyzed roughly as (39) (see Büring, 2004, for details):

(39) for every city x, some person y from x despises [it the city (y is from)]

3.3 Binding v. coreference

In section 1.3 we asked whether the relation between Claudia and her in (13-c),
repeated here, is binding, or mere coreference; we can now spell these options
out as in (40-a,b):

(40) Claudia knows her password.

a. Claudia β 2 [ knows her2 password ] (binding)
b. Claudia knows her2 password (coref.: g(2) = Claudia)

(40-a) and (40-b) yield the same truth conditions. But in other cases, the two
readings can be teased apart, for example by making the antecedent an asso-
ciated focus (here and henceforth I will write e.g. her2=Claudia to abbreviate
that 2 is a free index which is assigned the value Claudia by the assignment
function):

(41) I only want CLAUdiaF to know her password.

a. I only want ClaudiaF β 2 [ to know her2 password ] (binding)
‘C. should know her own password, no one else should know
theirs.’
b. I only want ClaudiaF to know her2=Claudia password (coreference)
‘Claudia’s password should be known to Claudia only.’

If her is bound to Claudia as in (41-a), it will co-vary with the focus alter-
natives to Claudia, yielding the meaning paraphrased. If pronoun and name
merely corefer, as in (41-b), the pronoun’s referent is constant for all focus
alternatives, as indicated in the second paraphrase. Clearly, these two read-
ings are truth-conditionally different. Since both readings are available for
sentence (41), we can conclude that both binding and coreference are pos-
sible between names (indeed all referring DPs) and pronouns anaphorically

20
related to them.
It has been argued, however, that ceteris paribus, binding is preferred
over coreference, or more precisely, that configuration (42-a) is preferred
over (42-b) if the resulting interpretation is the same (see Büring, 2005b, for
a more precise statement and discussion):

(42) Binding is Preferred:

(42-b) is ungrammatical (‘blocked’) if (42-a) yields the same inter-
pretation.
a. . . . DP’i β j . . . DPj
b. . . . DP’i . . . DPi

(Note that DP’ in (42-a,b) may itself be bound by a higher DP”, in which case
the relation between DP’ and DP in (42-b) wouldn’t be one of coreference,
but of ‘co-binding’. The claim is that coreference as well as co-binding are
‘blocked’ wherever binding as in (42-a) is possible.)
But how can we know which of two semantically equivalent representa-
tions an unambiguous sentence has? At least two phenomena have been ar-
gued to be probes into this question: Reinhart (1983), and following her Heim
(1993), argue that Binding Condition violations (see section 5. below) occur
only with binding, not coreference. For example, (43) is acceptable despite
what appears to be a Condition B violation, but only on a reading where
him corefers with John (LF (43-a)), rather than being bound by it (Binding
Condition B, roughly, prohibits non-reflexive pronouns from being coreferent
with a higher coargument, such as the subject in (43)):

(43) (Not many people voted for John. In fact,) only JOHN voted for
him.
a. only JohnF voted for him1=John
‘no one but John voted for John’
b. *only JohnF β 1 voted for him1
‘no one but John voted for themselves’

This suggests, the argument goes on, that Binding Condition B ignores the
coreferent construal in (43-a), but renders ungrammatical the local binding
in (43-b). But if coreference can ‘circumvent’ Binding Conditions, how come
sentences with two referring DPs ever violate them? Why, that is, is (44)
ungrammatical (with [[him]] =John), if LF (44-b) is not in violation of Binding

21
Condition B (L(ogical) F(orm)s are those syntactic representations that are
interpreted by the semantic rules)?

(44) *John voted for him.

a. *John β 1 voted for him1
b. *John voted for him1=John

The answer Reinhart and Heim suggests is that (44-a), an instance of (42-a),
binding, blocks, and thereby renders ungrammatical, (44-b), an instance
of (42-b), coreference (since both have identical interpretations). And (44-a)
in turn is ruled out as a Condition B violation (see Büring, 2005b, for detailed
discussion of this argument).
The second argument for something like (42) comes from the discussion
of ‘Dahl’s puzzle’ in (Fox, 2000, ch.4). It is based on the premise that sloppy
identity in VP-ellipsis requires ‘parallelism’ in binding. Thus his in the elided
VP in (45) can be bound by Bob (yielding the sloppy reading) because the
corresponding his in the antecedent is bound by the corresponding subject
John:

(45) John said his name, and Bob did say his name, too.

