The Prominent Absence Of The Complementary Distribution Of Anaphor And Pronoun In Snake Swntence And Its Semantic Interpretation

The binding theory is one of the most important theories in the syntax in which noun phrases are divided into three parts: referring expression, anaphor and pronoun. Anaphors include reflexive pronouns and mutual pronouns. The classical Chomsky's binding theory points out that anaphors and pronouns have in a complementary distribution according to the principle A and principle B in the binding theory. But in reality, there is a kind of sentences violating the common complementary distribution between anaphors and pronouns. The sentence is called snake sentence. That is to say, in this kind of sentences, the anaphors and the pronouns can occur in the same positions and both fit into grammar. But here we need notice that in such snake sentence; the anaphors only refer to the reflexive pronouns, not mutual pronouns. Therefore, the thesis makes such snake sentences as the target of research to explore the reason why there is such environment of the complementary distribution between anaphors and pronouns. The thesis uses the basic concepts and theories of the perspective theory, location theory and axial part theory to introduce the research history and the research methods of the snake sentence, to discuss the reason and explanation of the snake sentence, and to carefully analyze a kind of structure which has a similar syntax structure with the snake sentence.The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is the introduction of the form and characteristics of the so called snake sentence, which is mainly from the aspects of foreign and domestic status quo. The thesis introduces the research methods and approaches. The research of the snake sentence is the research of the relationship between anaphors and pronouns in the binding theory. The thesis does a systematic review and conclusion about some researchers'research achievements.Second, the thesis gives the theoretical backgrounds, which are binding theory, semantic binding theory, perspective explanation, location explanation and axial part explanation. The binding theory is the fundamental theory. The problem we talking about the snake sentence is in reality is the relation between anaphors and pronouns in binding theory. The thesis does a systematic research about binding theory. Cantrall (1974) proposes the perspective explanation which indicates that the choice of anaphors or pronouns relates with the perspective used to observe. The perspectives are divided into the subject-centered perspective and the observer-centered perspective. They are respectively corresponding with anaphors and pronouns. From the explanation, we can easily understand the semantic meaning of anaphors and pronouns. Kuno(1987),Levinson(1991)and Van hoek(1997)argues that we should notice the importance of the explanation of the location. The anaphors in snake sentence contains the meaning that the relation between human body and objects is abstract, whereas, the pronoun contains the meaning that the relation is concrete. The axial part explanation is about the concrete objects themselves. It proposes that the objects themselves have invisible axial parts, and some prepositions also have the axial parts meaning.Third, the thesis does a careful analysis of the pronouns. In this part the thesis expounds the different understandings between syntactic and semantic views. In this part, the thesis takes most linguists'opinions that putting anaphors into the category of pronoun to show their associations and differences. But for convenience, the thesis regards anaphors as the reflexive pronouns, whereas regards the current pronouns as the non-reflexive pronouns, then gives the following analysis under the foundations. Faltz (1977) proposes the containhood theory. Faltz puts forward the definition of containhood to show that the prepositions have the meaning of"containing". He thinks that the anaphors, that is also called reflexive pronouns, are in a higher percentage to occur in such prepositions with the containing meanings. Besides, human bodies can also be regarded as a container. Kuno proposes the peri-personal space, which indicates that the location and area on or closely around the referent. The term peri-personal space refers to the motor space around the body in which the body's effectors (hands, arms, feet and head) freely move during the action events (Gallese and Lakoff 2005). Thus, the peri-personal space is viewed as a region of space around the body whose outer limits are defined by the distance one can extend the body's limbs to perform an action. The higher use of the reflexive pronoun for actions inside the referent's peri-personal space, whereas the lower use of the non-reflexive pronoun for actions outside the referent's peri-personal apace.Last, the thesis does a systematic and careful analysis of the snake sentence from the aspects of binding, perspective and location on the basis of predecessors. The thesis also talks about the absence of perspectival and location differences. In the end, the thesis does an analysis of the have-structure which has some similarities with the snake sentence. We can have a more systematic understanding of the environment of absence of complementary distribution between anaphors and pronouns in the so called snake sentence.