DOCSLIB.ORG

Cross-Dialectal Variability in Propositional Anaphora: a Quantitative and Pragmatic Study of Null Objects in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cross-Dialectal Variability in Propositional Anaphora: a Quantitative and Pragmatic Study of Null Objects in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish CROSS-DIALECTAL VARIABILITY IN PROPOSITIONAL ANAPHORA: A QUANTITATIVE AND PRAGMATIC STUDY OF NULL OBJECTS IN MEXICAN AND PENINSULAR SPANISH DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Maria Asela Reig, PhD The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Professor Scott A. Schwenter, Adviser Approved by Professor Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza Professor Terrell Morgan Professor Rena Torres-Cacoullos ________________________ Adviser Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I analyze the linguistic constraints that condition the variation in Spanish between the null pronoun and the clitic lo referring to a proposition. Previous literature on Spanish has analyzed null objects referring to first order entities, mostly in varieties in contact with other languages. This dissertation contributes to the literature on anaphora in Spanish by establishing and analyzing the existence of propositional null objects in two monolingual dialects, Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. A variationist approach was used to discover the significant constraints on the variation of the null pronoun and the overt clitic lo in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. Following the generalizations from the previous literature on two separate areas of study, anaphora resolution and null objects (Chapter 2), several internal factor groups were included in the coding scheme. In Chapter 3, I provide an explicit statement of the envelope of variation and I specify the coding scheme employed. Chapter 4 offers the results of the multivariate analyses of Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. These results show that some of the linguistic constraints conditioning the variation are shared by both dialects (presence of a dative pronoun, type ii of antecedent, sentence type), suggesting that the null pronoun has the same grammatical role in both dialects. Nevertheless, divergences in the conditioning of the null pronoun also emerge from the analysis and the overall rate of null objects in Mexican Spanish is significantly greater than in Peninsular Spanish. Chapter 5 offers a discussion of the results and their theoretical implications for studies of anaphora. The accessibility of the referent hypothesis, operationalized with the factor groups referential distance, turn, and number of mentions, finds no support in the data, suggesting an important difference in the behavior of propositional versus noun- phrase anaphora. Instead, I provide qualitative evidence indicating that a crucial constraint on the variation is the degree of completeness of the referent: a complete proposition favors the overt clitic lo whereas null objects more likely refer to incomplete propositions. Finally, Chapter 6 explores the hypothesis of a change in progress and provides concluding remarks and suggestions for further research. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the contribution of many people. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my adviser, Scott Schwenter. His contributions to this dissertation are countless, from the first general idea to the final result. I am thankful for his generosity, dedication and sincere trust. His questions and comments were always challenging and encouraging, and I am glad I could benefit from many stimulating conversations with him (en mesas altas y bajas...). Outside academia, Araceli and you made us feel “at home” so many miles away. Muchísimas gracias. I want to extend my thanks to the members of my committee. I was fortunate enough to have access to Terrell Morgan’s broad knowledge on dialectology and pronoun variation in Spanish. Talking about linguistic (and non linguistic) issues with Terrell’s great smile and warmth was always a pleasure. My gratitude to Rena Torres-Cacoullos, for generously dedicating time and effort to this unknown student. Her expertise and insightful comments were a great contribution to this dissertation. I also thank Rebeca Campos-Astorkiza for generously accepting our invitation and for her dedication. Her remarks and questions helped improve previous versions of this dissertation. iv The time spent in graduate school would not have been so pleasant without my friends and fellow graduate students, Edith Hernandez, Manuel Delicado, Carolina Castillo, Marissa Vargas, Magdalena Mejia and Gilberto Velazquez. I am grateful for their friendship. Un enorme placer haber compartido estos años. A mi familia: mis padres, Asela Alamillo y Rafael Reig, y mis hermanos Juan, Elena y Jorge. Gracias por soportar la distancia todos estos años y por mostrarme siempre vuestro incondicional apoyo y confianza. Por último, a mi compañero desde el principio de esta aventura, Carlos. Gracias por hacer que este viaje haya merecido tanto la pena. Me alegro mucho de haber recorrido esta primera etapa juntos. Que el viaje prosiga por mucho tiempo. v VITA 2000 ...............B.A. In Hispanic Philology Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 2006 .............. PhD Spanish Language and Linguistics Universidad Autónoma de Madrid PUBLICATIONS Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2007. El digresor por cierto y la digresión. Oralia 10: 233-253. Reig Alamillo, Assela and Scott A. Schwenter. 2007. Null Objects and Neuter lo: a Cross- Dialectal Variationist Analysis, in J. Holmquist, A. Lorenzino and L. Sayahi (eds.) Selected Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, 113-121. Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2006. Propuesta para una clasificación de los verbos realizativos en español, in T. Face and C. Klee (eds.) Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, 183-190. Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2004. El francés de los documentos administrativos. Revista de Llengua i Dret, 42, 42-63. Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2002. Papeles discursivos de los participantes en la interacción entre la administración y los ciudadanos, in Actas del Congreso Internacional Análisis del discurso: lengua, cultura, valores. Universidad de Navarra, 2002. Reig Alamillo, Assela. 2001. El marcador del discurso en todo caso en los textos legislativos, Revista de Llengua i Dret, 36, 9-22. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese Studies in: Pragmatics Variationist linguistics vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................................................................iv VITA...................................................................................................................................vi LIST OF TABLES...............