International Journal of Language & Linguistics

The Bird Phenomenon: Negations, Binding, Quantifiers, and the Definiteness of a Pronoun
Hsiu Wen Wendy Cheng

Abstract
I propose “The Bird Phenomenon”. This is the phenomenon of the interaction between binding and the definiteness of the bound pronoun. To consistently account for this phenomenon, these mechanisms are proposed, for the working of this interaction between binding and the definiteness of the bound pronoun: The “meta-counteraction of negations”, is the meta-counteraction of two negations. This meta-counteraction gives rise to binding, and the definiteness of the bound pronoun in this binding. This meta-counteraction of negations yields the value [+1] or [+0], which gives rise to the feature [+/- definite] to this bound pronoun. Further, I propose the paradigm “The Features of Articles, Indexicals, Quantifiers, and Nominals at the Head of a Determiner Phrase”, in which the default base and the default features of this paradigm are specified. Further, I propose that the Bird Phenomenon presents that in language production and perception, each minimal building block of different types or categories composes freely to infinite patterns of sentences without constraint. These proposals in the Bird Phenomenon are the basis for the architecture of a Determiner Phrase, and the architecture of how Negations computes with Binding and Definiteness.

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