Expressions such as English himself are interpreted as locally bound anaphors in certain syntactic environments and are exempt from the binding conditions in others. This article provides a unified semantics for himself in both of these uses. Their difference is reduced to the interaction with the syntactic environment. The semantics is based on an extension of the treatment of pronominals in variable-free semantics. The adoption of variable free semantics is inspired by the existence of proxy-readings, which motivate an analysis based (...) on Skolem functions. It is explained why certain anaphor types allow proxy-readings whereas others do not. (shrink)

The nature of mental representations of linguistic expressions in relation to the time course from intention to articulation is a major issue. We discuss Branigan & Pickering's proposal to use structural priming to tap into this process. We show that their interpretation of their findings cannot be maintained. We reinterpret these results and suggest a revision of their conclusions.

I identify a number of problematic aspects of Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) contribution. These include their suggestion that subjacency and binding reflect non-domain-specific mechanisms; that proto-language is a ; and that non-adaptationism requires overly rich innate structures, and is incompatible with acceptable evolutionary processes. It shows that a fully UG (Universal Grammar)-free version of the authors' neo-adaptationism would be incoherent.