Logophoricity and Locality: A View from French Anaphors

Abstract

In many unrelated languages, the same anaphor is either subject to Condition A of the binding theory, or exempt from it but with specific interpretive properties. On the basis of French data and crosslinguistic comparisons, I first show that such exempt anaphors must be anteceded by logophoric centers. Elaborating on but modifying Sells 1987 , I provide specific tests to argue that these logophoric antecedents can be classified into two kinds of perspective centers, attitude holders and empathy loci, thus reducing logophoricity to mental perspective. Next, I propose to derive the logophoricity of exempt anaphors from the following hypothesis: seemingly exempt anaphors are in fact bound by silent logophoric pronouns introduced by syntactically represented logophoric operators within their local domain. Crucially, this hypothesis, which is independently supported by exhaustive coreference constraints on locally cooccurring exempt anaphors, also accounts for their apparent exemption from Condition A, reanalyzed here as local binding by a silent logophoric binder.