Jovović | Linguistic Inquiry

Ivana Jovović’s article “Condition B and Other Conditions on Pronominal Licensing in Serbo-Croatian” has just appeared online ahead of its print publication in Linguistic Inquiry. Congratulations Ivana!

Abstract: I argue that certain binding facts from Serbo-Croatian, analyzed as Condition B violations by Despić (2011, 2013), are best captured in terms of specific discourse constraints on coreferential pronouns and that such cases have no bearing on the categorial status of the nominal domain in Serbo-Croatian. I show that the availability of clitic and non-clitic pronouns that are coreferential with a possessor antecedent crucially depends on whether the antecedent is a discourse topic or new information focus; this leads me to conclude that such cases are not Condition B violations. I also observe that pronouns in English are subject to identical conditions and conclude that English also has clitic and nonclitic pronouns.