Anaphora: Text-based or discourse-dependent?

Abstract

The traditional definition of anaphora in purely co-textual terms as a relation between two co-occurring expressions is in wide currency in theoretical and descriptive studies of the phenomenon. Indeed, it is currently adopted in on-line psycholinguistic experiments on the interpretation of anaphors, and is the basis for all computational approaches to automatic anaphor resolution (see Mitkov 2002). Under this conception, the anaphor, a referentially-dependent expression type, requires “saturation” by an appropriate referentially-autonomous, lexically-based expression — the antecedent — in order to achieve full sense and reference. However, this definition needs to be re-examined in the light of the ways in which real texts operate and are understood, where the resulting picture is rather different. The article aims to show that the co-textual conception is misconceived, and that anaphora is essentially an integrative, discourse-creating procedure involving a three-way relationship between an “antecedent trigger”, an anaphoric predication, and a salient discourse representation. It is shown that it is only in terms of a dynamic interaction amongst the interdependent dimensions of text and discourse, as well as context, that the true complexity of anaphoric reference may be satisfactorily described. The article is intended as a contribution to the broader debate within the pages of this journal and elsewhere between the formalist and the functionalist accounts of language structure and use.

Textual Deixis and the ‘Anchoring’ Use of the Latin Pronoun hic

“…This view is in accordance with current cognitive linguistic theory, which assumes that canonical deixis on the one hand, and anaphora on the other, are not to be seen as mutually exclusive procedure types, but as special instances on a cline of indexical reference. Cornish (2010Cornish ( , 2011) distinguishes between three, interrelated, referring procedures with an indexical function:…”

“…Referring procedures with an 'indexical' function (Cornish 2010(Cornish , 2011 (i) canonical anaphora…”

“…More promising appears to be a cognitively-based discourse-functional approach to anaphora, advocated by, for instance, McCarthy (1994), Kleiber (1994), Janssen (2004), and a number of recent articles by Cornish (2003Cornish ( , 2006Cornish ( , 2010Cornish ( , 2011. Such a discourse-functional approach assumes that interpreting a given anaphor involves the tracking of certain referents in the interlocutors' evolving mental discourse model of the communicative event, rather than in the preceding text.…”

“…cline of indexical reference. In this context, the concept of anadeixis was introduced (Cornish 2010(Cornish , 2011. In the case of anadeictic reference (anaphoric reference by means of demonstratives, like Latin hic and ille), the semantic deictic aspects of proximity and remoteness are to be taken as pertaining to positions in mental space, with proximal demonstratives (like Latin hic) pointing to a region of focal referential concern of the interlocutors, and distal demonstratives (like Latin ille) to a region of disfocal concern.…”

Procédures référentielles indexicales, relations rhétoriques et structuration du discours1

“…En matière d'anaphore, il n'y a de ce fait aucune relation intratextuelle directe posée entre déclencheur d'antécédent et anaphorique : voir Cornish (2010b) pour une discussion plus ample. Ainsi, contrairement à la conception textualiste classique de l'anaphore de discours, l'évocation directe et explicite du référent repris dans le cotexte précédent ou subséquent (dans le cas de la cataphore) ne fournit ni une condition suffi sante, ni nécessaire, pour son existence.…”