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES..........................................................................................................xiii CONVENTIONS..............................................................................................................xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................1 1.1. Phenomenon and goals........................................................................................1 1.2. The linguistic variants..........................................................................................6 1.2.1. Propositional lo...........................................................................................6 1.2.2. The null element ........................................................................................9 1.3. Anaphora and discourse referents. Terminology................................................19 1.4. Dissertation overview........................................................................................20 CHAPTER 2: ANAPHORA RESOLUTION AND NULL OBJECTS ...........................22 2.1. Studies on anaphora resolution .........................................................................23 2.1.1. The accessibility of NP antecedents.........................................................23 2.1.2. The accessibility of clausally introduced antecedents..............................25 2.2. Null object with propositional antecedents in other languages. .......................34 2.3. Null objects in Spanish .....................................................................................41 2.4. Prototypical direct objects, the animacy scale and propositions .......................46 2.5. Prototypical objects and the transitivity of the clause.......................................51 2.5.1. Complement taking predicates and transitivity........................................57 vii 2.6. Further research questions.................................................................................62 2.7. Conclusions........................................................................................................64 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY....................................................................................65 3.1. Variationist linguistics and morphosyntactic variation......................................65 3.2. Corpus ...............................................................................................................69 3.3. Defining the envelope of variation....................................................................71 3.4. Coding ..............................................................................................................85
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Givenness and Its Realization in a Linguistic and in a Non- Linguistic Environment
    VILNIUS PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY NATALIJA ZACHAROVA GIVENNESS AND ITS REALIZATION IN A LINGUISTIC AND IN A NON- LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT MA Paper Academic advisor: prof. Dr. Hab. Laimutis Valeika Vilnius, 2008 VILNIUS PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY GIVENNESS AND ITS REALIZATION IN A LINGUISTIC AND IN A NON- LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT This MA paper is submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of the MA in English Philology By Natalija Zacharova I declare that this study is my own and does not contain any unacknowledged work from any source. (Signature) (Date) Academic advisor: prof. Dr. Hab. Laimutis Valeika (Signature) (Date) Vilnius, 2008 2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….4 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………...5 1. THE PROBLEMS OF THE INFORMATIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE ……………………………………………………………….8 1.1. The sentence as dialectical entity of given and new……………………...8 1.2. Givenness vs. Newnness………………………………………………….11 1.3. The realization of Givenness……………………………………………..12 1.4. Givenness expressed by the definite article ……………………………..15 1.5. Givenness expressed by the indefinite article…………………………….19 1.6. Givenness expressed by semi-grammatical definite determiners and lexical determiners………………………………………………………..20 2. THE REALIZATION OF GIVENNESS IN A LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT……………………………………………………………………21 2.1. Anaphoric Givenness………………………………………………………22 2.2. Cataphoric Givenness……………………………………………………...29 2.3. Givenness expressed by the use of the indefinite article…………………..30 3. THE REALIZATION OF GIVENNESS IN A NON- LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT……………………………………………………………………..32 3. 1. The environment of the home……………………………………………...33 3.2. The environment of the town/country, world………………………………35 3.3. The environment of the universe…………………………………………....37 3.4. Cultural environment……………………………………………………….38 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama
    Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama by David Julius Jacobson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Griffith, Chair Professor Donald Mastronarde Professor Leslie Kurke Professor Mary-Kay Gamel Professor Shannon Jackson Spring 2011 Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama Copyright 2011 by David Julius Jacobson Abstract Show Business: Deixis in Fifth-Century Athenian Drama by David Julius Jacobson Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Griffith, Chair In my dissertation I examine the use of deixis in fifth-century Athenian drama to show how a playwright’s lexical choices shape an audience’s engagement with and investment in a dramatic work. The study combines modern performance theories concerning the relationship between actor and audience with a detailed examination of the demonstratives ὅδε and οὗτος in a representative sample of tragedy (and satyr play) and in the full Aristophanic corpus, and reaches conclusions that aid and expand our understanding of both tragedy and comedy. In addition to exploring and interpreting a number of particular scenes for their inter-actor dynamics and staging, I argue overall that tragedy’s predilection for ὅδε , a word which by definition conveys a strong spatio- temporal presence (“this <one> here / now”), pointedly draws the spectators into the dramatic fiction. The comic poet’s preference for οὗτος (“that <one> just mentioned” / “that <one> there”), on the other hand, coupled with his tendency to directly acknowledge the audience individually and in the aggregate, disengages the spectators from the immediacy of the tragic tetralogies and reengages them with the normal, everyday world to which they will return at the close of the festival.
