Indirect pronominal anaphora in English and French
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Francis Cornish
Abstract
While for certain linguists (e.g. Erkü & Gundel, 1987) and psycholinguists (e.g. Sanford et al., 1983), using unaccented third person pronouns to refer to implicit referents is impossible or highly marked, for other linguists (e.g. Yule, 1982) and psycholinguists (e.g. Greene et al., 1994), this is not only acceptable but common in normal conversational discourse. If we draw a principled distinction between two main types of implicit referent (central or nuclear referents, and peripheral ones), then both sides in the debate may be correct. The results of two reading experiments in both English and French conducted to test this distinction showed indeed that object pronominal reference to implicit referents only caused slower reading times compared to explicit referents for peripheral referents.
Abstract
While for certain linguists (e.g. Erkü & Gundel, 1987) and psycholinguists (e.g. Sanford et al., 1983), using unaccented third person pronouns to refer to implicit referents is impossible or highly marked, for other linguists (e.g. Yule, 1982) and psycholinguists (e.g. Greene et al., 1994), this is not only acceptable but common in normal conversational discourse. If we draw a principled distinction between two main types of implicit referent (central or nuclear referents, and peripheral ones), then both sides in the debate may be correct. The results of two reading experiments in both English and French conducted to test this distinction showed indeed that object pronominal reference to implicit referents only caused slower reading times compared to explicit referents for peripheral referents.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Anaphors in text – Introduction vii
-
Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics
- Indirect anaphora in text 3
- Indirect pronominal anaphora in English and French 21
- Lexical anaphors in Danish and French 37
- Referential collaboration with computers 49
- Reflexivity and temporality in discourse deixis 69
- The function of complex anaphors in texts 81
- Metaphorical anaphors 103
-
The Syntax and Semantic of Anaphors
- Accessibility and definite noun phrases 123
- The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns 145
- Anaphoric properties of German right dislocation 165
- Antecedents of diverse types 183
- Corpus-based and machine learning approaches to anaphora resolution 207
-
Neurolinguistic Studies
- Neuroimaging studies of coherence processes 225
- Reference assignment in the absence of sufficient semantic content 241
- Resolving complex anaphors 259
- Index 279
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Anaphors in text – Introduction vii
-
Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics
- Indirect anaphora in text 3
- Indirect pronominal anaphora in English and French 21
- Lexical anaphors in Danish and French 37
- Referential collaboration with computers 49
- Reflexivity and temporality in discourse deixis 69
- The function of complex anaphors in texts 81
- Metaphorical anaphors 103
-
The Syntax and Semantic of Anaphors
- Accessibility and definite noun phrases 123
- The non-subject bias of German demonstrative pronouns 145
- Anaphoric properties of German right dislocation 165
- Antecedents of diverse types 183
- Corpus-based and machine learning approaches to anaphora resolution 207
-
Neurolinguistic Studies
- Neuroimaging studies of coherence processes 225
- Reference assignment in the absence of sufficient semantic content 241
- Resolving complex anaphors 259
- Index 279
