Long Distance Anaphora

Long Distance Anaphora
Author: Jan Koster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1991-09-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521400008

A collection of original articles on the nature of anaphoric systems in a wide variety of genetically and structurally different languages.

Long Distance Reflexives

Long Distance Reflexives
Author: Peter Cole
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2000-10-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1849508747

This new volume serves to focus and clarify the debate surrounding long-distance reflexives by examining the role of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics/discourse in the use of long-distance reflexives in a variety of languages. It discusses a broad range of questions about syntactic categories and presents a number of theoretical frameworks.

Research Methodology in Second-Language Acquisition

Research Methodology in Second-Language Acquisition
Author: Elaine E. Tarone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135445346

This volume addresses salient theoretical issues concerning the validity of research methods in second-language acquisition, and provides critical analysis of contextualized versus sentence-level production approaches. The contributors present their views of competence versus performance, the nature of language acquisition data, research design, the relevance of contextualized data collection and interpretation, and the desirability of a particularistic nomothetic theoretical paradigm versus more comprehensive consideration of multiple realities and complex influencing factors. This book presents varying and antithetical approaches to the issues, bringing together the thinking and approaches of leading researchers in language acquisition, language education, and sociolinguistics in an engaging debate of great currency in the field.

Long-Distance Dependencies

Long-Distance Dependencies
Author: Mihoko Zushi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135727864

This book investigates the theory of locality within the framework of minimalism, with a special focus on restructuring and other related phenomena that exhibit an apparent violation of the strictly local conditions.

Anaphora

Anaphora
Author: Yan Huang
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2000
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780198235286

(Publisher-supplied data) Yan Huang is Reader in Linguistics, Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading.

The Syntax of Anaphora

The Syntax of Anaphora
Author: Ken Safir
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2004-04-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019803718X

In this work, Ken Safir develops a comprehensive theory on the role of anaphora in syntax. First, he contends that the complementary distribution of forms that support the anaphoric readings is not accidental, contrary to most current thinking, but rather should be derived from a principle, one that he proposes in the form of an algorithm. Secondly, he maintains that dependent identity relations are always possible where they are not prohibited by a constraint. Lastly, he proposes that there are no parameters of anaphora - that all anaphora-specific principles are universal, and that the patterns of anaphora across languages arise entirely from a restricted set of lexical properties. This comprehensive consideration of anaphora redirects current thinking on the subject.

Abstract Entity Anaphora in Argumentative Texts

Abstract Entity Anaphora in Argumentative Texts
Author: Donghong Liu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2023-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9819946301

This book focuses on abstract entity anaphora in argumentative texts with Asher’s (1993) Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) as the theoretical framework, investigating its pragmatic features and exploring its referent interpretation. The data sources include more than 160,000-word argumentative texts (80,000-word English texts and 80,000-word Chinese ones) selected from newspapers, journals, and books in China and America. At first, a comparative study was done between Chinese and English argumentative texts so as to compare the pragmatic features of abstract entity anaphora in the two languages. Then, referent interpretation is explored within the SDRT framework. Although SDRT can account for most of the instances of abstract entity anaphora, it appears incompetent in dealing with some phenomena in the data of our study. Seven problems in SDRT were found, and corresponding solutions were proposed in an attempt to improve this theory. In general, this book has three aspects of significance. Firstly, it establishes abstract entity anaphora as an independent and a special kind of anaphora. Secondly, the research methods are the combination of empirical study and theoretical hypotheses as well as the coalescent of dynamic study and static study. Thirdly, the book is not limited to the application of SDRT to Mandarin Chinese and backward anaphora. Instead, based on the linguistic phenomena in the data, it challenges and improves the theory, and it even negates some aspects and meanwhile brings forward new solutions.

The Syntax of Anaphoric Binding

The Syntax of Anaphoric Binding
Author: Mary Dalrymple
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language (CSLI)
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1993-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781881526063

Mary Dalrymple provides a theory of the syntax of anaphoric binding, couched in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar. Cross-linguistically, anaphoric elements vary a great deal. One finds long- and short-distance reflexives, sometimes within the same language; pronominals may require local noncoreference or coreference only with nonsubjects. Analyses of the syntax of anaphoric binding which have attempted to fit all languages into the mold of English are inadequate to account for the rich range of syntactic constraints that are attested. How, then, can the cross-linguistic regularities exhibited by anaphoric elements be captured, while at the same time accounting for the diversity that is found? Dalrymple shows that syntactic constraints on anaphoric binding can be expressed in terms of just three grammatical concepts: subject, predicate, and tense. These concepts define a set of complex constraints, combinations of which interact to predict the wide range of universally available syntactic conditions that anaphoric elements obey. Mary Dalrymple is a member of the research staff of the Natural Language Theory and Technology group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Anaphora and Language Design

Anaphora and Language Design
Author: Eric Reuland
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2022-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262376776

A study on anaphoric dependencies that derives the conditions on anaphora in natural language from the design properties of the language system. Pronouns and anaphors (including reflexives such as himself and herself) may or must depend on antecedents for their interpretation. These dependencies are subject to conditions that prima facie show substantial crosslinguistic variation. In this monograph, Eric Reuland presents a theory of how these anaphoric dependencies are represented in natural language in a way that does justice to the the variation one finds across languages. He explains the conditions on these dependencies in terms of elementary properties of the computational system of natural language. He shows that the encoding of anaphoric dependencies makes use of components of the language system that all reflect different cognitive capacities; thus the empirical research he reports on offers insights into the design of the language system. Reuland’s account reduces the conditions on binding to independent properties of the grammar, none of which is specific to binding. He offers a principled account of the roles of the lexicon, syntax, semantics, and the discourse component in the encoding of anaphoric dependencies; a window into the overall organization of the grammar and the roles of linguistic and extralinguistic factors; a new typology of anaphoric expressions; a view of crosslinguistic variation (examining facts in a range of languages, from English, Dutch, Frisian, German, and Scandinavian languages to Fijian, Georgian, and Malayalam) that shows unity in diversity.

NP-Anaphora in Modern Greek

NP-Anaphora in Modern Greek
Author: Michael Chiou
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2010-01-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 144381895X

Anaphora is one of the most fascinating linguistic phenomena as it constitutes a unique and universal property of human language. Every single natural language provides linguistic means which facilitate speakers to refer to entities in the world. The understanding of the complexity of anaphora and of the problems surrounding it will ameliorate our understanding of the nature of human languages. This explains why anaphora constitutes a central research topic in contemporary linguistic science. This study examines the phenomenon of NP-anaphora with the main focus on modern Greek. By maintaining the empirical and theoretical benefits of the classical generative approach to binding, in this study we propose a partial pragmatic reduction of the interpretation of NP-anaphora in modern Greek in terms of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles of communication. The proposed analysis is articulated on the following basis: it is argued that the choice of anaphoric expressions and their interpretation by Greek speakers and addressees respectively is heavily dependent on preference, which is regulated by principles of language use and communication. Therefore, by employing a model, which is based on the systematic interaction of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles of communication, we provide a neat and more elegant approach to NP-anaphora resolution for modern Greek. In a nutshell, this study offers a quite new perspective into the study of NP-anaphora in modern Greek but it is also a little step towards a better understanding of the phenomenon of anaphora across languages.