Syntactic Versus Semantic Binding
Heim and Kratzer (1998) distinguish between syntactic and semantic binding (which are tightly connected):
A node α syntactically binds a node β if
- α and β are co-indexed,
- α c-commands β,
- α is in an A-position, and
- α does not c-command any other node which is also co-indexed with β, c-commands β, and is in an A-position (p. 261).
βn semantically binds αm if the sister of βn is the largest subtree of γ in which αm is semantically free, where
- αm is a variable occurrence in a tree γ,
- βn is a variable binder occurrence in γ (p. 262)
Read more about this topic: Binding (linguistics)
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—Empedocles 484–424 B.C., Greek philosopher. The Presocratics, p. 142, ed. Philip Wheelwright, The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc. (1960)