Anaphor Reconstruction in Thai Relative Clauses

Abstract

Whether an anaphor inside the head of relative clauses can take the embedded subject as its antecedent is commonly used to test the head derivation in relative clauses (e.g., Bhatt 2002; Schachter 1973). This paper used a truth value judgment experiment to investigate whether the anaphor tuaeng ‘self’ within the head noun phrase of Thai relative clauses can be bound by the embedded subject. The results suggested that such binding is prohibited, which further indicates that the head noun phrase of Thai relative clauses must be base-generated external to the modifying clause.