Dahl’s puzzle goes like this: Why can’t (46) report the following two state-
ments: John: ‘I’ll pay for my drinks’; Bill: ‘John will pay for my drinks,
too’ ?

(46) John says he will pay for his drinks. Bill does, too.

To get to this reading, we would need the following LF:

(47) John β 1 says he1 will pay for his1 drinks.

Bill β 3 does say that he2=John will pay for his3 drinks, too

His3 is bound, sloppily as it were, to Bill , which, by assumption, requires

his1 to be bound in structurally parallel fashion by John. But that means
that he1 and his1 in the first conjunct are both bound by John, an instance
of (42-b), illegitimately so, since the same interpretation could have been
achieved by he1 binding his1 as in (48), an instance of (42-a).

(48) John β 1 says he1 β 2 will pay for his2 drinks

Since (48) is the only proper LF for the first conjunct in (47), parallelism

22
 singular plural dual paucal
1st exclusive — ´eimami ´eirau ´eitou
1st inclusive yau ´eta ´eetaru ´etatou
2nd i´o ´emunuu ´emudrau ´emudou
3rd ´ea (i)ra (i)rau (i)ratou

Table 1: Boumaa Fijian cardinal pronouns (Dixon, 1988, pp.54f)

makes it impossible for his in the second conjunct of (47)/(48) to be directly

bound to Bill , explaining Dahl’s puzzle (cf. Fox, 2000; Büring, 2005b).

4. Pronominal content
4.1 Semantic features on pronouns
The most common semantic information encoded in pronouns are person,
number, and gender or class. Generally, this information does not contribute
to the assertive or at-issue content of an utterance: If I point to a boy saying
If she is in your class, she’s skipping school right now , what I am saying is not
true — or false, for that matter — but infelicitous. This can be modelled by
making features like human, male, singular etc. presuppositions of pronouns:

(49) [[shei ]]g = g(i) if g(i) is a singular female, undefined otherwise

An utterance of a sentence containing a free occurrence of she7 , then, will

only be defined if the context provides an assignment function that maps 7
onto a single female individual.
Which values the features person, number and gender/class can take dif-
fers from language to language. For example, besides the familiar singular
and plural, Boumaa Fijian has dual pronouns (denoting groups of two) as
well as paucals (groups of more than two, but not many), cf. table 1.
Since the number of properties expressed by pronouns cross-linguistically
is limited, we can think of them as privative syntactic features as in (50),
given with their obvious interpretations:

(50) a. [[[singular]]] = λxe .x is an atomic individual

b. [[[feminine]]] = λxe .x is female
c. [[[1st]]] = λxe .x is (a group containing) the speaker
d. [[[2nd]]] = λxe .x is (a group containing) the addressee

23
On the ‘pronouns as variables’ view, the interpretation of a pronoun is now
as in (51-a); (51-b) does the same for a variable-free system; on the ‘pronouns
as descriptions view’, we can simply assume that these features are adjoined
to the elided NP as in (52):

(51) Let α be a definite pronoun with index i and features F1 through

Fn , then for all assignments g
a. [[α]]g = g(i) if g(i) ∈ [[F1 ]] . . . [[Fn ]], undefined otherwise
b. [[α]] = λx.x, if x ∈ [[F1 ]] . . . [[Fn ]], undefined otherwise
(52) [DP pron ] = [ the [ F1 [ . . . [ Fn NP ]]]]

