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All languages have expressions, typically pronominals and anaphors, that may or must depend for their interpretation on another expression, their antecedent. When such a dependency is subject to structural conditions, it reflects binding. Although there is considerable variation in binding patterns cross-linguistically, in fact, variation is along a limited set of parameters. The Germanic languages exemplify some of the main factors involved. In Germanic, third-person pronominals generally do not allow binding by a co-argument. However, in Frisian and Afrikaans, they do, being embedded in a richer structure than meets the eye. In Continental West Germanic and Scandinavian, anaphors come in two types: simplex anaphors (SE-anaphors)—deficient for number and gender— and complex anaphors (SELF-anaphors). These typically consist of a pronominal or SE-anaphor combined with an element like Dutch zelf ‘self’ or one of its cognates. In all the Germanic languages SELF-anaphors are bound in their local domain—approximately the domain of their nearest subject—except in a few identifiable positions, where they are interpreted logophorically. That is, they accept a non-local antecedent, provided this element holds the perspective of the sentence. The distribution of SE-anaphors involves three different conditions. First, they can be bound by a co-argument only if the verb belongs to a restricted class, which allows syntactic detransitivization. Second, in general, SE-anaphors allow non-local binding. But the conditions differ among subgroups. In Dutch and German, they can only be bound non-locally when contained in a causative or perception verb complement or a small clause. In Mainland Scandinavian, non-local binding is, in principle, available to all infinitival clauses (subject to some dialectal variation). For instance, in some varieties of Norwegian, referentiality of intervening subjects restricts binding; in other varieties, the restricting factor is not “finiteness” but “

The expression of reflexivity in Indonesian and related languages is based on various strategies, see Cole and Hermon (2005), Kartono (2013), and Schadler (2014) for discussion. This paper focuses on the expression of reflexivity based on the element diri and its cognates, not discussed in these papers. As a reflexive marker, bare diri is not specified for grammatical features such as number, gender, and person, so it imposes no restrictions on the value of the subject argument. It is only allowed with a subset of verbs, namely agent–theme verbs. Our goal is to determine its precise role. After applying a number of diagnostics for argumenthood (Dimitriadis and Everaert 2014), we show that diri is not an argument. We propose that the role of diri is that of an element marking detransitivization of the verb and reflecting an operation combining the latter's agent and theme roles into one complex agent–theme role ("a bundling operation" in the sense of Reinhart and Siloni 2005). This complex role is assigned to the remaining argument resulting in a reflexive interpretation. Further tests also show that agent and patient roles are indeed present in verbs with diri after the bundling operation.

The Canonical Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981) assumes three major classes of expressions, anaphors, pronominals and R-expressions. However, it has been found that many languages have a richer system. In this thesis I investigate the anaphoric systems of a number of closely related languages spoken in Indonesia. The selected languages have a further element that is in some sense in-between anaphors and pronominals. I refer to these as 'half reflexives', since they can be both locally and non-locally bound. The languages under discussion show a further interesting puzzle, in that the pronoun dio in Palembangnese and in the variety spoken Village Jambi can have a reflexive interpretation. Contrarily, the pronoun dio in City Jambi differs from the Village dialect and is subject to Principle B. In this thesis I argue that the complexity of half reflexives explains why reflexivity in the selected languages is only licensed, but not enforced. I further show that the differences in binding behavior of dio in Palembangnese and the Village Jambi variety as compared to the other languages can be explained on the basis of an independent property, namely the absence of a number contrast.

A traditional assumption, widespread among linguists and non-linguists alike, is that non-standard dialects are subject to much more individual variation than standard varieties. This thesis is concerned with a non-standard dialect of American English called the African-American Vernacular of English (i.e. AAVE) and investigates the amount of individual variation in this particular variety. The following discussion is based on the findings of a theoretical study on the use of two grammatical properties, aspectual-Be and the null copula, by speakers of AAVE in the state of Mississippi and demonstrates how successive bilingualism can explain the high degree of individual variation typically found in non-standard linguistic varieties.

Children learning Dutch as their first language do not seem to have problems with the verb-final character of Dutch subordinate clauses as they use it correctly from the beginning (e.g. Klein, 1974). Adults learning Dutch as a second language tend to assume that the language has an SVO order and only modify this as they become more advanced (e.g. Jordens, 1988). Dutch is traditionally assumed to be an SOV language, but this is not uncontroversial. A key question in the matter of second language acquisition is whether or not the adult second language learners have access to UG. In this paper it will be argued that adult L2 learners do not have access to UG, but rely on their general linguistic knowledge and their knowledge of secondary rules in languages that they have learned instead of acquired (Krashen, 1981). This will be illustrated by the experiment conducted for this paper, which tests the usage of verb positions in Dutch subordinate clauses by Icelandic adult second language learners of Dutch.

This paper claims that case is vP-internally interpretable and that high NP-movement is driven by (minimally) two other ‘forces’: Person checking in a position higher than Tense, and EPP (Fin) checking in a still higher position, ‘Spec,IP’. This is evidenced by ´low’ nominatives, quirky agreement, Stylistic Fronting and expletive-distribution. Another central claim of the paper is that grammar interprets event features in relation to speech features. In particular, Person drives NP-movement because it computes event participants (cased θ-roles) in relation to speech participants, much as Tense links event time to speech time. As evidenced by both tense interpretation and pronoun interpretation, the finite clause is a Speech Phrase, SP, containing syntactic speech features.

Descriptive information on the linguistic behavior of anaphors (i.e., reflexives and reciprocals) in a typologically diverse sample of languages. Also includes some information on ordinary pronouns, and general descriptive information on each language. Content: summary typological parameters, annotated examples, parsed examples, morphological descriptions (conjugation tables etc.).