Dravidian anaphora and implications for emphatic anaphors

Abstract

LINGUIST on-line conference on Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding October, 1996. Based on work in progress with Martin Everaert and Eric Reuland. Dravidian languages (particularly Malayalam) were brought up in this conference as posing problems for the reflexivity approach of R&R (by Lidz and by Hamilton). In fact, anaphora in these languages provides direct evidence for that approach. It is also independently interesting, since it differs in some respects than the better studied anaphora systems, so I would like to survey these languages here in some detail. At the same time, one of the anaphora strategies found in these languages may shed some light on the problem of emphatic anaphors across languages.