Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Yuko Otsuka and Yoshiyuki Tanabe
Suffixal pronouns in Biblical Hebrew can be interpreted both as a pronoun and as
an anaphor when they occur as a PP argument, apparently contradicting the Binding
Principles of the Government and Binding Theory, which stipulate that pronouns and
anaphors be in complementary distribution (Chomsky 1981). Adopting the movement
approach to binding (Hornstein 2001), we propose that the two occurrences of suffixal
pronouns are derived differently and in different structural positions despite their identical
forms. Specifically, we argue that while the “pronominal” suffix pronoun is a bona fide
pronoun, the “anaphoric” suffix pronoun is a spell-out of the φ-features of the copy of the
antecedent DP, which is base-generated in the specifier position of a DP headed by a D
with a reflexive feature.
