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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.

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Article summary

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.

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  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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