Pronoun types such as the inclusive first person plural (referring to a group
containing (at least) speaker and addressee) can be modelled by combining
more basic features, e.g. [1st] and [2nd]. Other pronoun types, such as
logophoric pronouns may require additional refinements of this machinery
(see article 68: Indexicality and Logophoricity).
The inventory of features necessary also depends on theoretical choices. It
has, for example, been argued that certain unmarked properties, for example
masculine, 3rd, and plural should not be represented by features in their
own right, but rather just as the absence of other features, i.e. the pronoun
they would simply be completely unspecified. The grammar then imposes
a requirement that any referent be referred to by an expression that is as
semantically specific as possible, leaving third person plural as the default
for which there are no features. This might also explain why, for example,
such less specified forms can be used to avoid, say, gender specification, as
in no one brought their homework .
It has been observed, though, that sometimes grammar appears to ‘ignore’
features even on more specific pronoun forms. For example, (53) has a natural
reading on which it entails that other people did their own homeworks (not
the speaker’s) (Irene Heim, unpubl. notes; discussed e.g. in Rullman, 2004):

(53) Even I did my homework.

In other words, (53) asserts that the property denoted by β i did myi home-
work applies to individuals that are not the speaker. But if the pronoun
myi is defined only if g(i) is or includes the speaker, this reading should be
impossible. This dilemma could be avoided if we assume that features on
bound pronoun aren’t interpreted, but simply grammatically inherited from

24
the antecedent (i.e. the pronoun is a bona fide unrestricted variable). Of
course, since features evidently are interpreted on free pronouns (anaphoric
as well as deictic), we’d have to say that features are interpreted as indicated
above on free pronouns, but can be semantically inert on bound pronouns.

4.2 Plural pronouns

So far we assumed the denotation of a plural pronoun to be the same as
that of a plural name like the Kennedies or plural definite DP the boxes.
Concretely, all of these denote plural individuals, or pluralities, for short,
which are themselves in the domain of individuals (type e; see article 48:
Mass nouns and plurals). The assignment function then has to assign a
plurality to the index i on a plural pronoun, lest the presupposition encoded
by the feature [plural] be violated.
Like singular pronouns, plural pronouns can be referring or bound. In-
terestingly, looking at bound plural pronouns we find cases in which a plural
pronoun can have split antecedents (P. Schlenker p.c.; Rullman, 2004; Büring,
2005a, sec.9.3.3):

(54) Every boy has asked some girls if they could go out on a date.

The reading we are interested in here is one were each boy asked some girl:
‘Can the two of us go out on a date?’ To represent this reading we have
to allow for the pronoun they to be bound simultaneously by every boy and
some girl . An LF that expresses this reading is given in (55), assuming a
rule like (56) to replace (14):

(55) every boy [ β 1 has asked some girl β 2 [ if they1,2 could go on out on
a date ]]
(56) [[theyi,j,...n ]]g = the smallest group X ∈ De s.t. g(i), g(j), . . . g(n) are
all (possibly improper) parts of X

At an extreme, (56) allows for a pronoun to bear a distinct index for every
atomic individual that is part of the pronoun’s denotation, but nothing re-
quires this; a plural pronoun can also bear a single index, as before, which
is then mapped onto a group of arbitrary cardinality, or any combination of
‘singular’ and ‘plural’ indices.

25
4.3 Reciprocal pronouns
A particular exotic subcase of plural pronouns are reciprocals. The truth
condition for a simple reciprocal sentence are easily stated:

(57) [[A and B R-ed each other ]] = 1 iff [[R]] ([[A]])([[B]]) and [[R]] ([[B]])([[A]])

But what meaning to assign to each other to derive (57)? And how does
this recipe generalize to cases of more than two? Starting with the second
question, strong reciprocity seems an appropriate generalization in cases such
as (58) (vA stands for ‘be an atomic part of’; recall that we treat pluralities
as individuals, not sets of individuals):

(58) The suspects knew each other.

