Abstract
The
indirect anaphoric relations in the discourses like “John was eating. The table
was dirty” (eat ¬ the
table) are discussed. The issue of acceptability of the demonstrative
pronouns as markers of such relations is discussed: “John was eating. *This table was dirty” is not possible,
while “John was singing. This noise
disturbed Peter” is possible. The following rule is proposed: The use of a
demonstrative pronoun is possible if and only if the antecedent denotes a
process or situation, and the anaphor refers to a part of its lexical meaning.
Introduction*
The problem
of anaphoric relations has been discussed in linguistics for a long time and
still is on the agenda of the cognitive and linguistic research [Aone and McKee
(1993); Carter (1987); Hirst (1981); Kameyama (1997); Mitkov (1997); Indirect
Anaphora (1996)]. One of the most non-trivial cases of the anaphoric relations
is the so-called indirect anaphora.
In this paper, the differences of usage of one class of the indirect anaphora
formal markers, namely, demonstrative pronouns are discussed. We show that the
possibility of the use of such pronouns depends on the properties of the
antecedent (the target of the anaphoric relation, the component referred to),
as well as on the relationship between the anaphor (the source of the relation,
the component referring to) and antecedent.
One of the
first linguists who touched upon the sphere of the indirect anaphora was
W. Chafe in his paper [Chafe (1976)]. He described the different ways of
information packaging and, while describing definiteness, emphasized the
importance of the situations when one detail chains the other, e.g., “I had a look at a new house yesterday. The
kitchen was extra large.” Here the usage of the definite article with kitchen is possible because the listener
can relate the kitchen with the previously mentioned house.
Later this
phenomenon was called indirect (hidden, implicit, associative) anaphora [Indirect Anaphora (1996)]. It
is anaphora because it implies a reference of one word in the text to another
one; it is indirect because the reference is implicit: the exact antecedent is
not explicitly present in the text. Thus, indirect
anaphora is a kind of anaphoric relation between words in case when the
antecedent conceptually differs from the anaphor, i.e., there is no direct
coreference or conceptual identity between them.
Prototypic scenarios
Indirect
anaphora can be thought of as an anaphoric relation between a word and an
element of a prototypic scenario
implied by another word in the text. Note that such an element does not have
any surface representation in the text. Similar ideas without further
classification as concerned the indirect anaphora can be found in [Shank
(1980); Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1988)].
Let us
consider the following examples:
1. John was eating. The table was dirty.
2. John died. The widow was mad with grief.
3. John was buried. The widow was mad with grief.
Here the
definite articles are used with the words table
and widow. However, these words (and
the corresponding concepts) do not appear literally in the discourse before.
What is the reason for their definiteness? It can be explained by the existence
of the indirect anaphoric relation: eat
¬ table,
die ¬ widow,
bury ¬ widow.
In the first example the antecedent to
eat contains in its prototypic scenario a slot for a place with a possible value table.
In the second example the verb to die
is included in the lexical meaning of the word widow. In the third examples, the concept to die is in common in the lexical meanings of widow and to bury.
There are three
possible types of the indirect anaphora depending on the relations between the
antecedent and the anaphor:
(1)
The
anaphor is a word in the text while the antecedent is an element of a scenario
implied by another word; this is the most common case:
(2)
Vice
versa, an implied concept makes reference to a word in the text, a rather rare
case:
(3)
The
reference is made between the implied concepts, an even rarer case:
It is worth
noting that the indirect anaphora is possible only at the uppermost semantic
level of the situation. E.g., the following discourse is impossible or its
meaning is different from the pure anaphora: “*Peter disliked that John was eating here. The table was dirty.” Here, the topmost level situation is “Peter disliked,” and the indirect
anaphora to the embedded situation is not possible.
Basic examples
Let us
consider in what cases the use of demonstrative pronouns as markers of indirect
anaphora is possible, and in what cases it is not.
In this paper we will consider only purely anaphoric use of the demonstrative pronouns, which should be clearly distinguished from their use for implied or explicit contraposition, deictic function, and other uses not related to anaphora.
An example
of contraposition is “I bought a house. This
kitchen was extremely large” with the meaning ‘in this case the kitchen was large while the other kitchens were not’;
in this case, the logical stress is on the pronoun and a special intonation is
used. An example of a deictic function is “I
bought a house. This kitchen was extremely large” when the speaker
means the kitchen inside which he or she is pronouncing this phrase, or points
to the kitchen with his or her finger. Another example of the deictic use: “I was buying a house. I counted this money
carefully” when the speaker shows the money to the listener. In both cases,
the pronouns have nothing to do with anaphora. In these functions, the use of
the demonstrative pronouns is possible in any
of our examples below, but we do not consider such cases.
The formal
markers of indirect anaphora are connected with the category of definiteness.
The reason is that the speaker marks the object as definite if he or she
considers the listener to be able to identify its referent by explicit or
implicit reference. There are two ways to express the definiteness in English:
the definite articles and the demonstrative pronouns. Let us consider more
examples; impossible variants are marked with an asterisk:[1]
1.
I bought a house. The/*This kitchen (roof,
walls) was extremely large.
2.
I bought a house. The/*These dimensions
were 20 ´ 20.
