---
title: "Introducing agents by binding indices: Implications for subjectless"
description: "Building on Hale & Keyser (2002), they propose that these verbs carry an anaphoric index pointing to their agent. 21 references."
authors: ["Ryan Walter Smith", "Jianrong Yu"]
year: 2024
venue: "Glossa: a journal of general linguistics"
source: "https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/10596/"
doi: "10.16995/glossa.10596"
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/smith-2024-introducing-agents-binding-indices-implications/"
---
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# Introducing agents by binding indices: Implications for subjectless presuppositions and agent entailments.

**Authors:** [Ryan Walter Smith](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ryan-walter-smith/) and [Jianrong Yu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/jianrong-yu/) · **Year:** 2024 · **Venue:** [Glossa: a journal of general linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/) ([Glossa a journal of general linguistics 2024](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/glossa-a-journal-of-general-linguistics/2024/)) · **Publisher:** [Ubiquity Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/ubiquity-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10596) · [PDF](https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/10596/galley/33557/download) · [DOI 10.16995/glossa.10596](https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10596) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4393002800)

**Citations:** 3 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper revisits a debate in formal semantics about whether a verb's agent is a true argument of the verb or is added by a separate functional head (Voice, following Kratzer 1996). Bale (2007) used the modifier *again* as a test. *Again* can yield a "subjectless" repetitive presupposition, in which the earlier event may have had a different agent. Bale found this reading with eventive transitives like *hit* and *kick*, but not with intransitives or stative transitives. He concluded that some verbs take their agent directly.

Smith and Yu add two eventive transitive classes that also block the subjectless reading: ingestion verbs (*eat*, *drink*) and intentional killing verbs (*murder*, *massacre*). They then argue that such blocking does not force the agent into the verb. Building on Hale & Keyser (2002), they propose that these verbs carry an anaphoric index pointing to their agent. Voice binds that index by shifting the assignment function, using a mechanism Kratzer (2009) proposed for reflexives. Reflexive objects block the subjectless reading in the same way. The result is a middle position: agents are always introduced outside the VP, yet some verbs still track them.

## Key points
- The method is the *again* diagnostic, applied through constructed minimal contexts with judged felicity; the paper uses no corpus or treebank.
- Verbs that allow subjectless presuppositions include *hit* and *kick*, and their passives also allow it.
- Verbs that block it include:
  - unergatives such as *run*;
  - stative transitives;
  - ingestion verbs (*eat*, *drink*);
  - intentional killing verbs (*murder*, *massacre*).
- Word order matters: *again* placed before the subject scopes over the agent, so the earlier event must have had the same agent.
- A reflexive direct object removes the subjectless reading even from verbs that normally permit it, and this supports the binding analysis.
- Ordinary lexical entailments about agents do not block the reading. For example, *sing* entails that the agent's vocal cords move, yet John can sing a song and Bill can then sing it "again".

## Interesting ideas
- The paper uses a single operator (*again*) as a probe for which participants belong to an event description, which turns an abstract question about argument structure into concrete felicity judgments.
- The scope of *again* depends on its linear position: when it precedes the subject, the agent is included in the presupposition.
- Reflexive objects and lexically "self-oriented" verbs are treated with one binding mechanism, so both are handled the same way.
- The paper separates two kinds of agent information: verb-specific facts stored as meaning postulates (such as *sing* implying vocal-cord movement), and agent reference that other operators can actually see during composition.
- The evidence takes the form of minimal context pairs where only the agent's identity changes, each paired with a felicity judgment.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): When a text says something happened "again", Mova can decide whether the earlier event must share the agent by checking the verb class. Ingestion and intentional-killing verbs would require the same agent, while hit/kick-type verbs would only require the same theme.
- **I2** (frames): The UD position of an *again* advmod relative to the nsubj can set the scope of the repetition frame, giving an explainable rule rather than a guess.
- **I3** (frames): Coreference could mark reflexive objects as bound to the agent, and the same binding flag could be attached to verb classes like *eat* or *murder* in the role frames.
- **I4** (world): The compiled knowledge layer could keep agent entailments (inference only) apart from agent-binding features (which constrain presuppositions), so that one is not mistaken for the other.
- **I5** (learn): Similar paired items, in which the earlier event has a different agent, could serve as negative controls to check that the system does not over-accept "again" readings.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Ryan Walter Smith and Jianrong Yu. 2024. Introducing agents by binding indices: Implications for subjectless presuppositions and agent entailments. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{smith2024introducing,
  title = {{Introducing agents by binding indices: Implications for subjectless presuppositions and agent entailments.}},
  author = {Ryan Walter Smith and Jianrong Yu},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.10596},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10596}
}
```

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## References

21 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 29 October 2026*