Esphoric the N of a(n) N-nominals: Forward bridging to an indefinite reference point
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Peter Willemse
Abstract
In this article I analyze English binominal NPs of the form the N of a(n) N and describe them as instances of esphoric NPs, i.e. NPs involving a forward phoric relation. Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Martin (1992) have put these NPs on a par with definite NPs containing restrictive modifiers (e.g. the party in power, the longest stretch); I argue instead that NPs of the type the N of a(n) N are fundamentally different from the other types examined by Halliday & Hasan and Martin in that they designate two discourse referents rather than only one. I substantiate this claim with evidence retrieved from the COBUILD Bank of English corpus. My proposal is that esphoric NPs represent the cataphoric variant of a phoric relation which had traditionally been defined only in anaphoric terms, namely bridging. I thus analyze esphoric NPs as realizing forward bridging and discuss the types of conceptual relations they code. Finally, I describe these esphoric NPs as a special type of reference-point construction (Langacker 1993) in which the normal dynamics between reference point and target are reversed: it is the first NP which is target and the second NP which is reference point.
© Mouton de Gruyter – Societas Linguistica Europaea
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial note
- Obstruent devoicing and voice assimilation in Slovene
- The value of a language
- Parts-of-speech systems and dependent clauses: A typological study
- A misconception about the Baldwin Effect: Implications for language evolution
- Esphoric the N of a(n) N-nominals: Forward bridging to an indefinite reference point
- Book Reviews
- Report on the 38th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Valencia, 7–10 September 2005)
- 40th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea: 29 August–1 September 2007
- Index to volume 40
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial note
- Obstruent devoicing and voice assimilation in Slovene
- The value of a language
- Parts-of-speech systems and dependent clauses: A typological study
- A misconception about the Baldwin Effect: Implications for language evolution
- Esphoric the N of a(n) N-nominals: Forward bridging to an indefinite reference point
- Book Reviews
- Report on the 38th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Valencia, 7–10 September 2005)
- 40th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea: 29 August–1 September 2007
- Index to volume 40
