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TITLE "Implicatures in Discourse: The case of Spanish NP anaphora"
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Implicatures in Discourse
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail:
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Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark
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Volume 105 Implicatures in Discourse: The case of Spanish NP anaphora by Sarah E. Blackwell
Implicatures in Discourse The case of Spanish NP anaphora
Sarah E. Blackwell University of Georgia
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sarah E. Blackwell Implicatures in Discourse : The case of Spanish NP anaphora / Sarah E. Blackwell. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 105) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Spanish language--Anaphora. 2. Spanish language--Discourse analysis. 3. Spanish language--Noun phrase. I. Title. II. Series. PC4398.A52 B53 2002 465-dc21 isbn 90 272 5345 5 (Eur.) / 1 58811 279 9 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2002026209
© 2003 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
For Erica
Contents
List of abbreviations used in glosses Preface
xi xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 General objectives and scope 1 1.2 Deªnite NP anaphora or ‘coreference’ 2 1.3 Grammatically stipulated anaphora versus pragmatic coreference 3 1.4 The syntactic constraint of ‘c-command’ 5 1.5 Theoretical approach, data, and methodology 7 1.6 Outline of the book 8 Chapter 2 The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora 11 2. Introduction 11 2.1 Grice’s theory of conversational implicature 12 2.2 Anaphoric expressions as conversational implicatures 17 2.3 Clashes, revisions, and reductions in the original Gricean maxims 21 2.4 Levinson’s neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora 24 2.5 Problems Levinson’s approach poses for Spanish 31 2.6 Ariel’s arguments against Levinson’s proposal 33 2.7 The non-complementarity of NP expressions in Spanish 36 2.8 Consistency constraints on implicatures 39 2.8.1 The background knowledge constraint on anaphora 40 2.8.2 Grice’s meaning-nn and the mutual knowledge constraint 41 2.8.3 Semantic entailments and general semantic constraints on anaphora 40 2.8.4 Antecendent saliency and the ‘aboutness’ hypothesis 45 2.9 Summary and proposed framework of analysis 48 Chapter 3 Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference 3. Introduction 51
51
viii The Pragmatics of Spanish NP Anaphora
3.1 3.2
Minimization and recipient design in conversation 52 Givenness, choice of NP expression, and the neo-Gricean framework 57 3.2.1. Predictability, recoverability, and minimization of linguistic form 3.2.2. Givenness in terms of saliency 60 3.2.3. Givenness in terms of shared knowledge 69 3.3 Topic continuity in discourse and choice of NP type 74 3.4 Accessibility theory 79 3.5 Focal stress and contrastiveness 83 3.6 Contrastiveness, markedness, and the null/overt subject pronoun contrast in Spanish 86 3.7 Summary 94 Chapter 4 NP anaphora in Spanish conversation 4. Introduction 97 4.1 Conversation and conversation analysis 99 4.2 Data collection, transcription, and participants 101 4.3 The basic pattern of anaphora 103 4.4 Mutual knowledge, choice of linguistic form, and conversational implicatures 125 4.5 Culturally and socially-based mutual knowledge 142 4.6 Mutual knowledge and the recognition of speaker intention 156 4.7 Conclusions 173
58
97
Chapter 5 Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 175 5. Introduction 175 5.1 The Spanish ‘pear ªlm narratives’ 176 5.2 Antecedent saliency, choice of referring expressions, and implicatures of coreference 180 5.3 The eŸects of background assumptions and mutual knowledge 195 5.4 The role of agreement 210 5.5 The use of marked NPs 225 5.6 Backward anaphora and discourse structure 241 5.7 Summary and conclusions 246
Contents
Chapter 6 Conclusions 6. Introduction 251 6.1 Evidence for the Q-principle 252 6.2 Evidence for the I- and M-principles 253 6.3 Conclusion 258 Notes References Appendix: Transcription conventions Author index Subject index
251
261 273 285 287 291
ix
List of abbreviations used in glosses
Accusative case ‘Arbitrary’ or ‘impersonal’ pronominal reference, e.g. ‘one/people/ you’ dat Dative case fam Familiar, e.g. second-person singular familiar tú (‘you’) fem Feminine fut Future imp Impersonal inf Inªnitive masc Masculine pl Plural poss Possessive pro Empty (null) pronoun refl Re¶exive sg Singular super Superlative 1 First person 2 Second person 3 Third person acc arb
Preface