‘each suspect knows all the other suspects, and is known by them’
∀x, y vA X[x 6= y → R(y)(x)] (strong reciprocity)

But weaker notions such as weak reciprocity and chaining seem to be required
in other instances:

(59) The contestants killed each other.

‘each killed one of the others, and was killed by one of them’
∀x vA X, ∃y, z vA X[y, z 6= x ∧ R(y)(x) ∧ R(x)(z)] (weak
reciprocity)
(60) The children followed each other into the room.
‘each child follows, or is followed by, one of the other children’
∀x vA X, ∃y vA X[y 6= x ∧ [R(y)(x) ∨ R(x)(y)]] (chaining)

While these notions of reciprocity become successively weaker, it seems prob-

lematic to just find the weakest meaning and assume that to be the meaning
of reciprocal sentences. For example (58) seems intuitively false if among
suspects A–D, A knows B, B knows C, C knows D, but no one else knows
anyone (a possible chaining scenario); similarly if A and B know each other,
as do C and D, and no one else (a weak reciprocity scenario). This leads Dal-
rymple et al. (1998) to the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis: Each reciprocal
sentence has to be interpreted using the strongest reciprocal relation appli-
cable in its case. What constitutes the set of applicable relations, though,
is unclear. Why, for example, do we judge These two women gave birth to
each other to be false if said of a mother-daughter pair, although they meet
chaining, and biologically, no stronger reciprocal relation could possibly hold

26
between them?

Turning to the first question above, the easiest way to think of the meaning
of the reciprocal itself is as a function that maps a relation onto a property
of (plural) individuals. This is illustrated (for the case of strong reciprocity)
in (61):

(61) [[R each other]] = λXe .∀x, y vA X[x 6= y → R(y)(x)]

However, each other does not always apply locally to a relation, as for ex-
ample if it occurs within a complex DP, (62-a), or with a long-distance an-
tecedent as in (62-b):

(62) a. They read each other’s biographies.

b. Fred and Sarah are convinced that they can beat each other.

(One may think that the antecedent for each other in (62-b) should be they
rather than Fred and Sarah, but inspection of the truth conditions shows that
they denotes an atomic individual here, hence cannot antecede each other ;
see Heim et al., 1991)
The predicates corresponding to R in (61) in these cases are (63-a,b),
respectively:

(63) a. λxλy.y read x’s bibliography

b. λxλy.y is convinced that y can beat x

But neither of these correspond to a constituent that would likely be the

sister of each other .
If we instead try to interpret each other as a term, we have to give it
two indices, which are bound to the plural antecedent (the range) and the
distributed part of it (the contrast), respectively:

(64) [[each otherr,c ]]g = the biggest plurality X such that X is a part of
g(r) and g(c) is not a part of X; defined only if g(c) is a part of g(r)

For any assignment g, any two pluralities X = g(r) and Y = g(c), each
otherr,c , if defined, will denote X-Y, i.e. those X that are not part of Y. (65)
gives representative LFs for some reciprocal sentences, using a silent each,
which we call dist, defined in (66):

(65) a. the suspects β 1 [ dist [ β 2 [ knew each other1,2 ]]]

27
 b. Fred and Sarah β 1 [ dist[ β 2 [ are convinced that they2 can beat
each other1,2 ]]]
(66) [[dist]] = λPe,t .λXe .∀x vA X.P (x)

If we want to capture weaker reciprocities along these lines, further refine-

ments are required, see e.g. Schwarzschild (1996).

