This paper argues against the traditional view that Japanese pronouns differ from English pronouns in that they can never be bound by an operator. Rather, it is shown that pronouns cross-linguistically have the property of ' Anti-Minimality, 'by which is meant that a pronoun can be operator-bound only if another operator intervenes between the pronoun and its binding operator. Thus, just as pronouns stand opposed to anaphors with respect to A-binding, so they also stand opposed to variables with respect to O-binding; both anaphors and variables have the property of Minimality for the relevant type of binding. Data from English, Chinese and Japanese are discussed, and it is argued that discrepancies in the distribution of operator-bound pronouns derive from the existence/nonexistence of the pertaining Anti-Minimality inducers in these languages, which in turn reduces to the parametric variations in their configurational structure. Thus English differs from Chinese and Japanese in that only the former has AGR, while Japanese differs from the other two in that it crucially lacks a subject. Hence the strictly limited occurrence of operator-bound pronouns in this language. Since this study shows that the concept of Minimality comes into play for binding as well as for government, it provides further motivation for the reduction of the ECP to the Binding theory.
