The fact that the distribution of anaphoric readings is regulated by the geometry of syntactic form was one of the great discoveries of generative grammar, and even today the nuances of this relationship between form and possible meanings remains a source of new, more subtle discoveries. Perhaps the fundamental property of anaphoric readings is that one form depends on another for its reference. This monograph explores the idea that the fundamental factor determining the distribution of anaphoric dependencies is a simple syntax-dependent principle, but one that comes in the form of a prohibition, rather than a licensing condition. When this principle is integrated with some of those that are developed in The Syntax of Anaphora, important consequences are established for the nature of form-to-meaning relations and the architecture of formal grammar, including consequences that help us set the boundaries between syntactic geometry, semantic interpretation, and pragmatic force.

In the course of these explorations of the dependency relation in syntax, a variety of anaphoric phenomena are examined in great detail, especially the distribution of bound readings in crossover environments and reconstruction contexts, although the distribution of anaphors, scrambling and ellipsis constructions are also brought to bear on the issues explored.