Two types of pronouns and variable binding

It is well known that personal pronouns in Japanese such as kare 'he ' and kanozyo 'she', unlike their English counterparts, cannot be construed as bound variables in logical form. The purpose of this article is to argue that this cross-linguistic difference is due to the difference in syntactic categories. English personal pronouns are determiners (Postal 1969), exemplifying what will be referred to as D-pronouns, and can be construed as bound variables, whereas Japanese personal pronouns are nouns, exemplifying what will be referred to as N-pronouns, and cannot be so construed. I argue that this follows from a general condition on binding that applies only to functional items, and not to lexical ones. I provide empirical and conceptual support for this hypothesis on the basis of the behavior of such elements as articles, determiners, and demonstrative pronouns as well as that of personal pronouns.