Anaphora in Generative Grammar
In generative grammar, the term anaphor is used to refer to English's reflexive pronouns, and analogous forms in other languages. Anaphors in this sense must have strictly local antecedents, because they receive their reference via the local syntactic operation (or rule of interpretation) known as binding.
Reflexive anaphors must obey binding condition A, which states that "a reflexive pronoun must be bound within the smallest category containing it, its selecting head and a subject (=its governing category, or GC)". In the following sentence: *John thought that she saw himself, the GC of the reflexive 'himself' is the relative clause, since it contains the anaphor itself, its selecting head (saw) and a subject (she). The only available noun that could bind 'himself' is 'she', but this is ruled out because of the gender mismatch. The anaphor is therefore left unbound, which violates condition A - explaining the sentence's ungrammaticality.
Read more about this topic: Anaphora (linguistics)
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