    [Show full text]
  • Exophoric and Endophoric Awareness
    Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume.8 Number3 September 2017 Pp. 28-45 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol8no3.3 Exophoric and Endophoric Awareness Mohammad Awwad Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Lebanese University, Deanship Dekweneh , Beirut, Lebanon Abstract This research aims to shed light on the impact of exophoric and endophoric instruction on the comprehension (decoding) skills, writing (encoding skills), and linguistic awareness of English as Foreign Language learners. In this line, a mixed qualitative quantitative approach was conducted over a period of fifteen weeks on sixty English major students enrolled in their first year at the Lebanese University, fifth branch. The sixty participants were divided into two groups (30 experimental) that benefited from instruction on exophoric and endophoric relations and (30 control) that did not have the opportunity to study referents in the designated period of the research. The participants sat for a reading and writing pretest at the beginning of the study; and they sat again for the same reading and writing assessment at the end of the study. The results of the pre and post tests for both groups were analyzed via SPSS program and findings were as follows: hypothesis one stating that students who are aware of endophoric and exophoric relations are likely to achieve better results in decoding a text than are their peers who receive no referential instruction, was accepted with significant findings. Hypothesis two stating that students who are aware of endophoric and exophoric relations are likely to perform better in writing than their peers who receive no referential instruction , was accepted with significant findings.
    [Show full text]
  • II Levels of Language
    II Levels of language 1 Phonetics and phonology 1.1 Characterising articulations 1.1.1 Consonants 1.1.2 Vowels 1.2 Phonotactics 1.3 Syllable structure 1.4 Prosody 1.5 Writing and sound 2 Morphology 2.1 Word, morpheme and allomorph 2.1.1 Various types of morphemes 2.2 Word classes 2.3 Inflectional morphology 2.3.1 Other types of inflection 2.3.2 Status of inflectional morphology 2.4 Derivational morphology 2.4.1 Types of word formation 2.4.2 Further issues in word formation 2.4.3 The mixed lexicon 2.4.4 Phonological processes in word formation 3 Lexicology 3.1 Awareness of the lexicon 3.2 Terms and distinctions 3.3 Word fields 3.4 Lexicological processes in English 3.5 Questions of style 4 Syntax 4.1 The nature of linguistic theory 4.2 Why analyse sentence structure? 4.2.1 Acquisition of syntax 4.2.2 Sentence production 4.3 The structure of clauses and sentences 4.3.1 Form and function 4.3.2 Arguments and complements 4.3.3 Thematic roles in sentences 4.3.4 Traces 4.3.5 Empty categories 4.3.6 Similarities in patterning Raymond Hickey Levels of language Page 2 of 115 4.4 Sentence analysis 4.4.1 Phrase structure grammar 4.4.2 The concept of ‘generation’ 4.4.3 Surface ambiguity 4.4.4 Impossible sentences 4.5 The study of syntax 4.5.1 The early model of generative grammar 4.5.2 The standard theory 4.5.3 EST and REST 4.5.4 X-bar theory 4.5.5 Government and binding theory 4.5.6 Universal grammar 4.5.7 Modular organisation of language 4.5.8 The minimalist program 5 Semantics 5.1 The meaning of ‘meaning’ 5.1.1 Presupposition and entailment 5.2
    [Show full text]
  • Minimal Pronouns, Logophoricity and Long-Distance Reflexivisation in Avar
    Minimal pronouns, logophoricity and long-distance reflexivisation in Avar* Pavel Rudnev Revised version; 28th January 2015 Abstract This paper discusses two morphologically related anaphoric pronouns inAvar (Avar-Andic, Nakh-Daghestanian) and proposes that one of them should be treated as a minimal pronoun that receives its interpretation from a λ-operator situated on a phasal head whereas the other is a logophoric pro- noun denoting the author of the reported event. Keywords: reflexivity, logophoricity, binding, syntax, semantics, Avar 1 Introduction This paper has two aims. One is to make a descriptive contribution to the crosslin- guistic study of long-distance anaphoric dependencies by presenting an overview of the properties of two kinds of reflexive pronoun in Avar, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken natively by about 700,000 people mostly living in the North East Caucasian republic of Daghestan in the Russian Federation. The other goal is to