The goal of this book is to seek empirical evidence supporting a pragmatic theory of anaphora, while also aiming to heighten our understanding of thirdperson reference in Spanish discourse. My initial motivation for studying anaphora in Spanish stems from my experiences as a learner of Spanish as a second language, which, in large part, precede my formal training in linguistics. Even after living in Madrid for several years, I would still, at times, ‘get lost’ in a conversation; as they say in Spanish, perdería el hilo (‘(I) would lose the thread’). My losing track of the conversation was often due to the fact that I couldn’t ªgure out who (or what) the speaker had just referred to, typically via a pronoun or null (zero) subject. By failing to infer this important bit of information, I was usually unable to interpret subsequent reference to the same entities, which would cause me to ‘lose the thread’ completely. The following chapters focus on two main questions, the ªrst being why (or under what conditions) speakers choose, for instance, a pronoun instead of a full noun phrase (NP), or a null subject instead of an overt (lexically expressed) subject pronoun to refer to an entity in discourse. This question leads naturally to the second question, namely, how the chosen expression is successfully interpreted by the addressee. In order to answer these questions, I examine the various NP expressions used by Spanish speakers to refer to entities that are either mentioned or implied in previous discourse, a phenomenon known as ‘discourse anaphora’. Two genres of spoken Spanish, conversations and narratives, are analyzed in this book. The data examined in Chapter 4 come from eight naturally occurring conversations among family members and friends from Aragón, a region in northeastern Spain. The narratives discussed in Chapter 5 were produced by ªfteen Spaniards from the same region. These participants were shown a brief ªlm, known as ‘the pear ªlm’ (Chafe 1980), and were then asked to tell about it. Both the conversations and the narratives were video- and audiotaped, and later transcribed. In my analysis of representative excerpts of the Spanish conversations and narratives, I illustrate how speakers abide by ‘neo-Gricean’ principles in both genres of spoken discourse. However, I also argue, following Huang (1991,
xiv The Pragmatics of Spanish NP Anaphora
1994, 2000b), that the in¶uence of intervening grammatical, semantic, cognitive, and pragmatic constraints on anaphora must also be considered if we are to fully account for the phenomena in question. For instance, in a conversation, assumptions of ‘mutual knowledge’ (Clark and Marshall 1981) can in¶uence the speaker’s choice of a referring expression by determining how ‘semantically informative’ the expression must be in order for it to be successfully interpreted by the addressee. Furthermore, familiarity with the cultural norms and practices of a community frequently enables interlocutors to comprehend minimal referring expressions (e.g. null subjects) which cultural outsiders, unfamiliar with these norms, may not be able to interpret. I collected the Spanish conversations and narratives in Spain in 1993 as part of the ªeld work carried out for my doctoral dissertation (Blackwell 1994). I did all of the transcriptions and translations from Spanish to English myself, and am therefore responsible for any errors or discrepancies in them. While the main thesis of this book is the same as the one advanced in my dissertation, I have substantially revised and reorganized each chapter, and have expanded the data analysis and the references section. It is my hope that this book will shed light on the nature of discourse anaphora in Spanish and help to stimulate further empirical research in the areas of Spanish pragmatics, conversation analysis, and discourse analysis. I could never have carried out the research leading up to the writing of this book without the support and guidance of my dissertation director, Dr. Susan Berk-Seligson. Her graduate seminars at the University of Pittsburgh introduced me to pragmatics and sociolinguistics and laid the foundation for my subsequent research. I am greatly indebted to Professor Berk-Seligson for constantly providing me with constructive feedback and excellent suggestions for improving my research projects. Without her outstanding teaching and mentoring, my dissertation and this book would not have materialized. I do not know how to thank Dr. Jacob Mey enough for helping me edit an earlier version of this book. Jacob’s keen eye, attention to detail, and depth of knowledge are truly remarkable. His insightful suggestions and page-by-page comments on each chapter of the manuscript have been invaluable. I am also very grateful to him for his patience and willingness to exchange ‘batches’ of the manuscript with me across oceans and continents. I will always be indebted to him for these reasons. Many thanks go to my mentor and friend, Dr. Jorge Guitart, Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the State University of New York at BuŸalo. I am
