ABSTRACT
The problem of definite NP co reference is the one which originally motivated the relation 'precede and command' (in Langacker, 1966). It was introduced to account for a problem which is independent of the specific theory adopted concerning the status of anaphoric relations-a pronoun cannot be related arbitrarily to any full NP in a sentence. In other words, it is not sufficient that the context, the semantics of the sentence, or the situation in the world permit two NPs to be anaphorically related - certain structural properties of the two NPs impose further restrictions on their coreference options in a given sentence. As we put it in the previous chapter, the question is what is the domain in which one NP can restrict the referential interpretation of another NP, or what are the relevant domains for the application of the coreference restrictions. In this chapter I shall first argue that the precede-and-command restriction is irrelevant, and I shall introduce the c-command restriction.