5. Binding theory
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, pronouns come in different vari-
eties such as reflexive and non-reflexive. Usually these morphological classes
are subject to binding conditions, often jointly referred to as binding theory;
that is, for each morphological class, the grammar may specify whether its
elements have to be be bound, or must not be bound, and if so, within which
structural domain. It is important to note that in this more syntactic con-
text, ‘binding’ and ‘bound’ are used indiscriminately to mean ‘coreferring’ or
‘semantically bound’ (in the sense of sections 2. and 3. above).
The literature both on the finer points of the English system as well as on
binding systems crosslinguistically is huge (see Dalrymple, 1993; Koster and
Reuland, 1992; Huang, 2000; Büring, 2005a, for overviews and references).
Most of these proposals use syntactic conditions that filter out certain config-
uration of indices on pronouns, e.g. the classical ‘ABC’ of binding in Chom-
sky (1981), roughly paraphrased in (67) (where ‘bound’ means ‘be coindexed
with a c-commanding DP’):

(67) Binding Conditions A–C

A A reflexive or reciprocal pronoun (‘anaphor’) must be bound
within the smallest clause containing it
B A non-reflexive pronoun (‘pronominal’) must not be bound within
the smallest clause containing it
C A non-pronominal DP must not be bound at all.

Some languages don’t have separate reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns,

while many others have more pronoun classes than just these two, and the
binding conditions associated with these can be considerably more complex.
In particular, one and the same class can have more than one condition (for
example that it be free within one domain, but bound within the other), and
members of two or more classes can have overlapping distribution.

28
 Apart from purely syntactic approaches to binding theory, which won’t
be discussed any further here, there are attempts to derive binding conditions
semantically. A common idea is that reflexive pronouns are simply functions
from transitive relations to intransitives, as in (68):

(68) [[herself]] = λRe,et .λx.R(x)(x), defined only if x is female

Without further ado (and in particular without the use of indices), this lex-
ical entry derives that reflexives must be locally ‘bound’ by the next higher
co-argument. By the same token, however, it requires modification in all
cases where the antecedent to the reflexive can be any one of its higher coar-
guments, or not a coargument at all:

(69) a. Gilbert1 told Spencer2 about himself1/2 .

b. Fritz lässt mich für sich arbeiten. (German)
F. lets me for SELF work
‘Fritz has me work for him.’ (lit. ‘for himself’)

The ban on locally bound non-reflexive pronouns can be explained by a pref-

erence principle that forces the use of the reflexive wherever possible. Alter-
natively, Jacobson (2007) proposes that predicates are irreflexivized whenever
they combine with a pronoun. The irreflexivizing operation is given in (70):

(70) for any two-place predicate R, Irr(R) =def λx.λy.R(x)(y), defined

only if x 6= y

By assumption, the syntactic category of pronouns is different from that

of regular NPs, e.g. NP[p] instead of NP. For a predicate to syntactically
combine with a pronoun, it has to undergo a rule that shifts it from, say,
category (S\NP)/NP to (S\NP)/NP[p]; the semantics of that rule in turn
applies Irr to the meaning of the predicate. Hence coreference between the
two arguments results in presupposition failure. Note that this result holds
regardless of whether the subject actually binds the object or just corefers
with it, preempting any need to force binding over coreference in order to
enforce binding conditions (as per section 3.3 above).
A different semantic implementation of binding theory is presented in
Schlenker (2005) (see also Dekker, 1994, for a similar proposal). Schlenker
assumes that assignment functions, conceived of as sequences of individuals,
are subject to ‘Non-Redundancy’: An individual can occur at most once in a
given sequence. In interpreting a sentence top down, sequences grow longer;

29
in particular, each referring DP adds its referent r to the end of the sequence
s (symbolized as s + r):
s
(71) If α is a non-pronominal referential DP, [[α β]]s =def [[β]] s+[[α]]
s
e.g. [[John β]]s = [[β]] s+[[John]] = [[β]]s+John

(71), combined with Non-Redundancy yields binding condition C: If α is c-

commanded by a coreferential DP, the referent r of DP has been added to the
sequence s under which α is interpreted; by (71), α appends r to s, yielding
a new sequence s0 in which r occurs twice, in violation of non-redundancy.
Pronouns, on the other hand, serve exactly the purpose of retrieving a
pre-existing referent from a sequence s. Bound pronouns are given negative
indices −n, which instruct the interpretation procedure to remove the n-th
element counting from the end of the current sequence and appending it to
the end of the sequence. This is illustrated for one particular sequence s
in (72) (# marks the original position of that element, for reasons that need
not concern us yet):

