Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification

The goal of this paper is to show the existence of an interaction between binding and intensification in light of French possessive son propre (“his own”). Propre (“own”) has two possible interpretations: its semantic effect consists in contrasting either the possessor (possessor propre) or the possessum (possessum propre) with a set of contextually determined alternatives. Crucially, these double intensifying properties of propre correlate with the binding properties of son propre. When son is associated with possessor propre, son propre behaves like an anaphor that can be long distance bound if the antecedent is a logophoric center. However, when son is associated with possessum propre, son propre lacks both anaphoric and logophoric properties. This correlation shows that there is an interaction between the modules of binding and intensification: it is only when the referent of its antecedent (i.e. the possessor) is intensified that son propre needs to be bound.