highlight the relevance of the newly introduced data from an understudied lan- guage to the theoretical debate on the nature of reflexivity, long-distance anaphora and logophoricity. The issue at the heart of this paper is the unusual character of theanaphoric system in Avar, which is tripartite. (1) is intended as just a preview with more *The present material was presented at the Utrecht workshop The World of Reflexives in August 2011. I am grateful to the workshop’s audience and participants for their questions and comments. I am indebted to Eric Reuland and an anonymous reviewer for providing valuable feedback on the first draft, as well as to Yakov Testelets for numerous discussions of anaphora-related issues inAvar spanning several years.
    [Show full text]
  • Anaphoric Reference to Propositions
    ANAPHORIC REFERENCE TO PROPOSITIONS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Todd Nathaniel Snider December 2017 c 2017 Todd Nathaniel Snider ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ANAPHORIC REFERENCE TO PROPOSITIONS Todd Nathaniel Snider, Ph.D. Cornell University 2017 Just as pronouns like she and he make anaphoric reference to individuals, English words like that and so can be used to refer anaphorically to a proposition introduced in a discourse: That’s true; She told me so. Much has been written about individual anaphora, but less attention has been paid to propositional anaphora. This dissertation is a com- prehensive examination of propositional anaphora, which I argue behaves like anaphora in other domains, is conditioned by semantic factors, and is not conditioned by purely syntactic factors nor by the at-issue status of a proposition. I begin by introducing the concepts of anaphora and propositions, and then I discuss the various words of English which can have this function: this, that, it, which, so, as, and the null complement anaphor. I then compare anaphora to propositions with anaphora in other domains, including individual, temporal, and modal anaphora. I show that the same features which are characteristic of these other domains are exhibited by proposi- tional anaphora as well. I then present data on a wide variety of syntactic constructions—including sub- clausal, monoclausal, multiclausal, and multisentential constructions—noting which li- cense anaphoric reference to propositions. On the basis of this expanded empirical do- main, I argue that anaphoric reference to a proposition is licensed not by any syntactic category or movement but rather by the operators which take propositions as arguments.
    [Show full text]
  • Antar Solhy Abdellah Publication Date: 2007 Source: CDELT (Centre for Developing English Language Teaching) Occasional Papers, January (2007) [Egypt]
    Title: “English Majors’ errors in translating Arabic Endophora; Analysis and Remedy” Author: Antar Solhy Abdellah Publication date: 2007 Source: CDELT (Centre for Developing English Language Teaching) Occasional Papers, January (2007) [Egypt]. ENGLISH MAJORS' ERRORS IN TRANSLATING ARABIC ENDOPHORA: ANALYSIS AND REMEDY Antar Solhy Abdellah Lecturer in TEFL Qena Faculty of Education, South Valley University- Egypt Abstract Egyptian English majors in the faculty of Education, South Valley university tend to mistranslate the plural inanimate Arabic pronoun with the singular inanimate English pronoun. A diagnostic test was designed to analyze this error. Results showed that a large number of students (first year and fourth year students) make this error, that the error becomes more common if the pronoun is cataphori rather than anaphori, and that the further the pronoun is from its antecedent the more students are apt to make the error. On the basis of these results, sources of the error are identified and remedial procedures are suggested. Abstract in Arabic تقوم الدراسة الحالية بتحليل أخطاء طﻻب شعبة اللغة اﻹنجليزية )الفرقة اﻷولى والرابعة( في ترجمة ضمير جمع غير العاقل من العربية إلى اﻹنجليزية؛حيث يميل الطﻻب إلى استخدام ضمير غير العاقل المفرد في اﻹنجليزية بدﻻ من ضمير الجمع. تستخدم الدراسة اختبارا تشخيصيا يسعى للكشف عن نسبة شيوع الخطأ ومن ثم تحليله. أظهرت النتائج أن عددا كبيرا من طﻻب الفرقتين يرتكبون هذا الخطأ، وأن الخطأ يزداد إذا كان الضمير في موضع المتقدم أكثر مما إذا كان في موضع المتأخر، وأن الخطأ يزداد كلما بعد الضمير عن عائده. ثم تناولت الدراسة تحليﻻ لمصدر الخطأ وقدمت مقترحات لعﻻجه. INTRODUCTION 62 Students whose major is English in faculties of Education are faced with translation problems from the very start of their study.
