Valency versus binding: On the distinctness of argument structure
This paper argues for the use of two levels in syntactic description, grammatical relations and argument structure, at which sentences may have diierent representations: the prominence ranking may diier, as in syntactically ergative and Western Austronesian languages, and the argument structure may be more nested, as in passives or causatives. We begin with binding theory. 1 1 Rethinking binding theory Most theories of binding in most syntactic frameworks assume that the same notion of surface obliqueness that identiies the subject of a clause is also used for obliqueness conditions on reeexive binding. For instance, in GB (Chomsky 1981), binding theory is standardly deened on S-structure, so that in (1), Nancy can bind herself due to the c-commanding connguration that also makes Nancy the subject of the sentence. (1) IP NP Nancy i VP V gave NP herself i NP Det a N raise 1 This paper is an unrevised draft of the paper I presented at the Colloque de Syntaxe et S emantique de Paris. I thank people at the conference for their comments. Further comments are also welcome. Some of the ideas here are explored in more detail in my dissertation and other papers available at