The Syntax of Bora Subject Clitics: Anaphora and Long Distance Binding

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes subject pronouns in Bora, an endangered indigenous language of the Amazon. Bora uses a series of overt subject clitics to express the subject of clauses, which indicate cross-clausal coreference in many cases. Using data collected during personal fieldwork trips, I investigate the distribution of these clitics, and analyze their properties with respect to theories of control and binding. This accomplishes important research goals of (i) performing research on the Bora language, especially given its status as an endangered language, and (ii) using data from understudied languages to inform formal linguistic theory. After establishing a basic analysis of Bora syntactic structure, I review literature on binding theory and control structures, with the goal of showing how and whether the Bora data fit into existing linguistic theory. Regarding binding, I review canonical binding theory in generative grammar, as well as an alternative proposal that relies on reflexivity as a means of licensing anaphora. Regarding control clauses, I review analyses of PRO serving as a null, or in exceptional cases, an overt instantiation of a controlled subject. I compare this analysis with a theory of control that dispensed with PRO and instead analyzed control clauses as the result of syntactic movement. I conclude that, although Bora subject clitics appear in embedded clauses that would constitute control in other languages, such clauses in Bora are not control structures. Rather, every clause is a finite clause with an overt subject, with very few exceptions. I go on to show that overt subject clitics have anaphoric properties. For 3rd person subjects, an embedded proclitic i= (3COR) indicates coreference with the structurally next highest clause subject. The Speech Act Participant (SAP) clitic me= attaches to any verb with a 1st or 2nd person non-singular subject, and also indicates coreference with a higher clause subject when it appears without an overt subject NP. While the 3COR marker’s antecedent must appear in a higher clause, the SAP can take either a local or non-local antecedent, depending on its coreferent properties. The non-local nature of the antecedents of the 3COR marker and, in some cases, the SAP suggest that they constitute instances of long distance anaphora. This differs from the properties that I show for the 1st and 2nd person singular proclitics, which I argue to have properties of pronominals. After comparing the Bora data to instances of long distance anaphora in other languages, I determine that the Bora data has many similarities to these other languages. I argue that the ability of some of these clitics to be bound by non-local antecedents is similar to analyses of long distance anaphora in other languages. I first establish that Bora proclitics share properties with other types of long distance anaphors (being monomorphemic, occurring in restricted environments, having subject antecedents, and being subject to a Blocking Effect). I then provide an analysis based on similarity with Mandarin Chinese whereby the Bora anaphoric proclitics undergo raising at Logical Form in order to be bound by their antecedent, which must be the structurally next highest c-commanding subject in the sentence.