    [Show full text]
  • Publ 106271 Issue CH06 Page
    REMARKS AND REPLIES 151 Focus on Cataphora: Experiments in Context Keir Moulton Queenie Chan Tanie Cheng Chung-hye Han Kyeong-min Kim Sophie Nickel-Thompson Since Chomsky 1976, it has been claimed that focus on a referring expression blocks coreference in a cataphoric dependency (*Hisi mother loves JOHNi vs. Hisi mother LOVES Johni). In three auditory experiments and a written questionnaire, we show that this fact does not hold when a referent is unambiguously established in the discourse (cf. Williams 1997, Bianchi 2009) but does hold otherwise, validating suggestions in Rochemont 1978, Horvath 1981, and Rooth 1985. The perceived effect of prosody, we argue, building on Williams’s original insight and deliberate experimental manipulation of Rochemont’s and Horvath’s examples, is due to the fact that deaccenting the R-expres- sion allows hearers to accommodate a salient referent via a ‘‘question under discussion’’ (Roberts 1996/2012, Rooth 1996), to which the pro- noun can refer in ambiguous or impoverished contexts. This heuristic is not available in the focus cases, and we show that participants’ interpretation of the pronoun is ambivalent here. Keywords: cataphora, focus, deaccenting, question under discussion 1 Focus and Cataphora Since Chomsky 1976, it has often been repeated that backward anaphora is blocked if the ‘‘anteced- ent’’ receives focus. This is illustrated by the purported contrast in the answers to the questions in (1). These examples, and judgments, are from Bianchi 2009.1 (1) a. As for John, who does his wife really love? ?*Hisi wife loves JOHNi. b. As for John, I believe his wife hates him.
    [Show full text]
  • Constraints on Donkey Pronouns
    Constraints on Donkey Pronouns The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Grosz, P. G., P. Patel-Grosz, E. Fedorenko, and E. Gibson. “Constraints on Donkey Pronouns.” Journal of Semantics 32, no. 4 (July 15, 2014): 619–648. As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffu009 Publisher Oxford University Press Version Author's final manuscript Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/102962 Terms of Use Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Detailed Terms http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ CONSTRAINTS ON DONKEY PRONOUNS Patrick Grosz, Pritty Patel-Grosz, Evelina Fedorenko, Edward Gibson Abstract This paper reports on an experimental study of donkey pronouns, pronouns (e.g. it) whose meaning covaries with that of a non-pronominal noun phrase (e.g. a donkey) even though they are not in a structural relationship that is suitable for quantifier-variable binding. We investigate three constraints, (i) the preference for the presence of an overt NP antecedent that is not part of another word, (ii) the salience of the position of an antecedent that is part of another word, and (iii) the uniqueness of an intended antecedent (in terms of world knowledge). We compare constructions in which intended antecedents occur in a context such as who owns an N / who is an N-owner with constructions of the type who was without an N / who was N-less. Our findings corroborate the existence of the overt NP antecedent constraint, and also show that the salience of an unsuitable antecedent’s position matters.
