Anaphoic islands and peninsulas: grammar and pragmatics

Abstract

Concepts such as anaphoric island (Postal 1969) and anaphoric peninsula (Corum 1973) have been part of the studies on the relationship between morphology and syntax, where they have received a great deal of attention. In this article we analyze the most common anaphoric peninsulas, exploring their morphological, syntactic and semantic conditions. We argue that anaphoric peninsulas are actually the effect of pragmatic and discoursive factors, as there is no real coreference between the base of the word and an external pronoun. Our analysis connects all the factors that favour this kind of reference with semantic and discoursive aspects, thus providing additional evidence that these effects are actually pragmatic and not structural.