Chapter 2

Syntactic and semantic constraints on pronoun and anaphor resolution in Persian

This chapter investigates the mechanism of reference resolution for the colloquial pronoun un “(s)he” and the anaphor xod-eš “self-3sg” in Persian. The present analysis serves as another piece of evidence in support of the ‘multiple constraints’ framework for reference resolution advanced in Kaiser (2003) and Kaiser et al. (2009), while also contributing to the relatively scant analyses of Persian reference resolution. In identifying the differences in sensitivity to constraints, though, we argue that xod-eš and un are fundamentally different in their binding behaviour. Regarding the semantic constraints, we observed that un is more sensitive to a perceiver bias than xod-eš. We further reinforce the bound nature of xod-eš with the observation that it requires a c-commanding antecedent. This, along with the observed tolerance for (syntactic) binding both within and beyond the local clause, motivates its comparison with the Korean caki and Chinese ziji “self”, both of which share these properties.