Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation: A Reinterpretation of Reinhart's Approach (1993)
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@MISC{Heim93anaphoraand,
author = {Irene Heim},
title = {Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation: A Reinterpretation of Reinhart's Approach},
year = {1993}
}
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Abstract
Syntactic structure constrains the possible "coreference " relations between the noun phrases in a sentence. Since the early days of generative syntax, we have learned a great deal about the nature of these structural constraints. Much of this syntactic theorizing has been possible with only a vague and informal understanding of what it really is in semantic terms that is being constrained here. Everyone agrees that it is not coreference in a literal sense, i.e., sameness of referents. But to specify in positive and semantically precise terms what it is instead has turned out to be non-trivial. Those authors that have given serious attention to the semantic import of syntactic constraints on so-called "coreference " have arrived at rather different conclusions. 1 A particularly elegant and well-elaborated proposal in this regard is due to Tanya Reinhart (1983a; 1983b). I ts central thesis is that only one type of "coreference " relation is syntactically represented and directly constrained by principles of grammar, and this is the well-understood relation of variable binding in the sense of formal logic. Other semantic relations, in particular such
