Syntactic variables and semantic minimality

Ethan Poole (joint work with Zahra Mirrazi)

We argue that when two syntactic variables are “related” and stand in a c-command relationship at LF, a ¾-pattern emerges: free/free, bound/bound, bound/free, and *free/bound. Several otherwise-disparate puzzles are shown to fall under this pattern: Dahl’s Puzzle, SCO effects, the Nested DP Constraint, exceptional de dicto, de re blocking, and certain restrictions on fake indexicals. Building on Drummond 2014, we propose that these phenomena reflect a minimality-style constraint on variables: (roughly) a variable may not be bound across a related free variable. The notion of “related”, we define in terms of overlap in value and counterparts, an extension of Reinhart’s (2006) covaluation. We argue that this “semantic minimality” does not straightforwardly reduce to the garden-variety syntactic minimality; rather, we suggest that syntactic and semantic minimality are separate, convergent consequences of economy.