What Do French Inanimate Anaphors Really Show? Unavailable

In their article “Anaphor Binding: What French Inanimate Anaphors Show,” Charnavel and Sportiche (C&S) (2016) examine the distribution of two French anaphoric expressions: (a) the nonpossessive anaphor lui-même (feminine: elle-même; lit. ‘him/her/it-self’), and (b) the possessive anaphor son propre (lit. ‘his/her/its own’) when it induces focus alternatives on the possessor (henceforth, possessor son propre).¹ On the one hand, C&S observe that, when these anaphors take an animate antecedent, their distribution is unaffected by the distance separating them from their antecedent: both anaphors can be linked to a local animate antecedent or to a more distant animate antecedent occurring in a different clause.² On the other hand, C&S argue that, when these anaphors take an inanimate antecedent, they behave like “true anaphors” subject to locality restrictions that preclude any long-distance use. According to C&S, this generalization is supported by the existence of contrasts like those in (...