Binding in South Slavic and DP

A Data-Driven Approach

Abstract

This paper reports on a set of experiments designed to test the binding potential of prenominal possessives in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. Despić (2013) argues that the differences in binding possibilities observed between English and Serbian provide support for the Parameterized DP Hypothesis (e.g., Fukui 1988; Zlatić 1997; Bošković 2003, 2005, 2008). LaTerza (2016) tests whether the claim holds true for two South Slavic DP-languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian, and concludes that it does not. Data provided in LaTerza 2016 is further discussed in Franks 2019. Based on three interesting observations—the use of a clitic vs. full pronoun, different binding behavior of pronominal and nominal possessives in Bulgarian, and acceptability judgments reported for Macedonian and Serbian—Franks (2019) concludes that Bulgarian and Macedonian have the same binding potentials as English, confirming Despić’s original hypothesis. Srdanović and Rinke (2020) provide Serbian experimental data focusing on possessives in subject position and  coreferential readings of pronouns in object positions. The authors show that Serbian allows coreferential readings just like English, especially when clitics are used. Our paper provides experimental data for Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. Our conclusions are that the three languages exhibit almost identical binding potentials. This finding is in line with the ones in Srdanović and Rinke 2020 since it also disproves the claim that the differences in binding result from the nominal structure present in a language: DP or NP.