Week 9: Anaphora and co-reference Flashcards
Anaphora
The use of a word which refers to, or is a substitute for, a preceding word or group of words.
What is anaphora the relationship between?
An anaphor and an antecendant
What is the antecedant?
The thing being referred back to
What is the anaphor?
Something that refers back to a preceding expression (the antecedant)
Cataphora
The forward reference relation
(often this is included in the term anaphora)
Anaphoric chain
When anaphors are themselves antecedents, creating a chain of linked anaphors
anaphora resolution
the process by which the addressee/reader makes the correct anaphoric relations in order for communication to be successful
Deixis
a relation where the referent of an expression is determined in relation to features of the utterance act: the time, the place and the participants
What is deixis a type of?
exophora
Discourse deixis
Deixis where the referent is in the discourse (no longer a type of exophora)
Name three types of anaphoric relations
Co-reference
Associative anaphora/indirect anaphora/bridging
Substitution
What is the prototypical and simplest anaphoric relation?
Co-reference
What is co-reference?
Where the anaphor and antecedent have the same referent.
What semantic relation(s) play a role in co-reference?
synonymy and hyponymy/hypernymy
What semantic relation(s) play a role in associative anaphora?
meronymy
What is substitution?
Where part of an NP is substituted for something else
What words are often used for substitution in English?
one
do
so
Give some examples of non-referential noun phrases
Copular verb with an indefinite noun phrases
Dummy subjects
Clefting
What is generic reference?
The noun phrase refers to an entire class of entities rather than a specific entity
What is typically excluded from analysis of anaphors?
Anything that is not co-reference (substitution and associative reference)
Non-referential noun phrases
Generic reference
Deictic reference
Any anaphor whose antecedent is not a word or group of words.
When is a noun phrase definite?
When the referent is identifiable.
What type of notion is definiteness?
Grammatical
Noun phrases that are marked as indefinite…
…denote a referent that is not identifiable
What type of notion are given and new?
Pragmatic
They are concerned with the status of the referent in the discourse.
What is a given referent?
A given referent is known to the hearer/addressee
What is a new referent?
A new referent is not yet known to the hearer/addressee
An anaphor with co-reference denotes a ______ referent, more specifically,…
given
…one that is given in the text
What is often a new referent?
The first antecedent in an anaphoric chain.
Give examples of definite noun phrases
Proper names
Noun phrases with this/that
Noun phrases with the
Noun phrases with a possessive determiner
What is Ariel’s accessibility theory?
“referring expressions are actually accessibility markers, i.e.,
expressions cueing the addressee on how to retrieve the appropriate
mental representation in terms of degree of mental accessibility”
Which is more accessible:
full name + modifier
full name
full name
Which is more accessible:
long definite NP
full name
long definite NP
Which is more accessible:
long definite NP
first name
first name
Which is more accessible:
short definite NP
last name
last name
Which thing is least accessible
full name + modifier
Explain what accessibility represents
How much grammatical structure is needed to identify it: something that is highly accessible needs very little grammatical structure to identify it
Which thing is most accessible (excluding zero)
cliticised pronoun (e.g. herself)
Which is more accessible:
NP with this/these
NP with that/those
NP with this/these
Put these in order of accessibility (low to high):
stressed pronoun
unstressed pronoun
that/those
that/those
stressed pronoun
unstressed pronoun
Put these in order of accessibility (low to high):
NP with that/those
first name
stressed pronoun
first name
NP with that/those
stressed pronoun
Put these in order of accessibility (low to high):
stressed pronoun
cliticised pronoun
unstressed pronoun
stressed pronoun
unstressed pronoun
cliticised pronoun
List 5 things that affect the accessibility of the referent
- Discourse-given vs discourse-new
- Distance between anaphor and antecedent
- Intervention of alternative antecedents (disambiguations)
- Breaks or interruptions in the discourse
- Importance of the referent
Endophoric relations
In-text phoric relations
Exophoric relations
Opposite of endophoric relations, i.e. out-of-text phoric relations
