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The domain of pronouns and backward binding

ORCiD logo with link | Adam Mickiewicz University
Published online: 14 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.25001.wit
Abstract
This study examines the relationships between personal pronouns and their nominal antecedents, focusing on the phenomenon of backward binding. Drawing primarily on data from English, Polish, and Czech, it demonstrates that such coreference relations are governed by three key conditions: (1) linear precedence, (2) a structural constraint known as phase command (Bruening, Benjamin. 2014. Precede-and command revisited. Language 90 (2). 342–388. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and (3) the information structure status of the nominal antecedent, which must be [+backgrounded/+topic] (Reinhart, Tanya. 1976. The syntactic domain of anaphora. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA., . 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Bianchi, Valentina. 2009. A note on backward anaphora. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 341.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Biskup, Peter. 2011. Adverbials and the phase model. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, among others).
The findings reveal that personal pronouns cannot occupy more prominent (commanding) syntactic positions than the nominals they refer to within a given sentence. Notably, even when pronouns are embedded within prepositional phrases (PPs) in English and Polish, they still trigger Principle C effects. This suggests that while PPs are legitimate constituents, their boundaries do not constrain the pronoun’s command domain. Instead, the command domain is delimited by the boundaries of derivational phases (e.g., vP, CP). Consequently, a nominal antecedent coindexed with a preceding pronoun is most natural when positioned in a separate clausal domain, such as an adverbial clause.
Additionally, the analysis shows that right-peripheral adjunct clauses fall within the command domain of the subject pronoun but not the object pronoun. Crucially, the antecedent nominal phrase must be [+backgrounded/+topic] to establish a coherent coreference relationship.
Article outline
  • Highlights
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The domain of pronouns and considerations of constituent structure
    • 2.1The framework: Which notion of command matters for backward anaphora
    • 2.2The domain of prepositional objects
    • 2.3The domain of subject pronouns
    • 2.4Segments, precedence, command and reconstruction
  • 3.Backward Binding and PP-internal antecedents
  • 4.Backward binding across the clausal boundary
  • 5.Backward binding and backgrounded antecedents
  • 6.Backward binding in Polish: The subject pronoun vs the object pronoun
    • 6.1Pronouns, adverbial clauses and coreference
    • 6.2The position of the object pronoun and backward binding
  • 7.Conclusions and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
References (69)
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