Preface
grateful to him for responding to my numerous linguistic queries about what is and isn’t possible in Spanish. I would like to thank the series editor, Dr. Andreas Jucker, for his excellent assistance and advice at all stages of this project. I must also thank the anonymous reviewers for their thorough reading of earlier versions of the manuscript, and for providing me with many beneªcial comments and suggestions for improvement. Very special thanks go to Isja Conen, the acquisition editor at John Benjamins, for her encouragement and for providing such excellent editorial help. I am very grateful to my close friends and colleagues at the University of Georgia for supporting me. I would also like to recognize and thank the University of Georgia Center for the Humanities and Arts for awarding me a CHA Research Fellowship in 1999. This fellowship released me from my teaching responsibilities at the University for one semester, enabling me to work more intensively on the preparation of the manuscript during that term. Many friends and family members have contributed their time and resources at various stages of this project. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to family and friends from Maleján (Zaragoza), Spain, for their generosity and support. The kindness and enthusiasm of the Malejaneros, and their willingness to participate as ‘speakers’ and/or ‘narrators’ made the task of collecting the conversations and narratives truly enjoyable. I greatly value their remarkable conversational and storytelling skills, which are evident, I believe, in both the recordings and the transcriptions. My heartfelt thanks go to my mother-in-law, Carmen Aznar Bona, my sister, Regina Ann Blackwell, and my mother, Barbara Allen Blackwell, for being so generous and for always uplifting me. Finally, I want to thank my daughter, Erica, and my husband, José Ramón Malagón Aznar, for their unwavering patience, support, and love.
xv
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 General objectives and scope Recent studies on anaphora point to the fact that the choice of anaphoric expressions in spoken discourse and their felicitous interpretation depend on syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and cognitive factors (e.g. Reinhart 1983a, b, 1986; Levinson 1987a, b, 1991, 2000; Ariel 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996; Geluykens 1994; Huang 1991, 1994, 2000a, b; van Hoek 1995, 1997). In this book, I analyze the use and interpretation of deªnite noun phrase (NP) anaphora in Spanish conversational and narrative discourse within a neo-Gricean pragmatic framework of conversational implicature. In doing so, I seek evidence of a set of revised Gricean principles in Spanish speakers’ choice of anaphoric expressions, often from a number of possible linguistic forms, including lexical NPs, demonstratives, pronouns, and null (zero) subjects. I also attempt to determine the extent to which these neo-Gricean principles can account for addressees’ interpretations of the speakers’ linguistic choices. However, I argue that, while the Gricean principles may be adhered to by speakers in a general manner, a set of intervening grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic constraints on coreference must be incorporated into the neo-Gricean theory of anaphora in order to provide a more explanatory account of the phenomena studied. Analysis of two genres of spoken Spanish discourse, spontaneous conversations and a series of narratives, enables us to test the neo-Gricean pragmatic theory and to better observe the eŸects of coreference constraints. Furthermore, through a close examination of both conversational and narrative Spanish discourse, we are able to unearth some of the social, cultural, and interactional factors in¶uencing the production and interpretation of discourse anaphors in Spanish. The naturally occurring conversations reveal the in¶uence of the Spanish interlocutors’ social and cultural knowledge and assumptions on their use and interpretation of anaphoric NPs in conversational discourse. The narratives were elicited from native speakers of Castilian Spanish after they viewed the pear ªlm (Chafe 1980) and were asked to talk about the ªlm.
