--- title: "Reflexivity in English — paper by Storoshenko et al. (2008)" description: "The paper models English reflexive pronouns (himself, herself) in Synchronous Tree Adjoining… 10 references, cited by 3 papers here." authors: ["Dennis R. Storoshenko", "Chung-hye Han", "David Potter"] year: 2008 venue: "Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Frameworks (TAG+9)" source: "https://aclanthology.org/W08-2320/" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/storoshenko-2008-reflexivity-english-stag-analysis/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/storoshenko-2008-reflexivity-english-stag-analysis/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2008](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2008/page/2/) / Reflexivity in English: an STAG analysis # Reflexivity in English: an STAG analysis **Authors:** [Dennis R. Storoshenko](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/dennis-ryan-storoshenko/), [Chung-hye Han](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/chung-hye-han/) and [David Potter](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/david-potter/) · **Year:** 2008 · **Venue:** [Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Frameworks (TAG+9)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/international-workshop-on-tree-adjoining-grammar-and-related-frameworks/) ([International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Frameworks 2008](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/international-workshop-on-tree-adjoining-grammar-and-related-frameworks/2008/)) · **Publisher:** [Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/association-for-computational-linguistics/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/W08-2320/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/W08-2320.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2757633197) **Citations:** 5 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · 3 in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read ## Summary The paper models English reflexive pronouns (himself, herself) in Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (STAG), where a syntactic derivation is paired with an isomorphic semantic one. Each reflexive is a two-part multi-component set. The first part substitutes into the argument slot. The second is a degenerate auxiliary tree that adjoins higher up and enforces φ-feature (person/number/gender) agreement with the antecedent, using Top/Bottom feature unification. In the semantics, following Reinhart and Reuland, the reflexive is not a link between two nominals. It is a λ-function that takes a predicate and merges two of its argument variables, which reduces the predicate's valence. Three variants (T′, V′, TP) cover reflexives bound by a subject, by an object, or across a clause boundary. The analysis handles mono-clausal sentences, raising with *seems to*, and ECM with *believes*. The main theoretical claim is that Chomsky's Condition A need not be stipulated. Its locality part follows from the formalism, and its c-command part follows from semantic type well-formedness. ## Key points - Each reflexive is a pair of trees, an approach adopted from Kallmeyer and Romero (2007) and, earlier, Ryant and Scheffler (2006): - an initial tree in the argument slot; - a degenerate auxiliary tree adjoining at T′, V′ or TP to check agreement. - Semantic types differ by variant: - the T′-form has type \<\>,\>; - the V′-form has type \<\>>,\>>. - The analysis uses unreduced λ-expressions on the semantic derived tree, following Han (2007), with λ-conversion applied at the end. - Ill-formed sentences are blocked in two ways: - *Jim introduces herself to Gillian* fails because of a [3sgM]/[3sgF] feature clash; - using the wrong reflexive variant fails because functional application cannot proceed in the semantics. - Raising (*Julian seems to Miles to love himself*) and ECM (*Julian believes himself to be intelligent*) are handled as follows: - both use multiple adjunction (Schabes and Shieber 1994); - ECM needs no special features on the verb, unlike Kallmeyer and Romero; - picture-NP reflexives are treated as logophors and set aside, and non-argument reflexives are left for future work. ## Interesting ideas - A reflexive can be treated as an operator on the predicate that identifies two of its argument slots, rather than as a pointer to an antecedent. - Agreement checking is placed in a separate, content-free component, so the agreement constraint is kept apart from the meaning contribution. - Binding constraints are not hand-written; they fall out of type mismatches, so a derivation that cannot compose is simply ruled out. - Choosing among a small set of reflexive variants by the position of the antecedent (subject, object, higher clause) keeps binding local and enumerable. - The analysis tests itself with starred sentences that must be rejected, including agreement mismatches and finite-clause *himself*. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (frames): When filling VerbNet roles, *himself* could be resolved by unifying the role slots of the same verb frame (e.g. Agent = Recipient), not by running general coreference. - **I2** (frames): The coreference module could check gender/number compatibility as an independent hard filter before scoring candidates, so that every rejection gets a clear, explainable reason. - **I3** (world): When building the text world, a candidate reading whose roles fail to compose type-wise can be discarded automatically, and the failure itself serves as the explanation. - **I4** (tree): After UD parsing, the dependency path from *-self* to the nsubj/obj of the same or the governing verb (xcomp for raising/ECM) could select among three explicit binding patterns. - **I5** (learn): Minimal ungrammatical or mis-bound reflexive pairs make good negative controls when evaluating the coreference and frame stages. