Binding Machines

António Branco
2002 Computational Linguistics  
Binding constraints form one of the most robust modules of grammatical knowledge. Despite their crosslinguistic generality and practical relevance for anaphor resolution, they have resisted full integration into grammar processing. The ultimate reason for this is to be found in the original exhaustive coindexation rationale for their specification and verification. As an alternative, we propose an approach which, while permitting a unification-based specification of binding constraints, allows
more » ... or a verification methodology that helps to overcome previous drawbacks. This alternative approach is based on the rationale that anaphoric nominals can be viewed as binding machines. . 1 See the Appendix for a specification of binding constraints. We adhere to the following terminological convention: anaphors divide into reflexives and nonreflexives; reflexives form a class that includes short-distance (ruled by Constraint A; e.g., himself ) and long-distance reflexives (Constraint Z; e.g., Chinese ziji); nonreflexives include pronouns (Constraint B; e.g., he) and nonpronouns (Constraint C; e.g., the student).
doi:10.1162/089120102317341747 fatcat:3n7rstqp7fdszmo2k6hmrp6xke