Modal subordination and pronominal anaphora in discourse

A typical problem in the resolution of pronominal anaphora is the presence of more than one candidate for the antecedent of the pronoun. Considering two English sentences like (1) "People buy expensive cars because they offer more status" and (2) "People buy expensive cars because they want more status" we can see that the two NPs "people" and "expensive cars", from a purely syntactic perspective, are both legitimate candidates as antecedents for the pronoun "they". This problem has been traditionally solved by using world knowledge (e.g. schema theory), where, through an internal representation of the world, we "know" that cars "offer" status and people "want" status. The assumption in this paper is that the use of world knowledge does not explain how the disambiguation process works and alternative explanations should be explored. Using a knowledge poor approach (explicit information from the text rather than implicit world knowledge) the study investigates to what extent syntactic and semantic constraints can be used to resolve anaphora. For this purpose, 1,400 examples of the word "they" were randomly selected from a corpus of 10,000,000 words of expository text in English. Antecedent candidates for each case were then analyzed and classified in terms of their syntactic functions in the sentence (subject, object, etc.) and semantic features (+ human, + animate, etc.). It was found that syntactic constraints resolved 85% of the cases. When combined with semantic constraints the resolution rate rose to 98%. The implications of the findings for Natural Language Processing are discussed.

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Anaphoric devices in written and spoken narrative discourse

Written Language & Literacy ◽

10.1075/wll.13.2.03bel ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 236-259 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Aurora Bel ◽

Joan Perera ◽

Naymé Salas

Keyword(s):

Age Groups ◽

Narrative Discourse ◽

Subject Position ◽

Narrative Texts ◽

Discourse Function ◽

Subject Pronouns ◽

Overt Pronouns ◽

Written Texts ◽

Pronominal Anaphora ◽

Selection Of

In this study, we focus on pronominal anaphora and we investigate the referential properties of null and overt subject pronouns in Catalan, in the semi-spontaneous production of narrative spoken and written texts by three groups of speakers/writers (9–10, 12–13, and 15–16 year olds). We aimed at determining (1) pronoun preferences for a specific type of antecedent; (2) their specialization in a certain discourse function; and (3) whether the pattern is affected by text modality (spoken vs. written texts). We analyzed 30 spoken and 30 written narrative texts, produced by the same 30 subjects, divided into the age groups mentioned above. Results seem fairly consistent across age groups and modalities, showing that null pronouns tend to select antecedents in subject position and are well specialized in maintaining reference, while overt pronouns offer a less clear pattern both in their selection of antecedents and in the discourse function they perform. Our findings partially support those of previous research on other null-subject languages, in particular, the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH) formulated by Carminati (2002) for Italian.

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METAPHORICAL CHAINS AND REFERENCE USAGE IN NEWSPAPERS: A MECHANISM FOR TEXTUAL COHESION

Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education ◽

10.29302/jolie.2019.12.3.4 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (3) ◽

pp. 59-72

Author(s):

Giacomo Ferrari ◽

Keyword(s):

Noun Phrases ◽

The Other ◽

Source Domain ◽

Lexical Cohesion ◽

Other Hand ◽

Pronominal Anaphora ◽

Textual Cohesion ◽

Entire Text ◽

Global Cohesion

This article examines the phenomenon of metaphor in newspapers, focusing on the use of multiple metaphors of the same type used to form a coherent chain. These metaphoric chains are treated within the frame of Halliday’s Systemic Function Grammar (SFG) as a feature of textual cohesion. The different cohesion features recognised by SFG are briefly presented. Features including pronominal anaphora, ellipsis, and reference by definite noun phrases are, in different studies, believed to play the same role as generic ‘referencing’. On the other hand, as different words or expressions chosen within the same source domain, metaphoric chains are connected to the feature of lexical cohesion. They form a single network of links through the entire text, guaranteeing global cohesion. Many questions are left unanswered and thus the conclusions advocate for an extensive corpus-based study aimed at accounting for the relation of the two phenomena and the cultural motivations of the use of metaphors.

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Gadādhara (1604–1709)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-f019-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jonardon Ganeri

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Philosophy Of Mind ◽

Philosophy Of Language ◽

Legal Theory ◽

Philosophical Methodology ◽

Language Philosophy ◽

Pragmatic Theory ◽

Case Grammar ◽

Pronominal Anaphora

Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya was a seventeenth-century Indian philosopher belonging to a school of thinkers, Navya-Nyāya, noted for its extreme realism and its contributions to philosophical methodology. Though Gadādhara’s commentaries on the school’s key texts are recognized as among the latest, most detailed and innovative, his greater claim to fame is due to his composition of a number of independent tracts on topics in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics and legal theory. He may be credited in particular with the discovery of a version of the pragmatic theory of pronominal anaphora. His work on case grammar and inferential fallacies is highly admired in India, while recent translations into English have begun to make him better known outside.

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