Syntactic and Logophoric Anaphora Under the Perspective of Experimental Syntax

Abstract

In order to avoid repetition of noun phrases in a sentence the use of anaphora is present in most languages. In English, for example, Reinhart and Reuland (1993) pointed out that syntactic anaphora, besides natural, is guided by c-command (Chomsky, 1981) and related to syntactic factors, and logophoric anaphora is guided by extra-syntactic information. This study aims to observe the influence of c-command in Brazilian Portuguese syntactic anaphora “a si mesmo (a)” during language processing, as well as verify the acceptability of the logophoric anaphora “ele mesmo”. For this, two psycholinguistic experiments were made that showed the influence of c-command during the reading of the anaphora “a si mesmo (a)” and that the sentences with logophoric anaphora “ele mesmo” are considered acceptable in Brazilian Portuguese.