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'''Donkey anaphora''' is a type of [[anaphoric relation]] obtaining in a range of constructions that apparently preclude straightforward bound variable [[anaphora]] or [[coreference]]. In (i):

(i) every farmer who owns a donkey beats it

the [[pronoun]] is interpretively dependent upon ''a donkey''. However, coreference cannot obtain since ''a donkey'' does not have a single reference that might be shared by it, since ''a donkey'' is in the scope of the universal quantifier. But the pronoun also cannot be interpreted as a variable bound (i.e. a [[bound variable]]) by ''a donkey'', since it is not in the [[scope]] of that expression. Two types of analyses have been proposed, both of which face various problems. E-type analyses (Cooper 1979, Evans 1977, Heim 1990) take the pronoun to function as a [[definite description]] which copies its descriptive content from the context (of utterance): "the unique donkey that x owns". Unselective binding analyses take the pronoun as a variable 'unselectively' bound (Lewis 1975) by ''every'', resulting in a universal quantification over pairs, as in (ii).

(ii) All" <x,y> (x owns donkey y) (x beats y)

This approach, which requires a non-quantificational interpretation of indefinite NPs that function as donkey antecedents, has been implemented in Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982). Other well-known donkey-contexts are conditional clause type examples (iii)a and the relatively under-researched VP-conjunction examples (iii)b.

(iii) a if a man comes in here, he will trip the switch
b every farmer owns some donkeys and feeds them at night

=== Link ===

[http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Donkey+anaphora&lemmacode=1094 Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]

=== References ===

* Cooper, R. 1979. ''The interpretation of pronouns,'' in: F. Heny and H.S. Schnelle (eds.) Syntax and semantics 10: Selections from the Third Groningen Round Table, pp.61-92, Academic Press, New York etc.
* Evans, G. 1977. ''Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (I),'' The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7-3, pp.467-536, Reprinted in: G. Evans (1985) Collected Papers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp.76-152.
* Geach, P. 1962. ''Reference and generality,'' Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
* Heim, I. 1982. ''The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases,'' diss. U. Mass., Amherst.
* Heim, I. 1990. ''E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora,'' Linguistics and Philosophy 13, pp.137-177
* Kamp, H. 1981. ''A theory of truth and semantic representation,'' in: J. Groenendijk et al. (eds.) (1984) Truth, Interpretation and Information, pp.1-41, Foris, Dordrecht
* Lewis, D. 1975. ''Adverbs of quantification,'' in: E. Keenan (ed.) Formal semantics of natural language, pp.3-15, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
* Ruys, E. 1992. ''The scope of indefinites,'' diss. Utrecht University.

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[[Category:Syntax]]
[[Category:Semantics]]

Donkey anaphora - Revision history

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