 On the readings we are concerned with, neither (25) nor (26) is talking about any particular donkey, and so the pronoun “it” cannot be a term referring to a particular donkey. Further, in the case of (25), all independent evidence available suggests that a quantifier can’t take wide scope over a conditional and bind variables in its consequent (*“If John owns every donkeyi, he beats iti”). This suggests that the (apparent) quantifier “a donkey” in (25) cannot bind the pronoun in the consequent. In addition, even if “a donkey” could magically do this in (25), assuming it is an existential quantifier, we still wouldn’t get the intuitive truth conditions of (25), which require that Sarah beats every donkey she owns. Similarly, the independent evidence available suggests that quantifiers can’t scope out of relative clauses (*“A man who owns every donkeyi beats iti”), and so again the pronoun in (26) is not within the scope of its quantifier antecedent and so is not bound by it. Thus, the pronouns in both conditional and relative clause donkey sentences can be neither understood as referring expressions nor as bound variables.