The project investigates the nature of grammatical dependencies such as anaphoric binding and gender-number agreement through the lens of another type of syntactic relations, namely clitic doubling in the little-studied Tabasaran language. All three phenomena exhibit similar behavior in various syntactic configurations. In Tabasaran 1/2.p pronouns and the 3.p reflexive share patterns such as local binding and also exhibit logophoric behavior in reported speech. In addition, the three phenomena demonstrate a long-distance behavior across clausal boundaries. The research examines how the syntactic dependency between a DP and other elements—whether a clitic, anaphor, or agreeing verb—varies based on the features involved and investigates syntactic constraints of three phenomena. The specific goal of the project is to study which aspects of clitic-doubling, derived through both binding and agreement, overlap with regular anaphoric binding, as instantiated by 3.p reflexives, and which aspects it shares with true agreement in gender-number.