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* 📚 Shelves (6): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works · [💭 Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/) · 1,552 works · [💭 Developmental and Educational Psychology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/psychology/developmental-and-educational-psychology/) · 499 works · [🧠 Neuroscience](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/neuroscience/) · 165 works · [🧠 Cognitive Neuroscience](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/neuroscience/cognitive-neuroscience/) · 164 works 🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,263 works ## Cite Cite as: Dennis R. Storoshenko, Chung-hye Han and David Potter. 2008. Reflexivity in English: an STAG analysis. Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Frameworks (TAG+9). The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{storoshenko2008reflexivity, title = {{Reflexivity in English: an STAG analysis}}, author = {Dennis R. Storoshenko, Chung-hye Han and David Potter}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Ninth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Frameworks (TAG+9)}, year = {2008}, url = {https://aclanthology.org/W08-2320/} } ``` - [← previous ProPOSEL: a human-oriented prosody and PoS English lexicon for machine-learning and NLP](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/brierley-2008-proposel-human-oriented-prosody-pos/) - [next → Classification of Verb-Particle Constructions with the Google Web1T Corpus](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kummerfeld-2008-classification-verb-particle-constructions-google/) - [↑ back to papers of 2008](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2008/page/2/) ## References 10 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Chomsky%2C+Noam%2E+1981%2E+Lectures+on+Government+and+Binding%2E+Dordrecht%3A+Foris%2E) 2. Han, Chung-hye and Nancy Hedberg. 2006. A Tree Adjoining Grammar Analysis of the Syntax and Semantics of It-clefts. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+ 8), pages 33–40, COLING-ACL workshop, Sydney, Australia. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Han%2C+Chung%2Dhye+and+Nancy+Hedberg%2E+2006%2E+A+Tree+Adjoining+Grammar+Analysis+of+the+Syntax+and+Semantics+of+It%2Dclefts%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+8th+International+Workshop+on+Tree+Adjoining+Grammars+and+Rela) 3. Han, Chung-hye. 2007. Pied-piping in relative clauses: Syntax and compositional semantics using Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar. Research on Language and Computation, 5(4):457–479. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-007-9040-4) 4. Kallmeyer, Laura and Maribel Romero. 2007. Reflexive and reciprocals in LTAG. In Geertzen, Jeroen, Elias Thijsse, Harry Bunt, and Amanda Schiffrin, editors, Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Computational Semantics IWCS-7, pages 271–282, Tilburg. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kallmeyer%2C+Laura+and+Maribel+Romero%2E+2007%2E+Reflexive+and+reciprocals+in+LTAG%2E+In+Geertzen%2C+Jeroen%2C+Elias+Thijsse%2C+Harry+Bunt%2C+and+Amanda+Schiffrin%2C+editors%2C+Proceedings+of+the+Seventh+International+Wo) 5. Kallmeyer, Laura and Maribel Romero. 2008. Scope and situation binding in LTAG using semantic unification. Research on Language and Computation, 6(1):3–52. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-008-9046-6) 6. Nesson, Rebecca and Stuart M. Shieber. 2006. Simpler TAG Semantics through Synchronization. In Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Formal Grammar, Malaga, Spain. CSLI. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nesson%2C+Rebecca+and+Stuart+M%2E+Shieber%2E+2006%2E+Simpler+TAG+Semantics+through+Synchronization%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+11th+Conference+on+Formal+Grammar%2C+Malaga%2C+Spain%2E+CSLI%2E) 7. Nesson, Rebecca and Stuart Shieber. 2007. Extraction phenomena in Synchronous TAG syntax and semantics. In Wu, Dekai and David Chiang, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Syntax and Structure in Statistical Translation, Rochester, New York. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nesson%2C+Rebecca+and+Stuart+Shieber%2E+2007%2E+Extraction+phenomena+in+Synchronous+TAG+syntax+and+semantics%2E+In+Wu%2C+Dekai+and+David+Chiang%2C+editors%2C+Proceedings+of+the+Workshop+on+Syntax+and+Structure+in+S) 8. Pollard, Carl and Ivan Sag. 1992. Anaphors in English and the scope of binding theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 23(2):261–303. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Pollard%2C+Carl+and+Ivan+Sag%2E+1992%2E+Anaphors+in+English+and+the+scope+of+binding+theory%2E+Linguistic+Inquiry%2C+23%282%29%3A261%E2%80%93303%2E) 9. Reinhart, Tanya and Eric Reuland. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry, 24(4):657–720. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Reinhart%2C+Tanya+and+Eric+Reuland%2E+1993%2E+Reflexivity%2E+Linguistic+Inquiry%2C+24%284%29%3A657%E2%80%93720%2E) 10. Proceedings of The Ninth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms Tübingen, Germany. June 6-8, 2008. (γ ′ 12) [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Proceedings+of+The+Ninth+International+Workshop+on+Tree+Adjoining+Grammars+and+Related+Formalisms+T%C3%BCbingen%2C+Germany%2E+June+6%2D8%2C+2008%2E+%28%CE%B3+%E2%80%B2+12%29) *Updated 1 November 2026*