Some Milestones in the Development of Binding Theory

The original theories of anaphoric relations were transformational. Anaphoric pronouns were derived from full NPs; reflexives were derived from pronouns, as were missing subjects of certain infinitivals (EQUI). (1) "... there are actually good reasons for introducing [pronouns] transformationally as substituends for NP's of the proper kind... [a] transformation... replaces an animate NP by "he." " Chomsky (1955, p.502) (2) "In §109.6 we found that such sentences as "John wanted him to come " ( = 311) are introduced by transformation. If we investigate these sentences in more detail, we discover that there are certain restrictions on the occurrence of pronouns. Alongside of 311 we have 325 but not 326: 325 (a) I wanted him to try (b) I wanted you to try (c) I wanted to try 326 I wanted me to try The only way to avoid a special restricting statement on the level P is to add a mapping MxP that carries 326 into 325c: 327 MxP carries I-want-I-to{try into I-want-to{try " LSLT p.519 (3) *You wanted you to try Third person is slightly trickier: (4) 328 (a) he wanted him to try (b) he wanted to try The simplest way to handle this situation appears to be to set up two distinct elements he and he * corresponding to the element hew of W, he being an element just like I and you (which accounts for 328b), and he * being an ordinary proper noun (which accounts for 328a, just as we have "he wanted John to try"). The establishment of this pair of homonyms on the level P is further supported by its usefulness for other purposes, as we will see below. We thus replace 327 by the more general characterizatio