3.
I bought a house. The/*This previous
owner was happy.
4.
I was buying a house. I counted the/*this
money carefully.
5.
I sold a house. What can I do with the/this
money?
6.
I bought a house. I liked the/this
price.
7.
John was eating. The/*This table was
dirty. (The/*These dishes...)
8.
John was eating. It was dark in the/*this
forest.
9.
John was eating. The/This food was
delicious.
10.
John was eating. The/These apples were
delicious.
11.
John was singing. The/This noise
disturbed Peter.
12.
John was singing. Peter disliked the/this
noise.
13.
John was reading. He liked the/this
author.
14.
John died. The/*This widow was mad with
grief.
The use of
the definite article is allowed in all cases of the indirect anaphora, while
the demonstrative pronoun is possible only in some sentences. In case of usual
(direct) anaphora, though, the use of a demonstrative pronoun is nearly always
possible, e.g., “I bought a house with a
kitchen. The/This kitchen was extremely large.”
Use of demonstrative pronouns
The
anaphors in our examples have different status in the prototypic scenario of
the antecedents. Some of them are parts of the antecedent’s lexical meaning, as
in examples 5, 6, and 9, while some are not. The former concepts are implicitly
present in the situation named by the antecedent, i.e., are introduced in the
discourse at the moment of introduction of the antecedent. E.g., the Random
House Webster's dictionary defines the word sell
as: “to transfer (goods) to or render (services) for
another in exchange for money; dispose of to a purchaser for a price.” So, the
words money (as a general concept,
not a physical object) and price are
parts of the lexical meaning of the word sell.
On
the other hand, in the example 1 the word kitchen
is not a part of the lexical meaning of house
and thus can not be considered as implicitly introduced in the discourse in the
first sentence. In the example 4, money
in the meaning of a physical object (coins, banknotes) is not a part of the
meaning of sell.
This difference correlates with the use of the demonstrative pronouns in our examples. Thus, we can formulate the following rule for the use of the demonstrative pronoun:
The use of a demonstrative pronoun is possible
if and only if the following two conditions hold:
(1) The antecedent denotes a process or
situation and
(2) The anaphor refers to[2]
a part of its lexical meaning.
Correspondingly,
its use is impossible when the antecedent denotes a thing (object) or the anaphor
is not a part of the lexical meaning of the situation referred to by the
antecedent.
In the
rule, we said that the antecedent refers
to a part of the lexical meaning of the antecedent if it is (a) a concept
directly included in the prototypic scenario of the antecedent, (b) a more general
or more specific concept, i.e., its subtype or a supertype (speaking in
linguistic terms, there are hyponymic or hyperonymic relations between
concepts), or (c) a metaphor of such a concept. Thus, indirect anaphora can
combine with some other phenomena accompanying coreference that does not affect
the issue we are interested in.
Discussion
Now let us
show how our rule explains the use of the pronouns in our examples. In the examples
1 to 3, the antecedents denote objects: house
¬ kitchen, house ¬ dimensions, house ¬ previous owner, thus, the use of a pronoun is prohibited. In the examples 4, 7, 8, and
14, the anaphors are not included into the lexical meaning of the antecedents: buy ¬ money (as the
physical object), eat ¬ table,
eat ¬ forest, die ¬ widow;
again, pronouns can not be used here.
On the
other hand, in the examples 5, 6, and 9 the rule allows the use of the
pronouns. Note the difference in the meaning of the word money in the examples 4 and 5: In the example 4 it is a physical
object that is not obligatory in the situation, since for buying, say, a credit
card could be used; on the other hand, in the example 5 this word refers to an
abstract entity, the price, and thus is a part of the lexical meaning of the
verb, since one can not buy or sell without money. So, in the example 4 the
demonstrative pronoun is prohibited, while in the example 5 it is allowed.
Examples 12
and 13 illustrate generalization: sing ¬ noise,
when the prototypic noun would be singing
or song.[3]
Example 10 illustrates specification: eat
¬ apples
(a kind of food). Example 13 contains a metaphor: read ¬ author
(i.e., a book by this author).
Conclusions and future work
We have
analyzed the difference of the use of one class of the indirect anaphora formal
markers, namely, demonstrative pronoun. A rule for their use was formulated.
The conditions of this rule depend on the properties of the antecedent and the
relation between the antecedent and anaphor.
We
formulated the rule using the concept of lexical
meaning. Perhaps it would be more correct to combine this concept with the
concept of obligatory/quasi-obligatory valences, because, for example, it is
not so clear whether a food is a part
of the lexical meaning of the verb to eat
(see example 10) or this is its valence. In the future, we plan to analyze
these relations.
At the same
time, in our article there is no meaningful explanation for one part of the suggested
rule. While the second part (the presence in the lexical meaning of antecedent)
is explained by implicit introduction into the situation, the first part (the
necessity to denote the process or situation, not the object) is empirical at
the present moment. It will be necessary to find cognitive grounds for the
distinction of processes/situations and objects.
In our future papers, we also will analyze
the situation in the languages without articles (like Russian) where it is
complicated by ambiguity of the expressions without any pronoun. Also, the
broader context probably has some influence on the indirect anaphora and its
formal markers.
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