Grano and Lasnik (2008) argue that phases should be extended if features are still unvalued on the complement of a phase head at the end of what would normally be a phase. Thus, if pronouns are bound variables with unvalued features, then the phase that matters for resolving the unvalued features is extended. However, the one case that their generalization should not cover, namely, local anaphora, suggests that phase extension based on unvalued features is not the right explanation of the bound pronoun effect, and that phases for anaphora are not coordinated with phases that restrict the relations that the bound pronoun effect encompasses.

This article demonstrates that the A/Ā distinction is an epiphenomenon that emerges from independently necessary properties of Merge and the interpretive components. A true explanation of the A/Ā distinction requires that the distinction between the two classes of structures must emerge from a conspiracy of independently motivated principles and that the distinction should explain why the contrasts between A- and Ā-constructions are precisely the ones they are. I argue that certain moved constituents must be structurally altered on the way to their landing sites; otherwise, they will interfere with Case and agreement relations. I propose that an optional instance of Merge, late attachment of a prepositional head to the moved DP, “insulates” that DP from Case and agreement, but has consequences for what an insulated DP can antecede and/or license. Insulation is optional, but limited by independently motivated interface requirements that determine its distribution. The distribution of insulation explains why A- and Ā-structures differ in just the ways they do and not in other ways.

I argue that there is only one true anaphor in natural language, which takes many shapes. Building on the idea that some pronouns are constructed and others are ‘‘natural-born’’ with features, as suggested by Kratzer (2009) , I suggest that all nonlocally anteceded bound variable pronouns that are traditionally bound (c-commanded) are the spell-out of a special, but universally available, dependent form, D-bound . The language-specific spell-out of D-bound in phase-internal contexts is responsible for Principle A effects, but not every language imposes phase-internal morphology for binding (thus, Principle A effects are not universal). This approach resolves morphological paradoxes that arise in ellipsis contexts when distance-bound antecedent forms behave as locally bound and vice versa. Finally, the distribution of Principle B and C effects is shown to be a consequence of the distribution of D-bound—the preferred form for anaphoric relations wherever it is available.

Fiengo and May (1994) argue that what they call “vehicle change,” which permits copies of names to be evaluated as pronouns with respect to interpretive principles, plays a key role in accounting for reconstruction effects in ellipsis environments. It is argued here that the alleviation of Principle C violations (“antire construction effects”), where it occurs in Ā-chains, is due not to deletion of the lower copy, as in Chomsky 1995, but to vehicle change. The introduction of vehicle change into the theory of Ā-chains is independently motivated as essential to capturing a robust adjunct/nonadjunct distinction in the reconstruction of pronoun-as-bound-variable readings that has not been discussed up to now; at the same time it predicts the class of “weakest crossover” environments.