    [Show full text]
  • 3 Types of Anaphors
    3 Types of anaphors Moving from the definition and characteristics of anaphors to the types of ana- phors, this chapter will detail the nomenclature of anaphor types established for this book. In general, anaphors can be categorised according to: their form; the type of relationship to their antecedent; the form of their antecedents; the position of anaphors and antecedents, i.e. intrasentential or intersentential; and other features (cf. Mitkov 2002: 8-17). The procedure adopted here is to catego- rise anaphors according to their form. It should be stressed that the types dis- tinguished in this book are not universal categories, so the proposed classifica- tion is not the only possible solution. For instance, personal, possessive and re- flexive pronouns can be seen as three types or as one type. With the latter, the three pronoun classes are subsumed under the term “central pronouns”, as it is adopted here. Linguistic classifications of anaphors can be found in two established gram- mar books, namely in Quirk et al.’s A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (2012: 865) and in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Stirling & Huddleston 2010: 1449-1564). Quirk et al. include a chapter of pro- forms and here distinguish between coreference and substitution. However, they do not take anaphors as their starting point of categorisation. Additionally, Stirling & Huddleston do not consider anaphors on their own but together with deixis. As a result, anaphoric noun phrases with a definite article, for example, are not included in both categorisations. Furthermore, Schubert (2012: 31-55) presents a text-linguistic view, of which anaphors are part, but his classification is similarly unsuitable because it does not focus on the anaphoric items specifi- cally.
    [Show full text]
  • Donkey Anaphora Is In-Scope Binding∗
    Semantics & Pragmatics Volume 1, Article 1: 1–46, 2008 doi: 10.3765/sp.1.1 Donkey anaphora is in-scope binding∗ Chris Barker Chung-chieh Shan New York University Rutgers University Received 2008-01-06 = First Decision 2008-02-29 = Revised 2008-03-23 = Second Decision 2008-03-25 = Revised 2008-03-27 = Accepted 2008-03-27 = Published 2008- 06-09 Abstract We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals and relative clauses, including those involving modals and proportional quantifiers. For example, an indefinite in the antecedent of a conditional can bind a donkey pronoun in the consequent by taking scope over the entire conditional. Our grammar manages continuations using three independently motivated type-shifters, Lift, Lower, and Bind. Empirical support comes from donkey weak crossover (*He beats it if a farmer owns a donkey): in our system, a quantificational binder need not c-command a pronoun that it binds, but must be evaluated before it, so that donkey weak crossover is just a special case of weak crossover. We compare our approach to situation-based E-type pronoun analyses, as well as to dynamic accounts such as Dynamic Predicate Logic. A new ‘tower’ notation makes derivations considerably easier to follow and manipulate than some previous grammars based on continuations. Keywords: donkey anaphora, continuations, E-type pronoun, type-shifting, scope, quantification, binding, dynamic semantics, weak crossover, donkey pronoun, variable-free, direct compositionality, D-type pronoun, conditionals, situation se- mantics, c-command, dynamic predicate logic, donkey weak crossover ∗ Thanks to substantial input from Anna Chernilovskaya, Brady Clark, Paul Elbourne, Makoto Kanazawa, Chris Kennedy, Thomas Leu, Floris Roelofsen, Daniel Rothschild, Anna Szabolcsi, Eytan Zweig, and three anonymous referees.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:1805.11824V1 [Cs.CL] 30 May 2018
    Artificial Intelligence Review manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Anaphora and Coreference Resolution: A Review Rhea Sukthanker · Soujanya Poria · Erik Cambria · Ramkumar Thirunavukarasu Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract Entity resolution aims at resolving repeated references to an entity in a document and forms a core component of natural language processing (NLP) research. This field possesses immense potential to improve the performance of other NLP fields like machine translation, sentiment analysis, paraphrase detection, summarization, etc. The area of entity resolution in NLP has seen proliferation of research in two separate sub-areas namely: anaphora resolution and coreference resolution. Through this review article, we aim at clarifying the scope of these two tasks in entity resolution. We also carry out a detailed analysis of the datasets, evaluation metrics and research methods that have been adopted to tackle this NLP problem. This survey is motivated with the aim of providing the reader with a clear understanding of what constitutes this NLP problem and the issues that require attention. Keywords Entity Resolution · Coreference Resolution · Anaphora Resolution · Natural Language Processing · Sentiment Analysis · Deep Learning 1 Introduction A discourse is a collocated group of sentences which convey a clear understanding only when read together. The etymology of anaphora is ana (Greek for back) and pheri (Greek for to bear), which in simple terms means repetition. In computational linguistics, anaphora is typically defined as references to items mentioned earlier in the discourse or \pointing back" reference as described by (Mitkov, 1999). The most prevalent type of anaphora in natural language is the pronominal anaphora (Lappin and Leass, 1994).
    [Show full text]