Abstract Entity Anaphora in Argumentative Texts: Pragmatic Features and Referent Interpretation

✍ Scribed by Donghong Liu

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 171
• Edition: 1st ed. 2023
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book focuses on abstract entity anaphora in argumentative texts with Asher’s (1993) Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) as the theoretical framework, investigating its pragmatic features and exploring its referent interpretation. The data sources include more than 160,000-word argumentative texts (80,000-word English texts and 80,000-word Chinese ones) selected from newspapers, journals, and books in China and America. At first, a comparative study was done between Chinese and English argumentative texts so as to compare the pragmatic features of abstract entity anaphora in the two languages. Then, referent interpretation is explored within the SDRT framework. Although SDRT can account for most of the instances of abstract entity anaphora, it appears incompetent in dealing with some phenomena in the data of our study. Seven problems in SDRT were found, and corresponding solutions were proposed in an attempt to improve this theory.

In general, this book has three aspects of significance. Firstly, it establishes abstract entity anaphora as an independent and a special kind of anaphora. Secondly, the research methods are the combination of empirical study and theoretical hypotheses as well as the coalescent of dynamic study and static study. Thirdly, the book is not limited to the application of SDRT to Mandarin Chinese and backward anaphora. Instead, based on the linguistic phenomena in the data, it challenges and improves the theory, and it even negates some aspects and meanwhile brings forward new solutions.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 The Definition of Abstract Entity Anaphora
1.2 Differences Between Abstract Entity Anaphora and Other Kinds of Anaphora
1.2.1 Abstract Entity Anaphora and Concrete Individual Anaphora
1.2.2 Abstract Entity Anaphora, Extended Reference and Text Reference
1.2.3 Abstract Entity Anaphora and Deep Anaphora
1.2.4 Abstract Entity Anaphora and Associative Anaphora
1.3 The Necessity of the Study of Abstract Entity Anaphora in Argumentative Texts
1.3.1 The Limitations of the Previous Study of Abstract Entity Anaphora
1.3.2 Characteristics of Argumentative Text
1.3.3 Argumentative Text and Abstract Entity Anaphora
1.4 Research Purpose and Significance
1.5 Organization of the Book
Notes
2 Pragmatic Features of Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Written Argumentative Data
2.2.1 The Sources of the Argumentative Texts
2.2.2 The Criteria of Data Collection and the Content of Data Analyses
2.3 Pragmatic Functions of Abstract Entity Anaphors
2.3.1 Recapitulation
2.3.2 Obscuration
2.3.3 Demarcation
2.4 Text Environment of Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.4.1 Background
2.4.2 Text Environment of English Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.4.3 Text Environment of Chinese Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.4.4 Comparisons Between English and Chinese Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.5 Pragmatic Tendency of Abstract Entity Anaphora
2.6 Backwards Anaphora
2.7 Summary
3 Discourse Structure and Discourse Anaphora
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) by Mann and Thompson
3.2.1 Main Idea
3.2.2 Comment
3.3 Rhetorical Structure by Fox
3.3.1 Main Idea
3.3.2 Comment
3.4 Linguistic Discourse Model (LDM) by Polanyi
3.4.1 Main Idea
3.4.2 Comment
3.5 Other Related Studies
3.6 Discourse Representation Theory
3.6.1 Main Idea
3.6.2 Comment
3.7 Taking Stock
4 SDRT and Abstract Entity Anaphora
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Discourse Relations and Topic
4.2.1 Discourse Relations
4.2.2 Topic
4.3 SDRS Construction
4.3.1 Determining the Basic Constituents
4.3.2 Constraints on Possible Sites for Constituent Attachment
4.3.3 SDRS Updating
4.3.4 Constituent Revision
4.4 SDRT and Abstract Entity Anaphora
4.4.1 Constraints on Abstract Entity Anaphora
4.4.2 AVAILABILITY and Constituent Revision
4.4.3 More Application to Abstract Entity Anaphora
4.5 Application of SDRT to Chinese Abstract Entity Anaphora
4.6 SDRT and Backwards Anaphora
4.7 Support from Cognitive Psychology
4.7.1 Situation Model
4.7.2 Resonance Model
4.8 Summary
Notes
5 Inadequacies of SDRT and Suggested Solutions
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Inadequacies
5.2.1 Discourse Relations
5.2.2 Topic Construction
5.2.3 The Role of the Topic
5.2.4 Explicit Referent Identification
5.2.5 Implicit Referent Identification
5.2.6 Reference Ambiguity Resulting from Double Attachment Sites
5.2.7 Long-Distance Anaphora
5.3 Suggested Solutions
5.3.1 Simplification of the Discourse Relations in SDRT
5.3.2 Topic Construction of Binary Structures
5.3.3 Topic Dominating Role
5.3.4 Explicit Referent Interpretation
5.3.5 Proposition Abstraction for Implicit Referent
5.4 Summary
6 Processing of Reference Ambiguity and Long-Distance Anaphora
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Solutions to Reference Ambiguity
6.2.1 Context and Intension
6.2.2 Tendency Investigation
6.3 Long-Distance Anaphora
6.3.1 Background
6.3.2 Theoretical Bases
6.3.3 Hypothesis Formulation
6.3.4 Instances of Application
6.3.5 The Role of Semantic Chains in Referent Interpretation
6.4 Summary
Notes
7 Conclusion
7.1 Achievements of This Study
7.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
Bibliography