Crossover effects

In linguistics, crossover effects are restrictions on possible binding or coreference that hold between certain phrases and pronouns. Coreference (or coindexation) that is normal and natural when a pronoun follows its antecedent becomes impossible, or at best just marginally possible, when "crossover" is deemed to have occurred, e.g. ?Who 1 do his 1 friends admire __ 1 ? The term itself refers to the traditional transformational analysis of sentences containing leftward movement (e.g. wh-movement, topicalization), whereby it appears as though the fronted constituent crosses over the expression (usually a pronoun) with which it is coindexed on its way to the front of the clause. Crossover effects are divided into strong crossover (SCO) and weak crossover (WCO). The phenomenon occurs in English and related languages, and it may be present in all natural languages that allow fronting.

Examples

Strong and weak crossover

As just indicated by the examples, there are two types of crossover, strong and weak. The following two sections consider each of these types.

Strong crossover

Strong crossover occurs when the pronoun is in an argument position, i.e. it is an argument of the relevant verb. This means that it is not contained inside a noun phrase. Instances of strong crossover are clearly impossible, that is, the coreferential reading is strongly unavailable, e.g. a. *Which politician 1 did she 1 say that they should vote for __ 1 ? – Strong crossover, intentional coreferential reading impossible b. *Who 1 do you think he 1 trusts __ 1 ? – Strong crossover, intentional coreferential reading impossible c. *Which man 1 did he 1 promise __ 1 would get a promotion? – Strong crossover, intentional coreferential reading impossible While these sentences are actually grammatical, the reading indicated by the subscripts is robustly unavailable. For instance, the first sentence (sentence a) cannot be interpreted to mean that Susan told them to vote for herself (i.e. Susan). Most analyses account for strong crossover effects with Condition C effects of binding theory (see binding for more details). In the underlying structure (before movement) the antecedent (the pronoun) c-commands an R-expression (the wh-expression) which violates Condition C of binding theory and therefore could explain why a coreferential reading is unavailable in cases of strong crossover. As will be discussed below, the analyses of weak crossover are subject to more debate.

Weak crossover

Crossover is "weak" when the coreferential reading is marginal, that is, when the coreferential reading is not clearly unacceptable, but rather just quite unlikely. Typical cases of weak crossover occur when the expression that has been "crossed over" is a possessor inside a noun phrase, e.g. a. ?Which players 1 does their 1 coach distrust __ 1 ? – Weak crossover, indicated reading possible, but unlikely b. ?Which beer 1 does its 1 brewer never advertise __ 1 ? – Weak crossover, indicated reading possible, but unlikely c. ?Who 1 do her 1 parents worship __ 1 ? – Weak crossover, indicated reading possible, but unlikely The pronoun that has been crossed over in each of these examples is embedded inside a noun phrase. Such cases of crossover are not impossible, but rather just unlikely. Since grammaticality judgments on instances of weak crossover are less robust than strong crossover, much of the literature on crossover effects focuses on weak crossover (see Lasnik & Stowell (1991), Postal (1993), Ruys (2000)) . Koopman & Sportiche (1983) attribute the judgements on coreference with respect to weak crossover to the Bijection Principle: “There is a bijective correspondence between variables and A-positions. (That is, each operator must A-bind exactly one variable, and each variable must be A-bound by exactly one operator.)” In the examples above, neither the trace (T), represented by the gap, nor the pronoun (P) binds the other as the pronoun is contained within a noun phrase. Therefore, the operator locally binds both T and P, meaning that it binds two variables and violates the Bijection Principle. However, weak crossover effects are absent when the pronoun is contained within an adjunct phrase, for example: a.) Who 1 did you say __ 1 was a liar before you met him 1 ? - Weak crossover absent, coreferential reading possible Based on this observation, Stowell proposes the following analysis of weak crossover: “In a configuration where a quantifier Q locally binds a pronoun P and a trace T, P may not be contained in an argument phrase XP that c-commands T.”

Interaction of Weak Crossover with Other Phenomena

There are certain syntactic phenomena in which we would expect weak crossover effects to arise, however we find that they are absent and a coreferential reading is possible, e.g. a.) Parasitic gaps Who 1 did Susan gossip about __ 1 despite his 1 boss having vouched for __ 1 ? b.) Tough movement Which girl 1 will be easy to persuade her 1 teacher to vouch for __ 1 ? These constructions indicate the complexity involved with respect to whether a coreferential reading is possible and why this is of interest to linguists. There are different possible analyses of why weak crossover effects do not arise in these constructions. One approach is to reanalyze the binding relations between pronouns and quantifiers in such constructions. Another approach is to revise the principles underlying weak crossover to account for why weak crossover effects do not occur in these environments.

Comments

Notes

References

Adesola, O. 2006. On the Absence of Superiority and Weak Crossover Effects in Yoruba. Linguistic Inquiry, 37 (2): 309–318. Lasnik, H. & Stowell, T. 1991. Weakest Crossover. Linguistic Inquiry, 22(4), pp. 687–720 Postal, P. 1971. Crossover phenomena. Postal, P. 1993. Remarks on Weak Crossover Effects. Linguistic Inquiry, 24 (3): 539–556. Ruys, E. G. 2000. Weak Crossover as a Scope Phenomenon. Linguistic Inquiry. 31 (3): 513–539. doi:10.1162/002438900554424. ISSN 0024-3892. Wasow, T. 1972. Anaphoric relations in English. MIT dissertation.

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