(72) [[she−2 β]]Bob+Sally+Sue+Tom = [[β]] Bob+Sally+#+T om+Sue

It follows that negatively indexed pronouns are the only way to get corefer-
ence with a c-commanding expressions. It follows, too, that there can be no
such thing as a pronoun that is coreferent with, rather than bound by, a c-
commanding DP; in other words, the preference for binding over coreference,
expressed in (42) above, is derived.
Note that neither (71) nor (72) seem to use the interpretation of the
DP (α/John/she) other than appending its referent to the sequence under
which its sister is interpreted. This is so because any n-place predicate R
is automatically interpreted relative to the n last elements of the sequence
(which, by (71) are the referents of the last n DPs that minimally c-command
R), as illustrated in (73) (where for any n-place predicate p, p0 stands for the
extension of α, i.e. a set of n-tuples):

(73) a. [[run]]Bob+Sally+Sue+Tom = 1 iff run0 (Tom)=1

b. [[see]]Bob+Sally+Sue+Tom = 1 iff see0 (Sue,Tom)=1
Bob+Sally
(74) a. [[Steve ran]]Bob+Sally = [[ran]] Bob+Sally+[[Steve]]
= [[ran]]Bob+Sally+Steve
= ran0 (Steve)
b. (Steve told Mary that) [[he−2 ran]]Steve+Mary

30
 = [[ran]]#+Mary+Steve = ran0 (Steve)

Since, say, two-place predicates take the last two elements of the evaluation
sequence as their arguments, and sequences are subject to non-redundancy, it
is impossible to express reflexive statements given what we’ve said so far (note
that e.g. John praised him−1 would yield the interpretation praised0 (#,John),
which by assumption is undefined); we thus have an overly strongly ‘gener-
alized’ version of binding condition B: no predicate can have two identical
arguments. Essentially like in the approaches to reflexives discussed above,
then, reflexive pronouns serve to reflexivize a predicate by reducing its arity,
sketched in (75):

(75) [[John recommended himself]] = [[recommended himself]]John

= self(recommended0 )(John) = recommended0 (John)(John)

With these sketchy and exemplary illustrations we end our overview of se-
mantic approaches to binding theory. Note that these approaches to condi-
tions A and B all crucially equate the domain in question with some variant
of the coargument domain of a given predicate (as do several more syntac-
tic approaches such as Pollard and Sag (1992) and Reinhart and Reuland
(1993)). It seems fair to say, then, that the more intricate facts about the
reflexive/non-reflexive distribution in less canonical argument positions such
as inside DPs, in clause-sharing constructions such as ECM, and as comple-
ments to prepositions, in English and cross-linguistically, pose the strongest
challenge to a comprehensive development of such semantic approaches.

Keywords:
pronouns, binding, semantics
Daniel Büring, Los Angeles (USA)

6. References

Bach, Kent (1992). “Intentions and Demonstrations.” Analysis 52:140–146.

Berman, Stephen R. (1987). “Situation-based Semantics for Adverbs of

Quantification.” In Anne Vainikka, ed., University of Massaxgusetts Oc-
casional Papers, vol. 12. UMass, Amherst.

31
Büring, Daniel (2004). “Crossover Situations.” Natural Language Semantics
12(1):23–62.

Büring, Daniel (2005a). Binding Theory. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguis-

tics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Büring, Daniel (2005b). “Bound to Bind.” Linguistic Inquiry 36(2):259–274.

Chomsky, Noam (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht:

Foris Publications.

Cooper, Robin (1979). “The Interpretation of Pronouns.” In Syntax and

Semantics, vol. 10, 61–92.

Dalrymple, Mary (1993). The Syntax of Anaphoric Binding. Stanford: Csli.

