Functional Heads as Binders: The Case of Eastern Armenian

Eastern Armenian has a three-way pronominal system, with one member, NA, being especially striking for its anti-subject, anti-wh and anti-focus distribution. I propose that wh and focus land low in Armenian, at the outer specifier of vP, and that the accurate generalization capturing the distribution of NA is that it is anti-spec-vP. I propose that this distribution can be explained if we construe binding as a type of agreement (let's call it Agree for expository purposes), mediated by the functional head. NA enters the derivation with a valued index. I propose a condition which bans the concurrence of the same index on a functional head and its specifier.