2
Implicatures in Discourse
Therefore, patterns of anaphora in the narratives are more predictable, and tend to be constrained largely by cognitive and informational factors.
1.2 Deªnite NP anaphora or ‘coreference’ ‘Anaphora’ may be deªned broadly as reference to something mentioned or implied in previous discourse (Green 1989). Lust (1986: 23) deªnes anaphora more explicitly as the relation between a proform, called an anaphor, and another expression, called an antecedent. By pairing the anaphor with its antecedent, the former repeats the reference or the sense that the latter has already established. Anaphoric reference enables speakers to avoid redundancy or repetition by the use of a semantically, lexically, and phonologically attenuated linguistic expression (the anaphor), in place of the full lexical expression (the antecedent). The classic example of anaphora is the relation of coreference between deªnite pronouns and their NP antecedents. However, Spanish is a pro-drop language, allowing both overt subject pronouns and null (zero) subject pronouns. Therefore, in the following sentence, the lexically realized pronoun él (‘he’) as well as a null subject (pro), represented as Ø (‘zero’), can occur, and both may be interpreted coreferentially with Juan (‘John’) (the possibility of coreference is indicated by italics): (1) Juan dijo que {él/Ø} llamaría a María. John said that {he/pro} would-call acc Mary ‘John said that he would call Mary.’
The coreferential readings between the subject NPs in italics in (1) are not obligatory. However, Rigau (1986: 148) observes that in such cases, “if there is a preferred reading, it is due to the discourse context in which the sentence appears, rather than to the presence of a full/empty pronoun.” In other words, both él (‘he’) and the null subject in (1) may have an alternative interpretation, other than one of coreference with Juan, when used under appropriate discourse conditions.
Introduction
1.3 Grammatically stipulated anaphora versus pragmatic coreference In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in how anaphoric expressions are used and understood by speakers. As a result, a number of competing hypotheses have been oŸered regarding the role of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in anaphora relations. There are convincing reasons for treating anaphora as primarily a discourse phenomenon in need of a pragmatic theory to account for it. For instance, as Wasow (1986) notes, the elements involved in anaphoric relations may be in separate sentences, possibly involving separate speakers, and, for that matter, they need not be linguistic elements at all. Nevertheless, the most obvious property anaphoric expressions share is that they derive their meaning in a given context from their association with other elements in that context. Furthermore, as Green (1989) points out, often anaphora interpretation requires the calculation of the speaker’s intended meaning, as the following example from Green (1989: 23) illustrates: (2) The dean expelled John because he discovered his secret.