Dalrymple, Mary, Makoto Kanazawa, Yookyung Kim, Sam Machombo, and

Stanley Peters (1998). “Reciprocal Expressions and the Concept of Reci-
procity.” Linguistics and Philosophy 21(2):159–210.

Dekker, Paul (1994). “Predicate Logic with Anaphora (seven inch version).”
In Lynn Santelmann and Mandy Harvey, eds., Proceedings of SALT IV ,
79–95. DMLL Publications, Cornell University.

Dixon, Robert M. (1988). A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian. Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press.

Egli, Urs (1983). “The Stoic Theory of Arguments.” In Rainer Bäuerle,

Christoph Schwarze, and Arnim Von Stechow, eds., Meaning, Use and the
Interpretation of Language, 79–96. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Elbourne, Paul (2001). “E-Type Anaphora as NP-Deletion.” Natural Lan-

guage Semantics 9(3):241–288.

Elbourne, Paul (2005). Situations and Individuals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press.

Elbourne, Paul (2008). “Demonstratives as Individual Concepts.” Linguistics

& Philosophy 31(4):409–466.

Evans, Gareth (1977). “Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses.” The

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7(3):467–536.

32
Evans, Gareth (1980). “Pronouns.” Linguistic Inquiry 11(2):337–362.

Fox, Danny (2000). Economy and Semantic Interpretation. Cambridge,

Mass: MIT Press.

Geach, Paul (1962). Reference and Generality. Ithaka, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press.

Haspelmath, Martin (1997). Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Heim, Irene (1982). The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases.
Ph.D. thesis, University of MA, Amherst.

Heim, Irene (1990). “E-Type Pronouns and Donkey Anaphora.” Linguistics

and Philosophy 13(2):137–177.

Heim, Irene (1993). “Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation: A Reinterpre-

tation of Reinhart’s Approach. SfS Report 07-93, Universität Tübingen.
Reprinted 1998.” In Uli Sauerland and Orin Percus, eds., The Interpre-
tive Tract, no. 2 in MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press.

Heim, Irene and Angelika Kratzer (1998). Semantics in Generative Gram-

mar . Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Heim, Irene, Howard Lasnik, and Robert May (1991). “Reciprocity and
Plurality.” Linguistic Inquiry 22(1):63–101.

von Heusinger, Klaus (1997). Salienz und Referenz — Der Epsilonoperator

in der Semantik der Nominalphrase und anaphorischer Pronomen. Studia
Grammatica 43. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Higginbotham, James (1983). “Logical Form, Binding, and Nominals.” Lin-

guistic Inquiry 14(3):395–420.

Hornstein, Norbert (1995). Logical Form — From GB to Minimalism. Ox-

ford: Blackwell.

Huang, Yan (2000). Anaphora - A Cross-Linguistic Study. Oxford University

Press.

33
Jacobson, Pauline (1999). “Towards a Variable Free Semantics.” Linguistics
and Philosophy 22(2):117–184.

Jacobson, Pauline (2000). “Paycheck Pronouns, Bach-Peters Sentences, and

Variable Free Semantics.” Natural Language Semantics 8(2):77–155.

Jacobson, Pauline (2007). “Direct Compositionality and Variable Free Se-

mantics: The Case of “Principle B” effects.” In Chris Barker and Pauline
Jacobson, eds., Direct Compositionality, Oxford Studies in Theoretical
Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kadmon, Nirit (1987). On Unique and Non-unique Reference and Asymmet-

ric Quantification. Ph.D. thesis, UMass, Amherst.

Kamp, Hans and Uwe Reyle (1993). From Discourse to Logic. Introduc-
tion to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and
Discourse Representation Theory. No. 42 in Studies in Linguistics and
Philosophy. Dordrect: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Kaplan, David (1989a). “Afterthoughts.” In Joseph Almog, John Perry, and

Howard Wettstein, eds., Themes from Kaplan, 565–614. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Kaplan, David (1989b). “Demonstratives.” In Joseph Almog, John Perry,

and Howard Wettstein, eds., Themes from Kaplan, 481–563. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press. (Reprint of 1977 UCLA Ms.).

