Long Distance Anaphora

A collection of original articles on the nature of anaphoric systems in a wide variety of genetically and structurally different languages.

Anaphors (elements such as himself) generally require an antecedent, but languages have been found to show striking differences as to where such antecedents may occur. This book is concerned with the general laws underlying this diversity, covering a wide variety of languages. The fourteen contributions all reflect the latest insights of linguistic theory.There are a number of persistent anomalies in binding theory. One is the lack of an integrated view of long distance anaphora. Anaphors generally require an antecedent, but languages have been shown to show striking differences as to where such antecedents may occur. This volume is a collection of original articles by distinguished contributors on the nature of anaphoric systems in a wide variety of genetically and structurally different languages, and it examines the general laws underlying the apparent diversity of data from the perspective of current linguistic theory. There is a surprising degree of convergence in the analyses proposed. A substantive introduction summarises and discusses the main results, providing an integrative picture of individual and common results. This is the first representative collection of articles on this important topic. It is both conceptually coherent and of real theoretical importance.