Synopses & Reviews
Understanding any communication depends on the listener or reader recognizing that some words refer to what has already been said or written (his, its, he, there, etc.). This mode of reference, anaphora, involves complicated cognitive and syntactic processes, which people usually perform unerringly, but which present formidable problems for the linguist and cognitive scientist trying to explain precisely how comprehension is achieved.
Yan Huang provides an extensive and accessible overview of the major contemporary issues surrounding anaphora and gives a critical survey of the many and diverse contemporary approaches to it. He provides by far the fullest cross-linguistic account yet published: Dr Huang's survey and analysis are based on a rich collection of data drawn from around 450 of the world's languages.
Synopsis
Understanding any communication depends on the listener or reader recognizing that some words refer to what has already been said or written (his, its, he, there, etc.). This mode of reference, anaphora, involves complicated cognitive and syntactic processes, which people usually perform unerringly, but which present formidable problems for the linguist and cognitive scientist trying to explain precisely how comprehension is achieved.
Yan Huang provides an extensive and accessible overview of the major contemporary issues surrounding anaphora and gives a critical survey of the many and diverse contemporary approaches to it. He provides by far the fullest cross-linguistic account yet published: Dr Huang's survey and analysis are based on a rich collection of data drawn from around 450 of the world's languages.
About the Author
Yan Huang is Reader in Linguistics, Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading.
Table of Contents
Typologies of anaphora Introduction
Typologies of anaphora
Anaphora and syntactic categories
Anaphora and truth-conditions
Anaphora and contexts
Anaphora and discourse: reference-tracking systems
Organisation of the book
Syntactic approaches to anaphora
Classical Chomskyan theory of anaphora
Typology of NPs
Binding theory
Control theory
Revisions and alternatives
Summary
Null subjects and null objects
Null subjects
Null objects
Summary
Long-distance reflexivisation
The phenomenon
Properties and theoretical issues
Long-distance reflexivisation in generative grammar
Summary
Conclusion
Semantic approaches to anaphora
VP-ellipsis
Definition and properties
Theoretical issues
Two general approaches: syntactically oriented versus semantically oriented
Summary
Binding and control: some semantic alternatives
Binding
Control
Summary
Logophoricity
Background
Logophoric pronouns in African languages
Long-distance reflexives in East Asian languages
Discourse representation
Summary
Conclusion
Pragmatic approaches to anaphora
A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory
A revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora
The general pattern of anaphora
A revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory
Application
Summary
Some other pragmatic/cognitive/functional approaches
Relevance theory
Accessibility theory
Prague School functionalism
Summary
'Syntactic' versus 'pragmatic': a new typology of language?
The pragmaticness of anaphora in a pragmatic language
The prominence of 'Chinese-style' topic constructions in a pragmatic language
Explaining the differences: parametric or typological?
Summary
Conclusion
Switch-reference and discourse anaphora
Switch-reference
The phenomenon
Switch-reference and related phenomena
Two general approaches and beyond: syntactically oriented versus semantically oriented, and perhaps pragmatically oriented
Summary
Discourse anaphora
The problem of anaphoric distribution in discourse
The topic continuity or distance-interference model
The hierarchy model
The cognitive model
The pragmatic model
Summary
Conclusion
Conclusions
Notes
References
Index of names
Index of languages and language families
Index of subjects