Karttunen, Lauri (1969). “Pronouns and Variables.” In CLS 5 .

King, Jeffrey (2001). Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational Approach.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Koster, Jan and Eric Reuland, eds. (1992). Long-Distance Anaphora. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis, David (1975). “Adverbs of Quantification.” Formal Semantics of

Natural Language 3–15.

May, Robert (1988). “Bound Variable Anaphora.” In Ruth M. Kempson,

ed., Mental Representations, 85–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

34
Merchant, Jason (2004). “Fragments and Ellipsis.” Linguistics and Philoso-
phy 27(6):661–738.
Moltmann, Friederike (2006). “Generic One, Arbitrary PRO, and the First
Person.” Natural Language Semantics 13(3):257–281.
Peregrin, Jaroslav and Klaus Von Heusinger (2004). “Dynamic Semantics
with Choice Functions.” In Hans Kamp and Barbara Partee, eds., Context
Dependence in the Analysis of Linguistic Meaning, 309–329. Amsterdam:
Elsevier.
Pollard, Carl and Ivan Sag (1992). “Anaphors in English and the Scope of
Binding Theory.” Linguistic Inquiry 23(2):261–303.
Postal, Paul M. (1970). “On So-called Pronouns in English.” In Roderick A.
Jacobs and Peter S. Rosenbaum, eds., Readings in English Transforma-
tional Grammar , 56–82. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company.
Reinhart, Tanya (1983). Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Reinhart, Tanya (1997). “Quantifier Scope: How Labor is Divided Between
QR and Choice Functions.” Linguistics and Philosophy 20(4):335–397.
Reinhart, Tanya and Eric Reuland (1993). “Reflexivity.” Linguistic Inquiry
24(4):657–720.
Roberts, Craige (2002). “Demonstratives as definites.” In Kess Van Deemter
and Roger Kibble, eds., Information Sharing: Reference and Presupposi-
tion in Language Generation and Interpretation, 89–196. Stanford: Csli.
Rooth, Mats (1987). “Noun Phrase Interpretation in Montague Grammar,
File Change Semantics, and Situation Semantics.” In Peter Gärdenfors,
ed., Generalized Quantifiers, Linguistic and Logical Approaches, no. 31
in Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 237–268. Dordrecht: D. Reidel
Publishing Company.
van Rooij, Robert (1997). Attitudes and Changing Contexts. Ph.D. thesis,
IMS Stuttgart.
Rullman, Hotze (2004). “First and Second Person Pronouns as Bound Vari-
ables.” Linguistic Inquiry 35(1):159–168.

35
Schlenker, Philippe (2005). “Non-Redundancy: Towards A Semantic Rein-
terpretation of Binding Theory.” Natural Language Semantics 13(1):1–92.

Schwarzschild, Roger (1996). Pluralities. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Shan, Chung-Chieh and Chris Barker (2006). “Explaining crossover and su-
periority as left-to-right evaluation.” Linguistics and Philosophy 29(1):91–
134.

Szabolcsi, Anna (1987). “Bound Variables in Syntax (are there any?).” In

Proceedings of the Amsterdam Colloquium, 331–351. University of Amster-
dam, The Netherlands.

Szabolcsi, Anna (1992). “Combinatory grammar and projection from the

lexicon.” In Ivan Sag and Anna Szabolcsi, eds., Lexical Matters, CSLI
Lecture Notes 24, 241–269. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Szabolcsi, Anna (2003). “Binding on the fly: Cross-sentential anaphora in

variable-free semantics.” In Geert-Jan Kruijff and Richard T. Oehrle, eds.,
Resource Sensitivity in Binding and Anaphora, 215–229. Kluwer.

Winter, Yoad (1997). “Choice Functions and the Scopal Semantics of Indef-
inites.” Linguistics and Philosophy 20(4):399–467.

36