Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations used in glosses
- 1 A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory and anaphora
- PART I ANAPHORA IN GOVERNMENT AND BINDING THEORY
- PART II THE PRAGMATICS OF ANAPHORA
- 5 A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora
- 6 Further applications of the theory
- 7 Anaphoric production in conversation
- 8 Anaphoric resolution in conversation
- 9 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
7 - Anaphoric production in conversation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations used in glosses
- 1 A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory and anaphora
- PART I ANAPHORA IN GOVERNMENT AND BINDING THEORY
- PART II THE PRAGMATICS OF ANAPHORA
- 5 A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora
- 6 Further applications of the theory
- 7 Anaphoric production in conversation
- 8 Anaphoric resolution in conversation
- 9 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
Summary
Introduction
In the preceding chapters, I concentrated mainly on intrasentential anaphora in Chinese. I showed that a syntactic approach such as Chomsky's GB theory is inadequate in explaining intrasentential anaphora in the language. As an alternative, I developed a pragmatic theory of anaphora within the neo-Gricean framework of conversational implicature. In this theory, anaphora is largely determined by the systematic interaction of two neo-Gricean pragmatic principles, namely the M- and I-principles (in that order of priority), constrained by the DRP, information saliency and general consistency conditions on conversational implicatures. I demonstrated that by utilising the two neo-Gricean pragmatic principles and the resolution mechanism organising their interaction, many of the patterns of preferred interpretation regarding intrasentential anaphora in Chinese can be given a satisfactory explanation.
Starting with this chapter, I shall turn my attention to discourse anaphora in Chinese – anaphora that is found in naturally occurring Chinese conversation. (For data sources and transcription conventions, see Appendix to this chapter.) I shall focus mainly on discourse anaphora in its prototypical use: how the establishment, shift and maintenance of reference to a third-person singular human entity is done in conversation (e.g. Du Bois 1980, Fox 1987: 2). According to Foley & Van Valin (1984: 322–5), there are four types of referencetracking systems operating in discourse, from which a given language may resort to one or more: (i) gender systems, (ii) switch-reference systems, (iii) switch-function systems and (iv) inference systems (see also Haiman & Munro 1983, Van Valin 1987, Comrie 1989b and Stirling 1993).
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- Information
- The Syntax and Pragmatics of AnaphoraA Study with Special Reference to Chinese, pp. 204 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994