Simply stated, in order to successfully interpret he and his in this sentence, we have to determine what the speaker means in a particular context, and this requires pragmatic inference. Geluykens (1994), in his work on the pragmatics of discourse anaphora in English, draws a distinction between ‘discourse anaphora’ and ‘sentential anaphora’. Citing Reinhart (1983a), Geluykens notes that sentential anaphora involves anaphoric NPs “which are subject to some form of syntactic ‘binding’ within the sentence in which they appear” (1994: 1). This separation between sentence-level and discourse-level anaphora has been traditional in anaphora studies. However, for our purposes, it seems more appropriate to establish a boundary between grammatically determined anaphora and interpretations of referring expressions that involve the language user’s intended meaning, regardless of where (sentences or discourse) the expression occurs. Reinhart (1986) attempts to draw the line between grammatical and pragmatic principles in the treatment of anaphora. She notes that many of the theoretical studies of anaphora in past years have focused primarily on pronominal anaphora involving intended coreference between deªnite NPs, which, as she contends, may not be a matter of grammar at all. Reinhart argues that only bound-variable interpretations of pronouns are grammatically deter-
3
4
Implicatures in Discourse
mined and thus should be explained by syntactically-based rules, whereas all other pronoun interpretation can be determined pragmatically. There are three possible referential relations that can hold between two NPs in a sentence (Reinhart 1983a). These relations are illustrated by the following Spanish examples from Blackwell (1998: 610–611). (Italics are used to signify coreference, and an asterisk indicates that the coreference relation marked in italics is not acceptable. In (5), indices are used to mark (non-)coreference.) (3) Obligatory (stipulated) coreference, e.g.: María se viste. Mary 3refl dresses ‘Mary dresses herself.’ (4) Obligatory (stipulated) non-coreference, e.g.: a. *María la viste. Mary {her/it-fem} dresses ‘*Mary dresses her.’ b. *{Ella/Ø} quiere a los amigos de María. {she/pro} loves acc the friends of Mary ‘*{She/(she/he/you-non-fam)} loves Mary’s friends.’ (5) Optional (free) coreference, e.g.: susij amigos. Maríai quiere a Mary loves acc {her/his/their/your-non-fam} friends ‘Maryi loves {herij/his/their/your} friends.’
In (3), the re¶exive se, meaning ‘herself’ in this context, must be interpreted anaphorically as referring to the subject antecedent María, due to a syntactic constraint on re¶exives.1 In (4), however, the occurrence of the non-re¶exive, object pronoun la, in the same position where a re¶exive could have occurred, results in an obligatory relation of ‘disjoint reference’, or ‘non-coreference’ between the pronoun and the subject María. Finally, in (5) we have the optional (free) coindexing of a pronoun and an antecedent, or what Reinhart (1986) calls ‘intended coreference’. In other words, the speaker intends the reference or value for the pronoun sus in (5) to be identical to that of María, even though the Spanish possessive sus can also mean ‘her’, ‘his’, non-familiar ‘your’, or ‘their’, given the appropriate contextual conditions. Reinhart (1986) suggests that we view intended coreference as ‘the pragmatic interpretation of anaphora’, or ‘pragmatic coreference’, since, as she explains, “this type of anaphora interpretation deªnes a relation between linguistic structures and their potential uses for the purpose of expressing referential intentions, rather
Introduction
than deªning referential or semantic relations between expressions in the sentence” (1986: 124).
1.4 The syntactic constraint of ‘c-command’ Intrasentential anaphora has been found to be constrained by a set of fundamental grammatical factors, the most salient of which include sentence conªguration and the relation of ‘command’. The term command refers to the syntactic dimension of dominance and to constituent structure in the conªgurational representation of sentences. Several deªnitions of ‘command’ have been proposed since Langacker’s (1969) original proposal of the relation of ‘precede and command’ (Reinhart 1983a; Kuno 1987). However, as van Hoek (1997: 2) notes, “within the generative syntactic tradition, the standard explanation for the anaphora constraints is based on some version of the structural notion of c-command proposed by Reinhart (1976, 1981, 1983[a], 1986).” The c-command relationship has been used to explain why coreference is allowed in sentences like (6a) and (6c), but prohibited in sentences such as (6b) and (6d) (Van Hoek 1997: 1, her example (1); italics are used here to mark coreference): (6) a. b. c. d.
Near him, John noticed a trapdoor. *Near John, he noticed a trapdoor. John loves his mother. *He loves John’s mother.
Coreference is impossible in (6b) and (6d), because in both sentences, he ccommands John, i.e., John is in the ‘domain’ of he. The c-command constraint blocks coreference between pronouns and non-pronouns under such circumstances. On the other hand, the c-command constraint does not apply to the coreference relations in (6a) and (6c), and, in each case, nothing blocks coreference. The signiªcance of Reinhart’s c-command is that it provides us with a syntactic constraint on sentence-level NP anaphora in Spanish, as in English, without making reference to precedence, i.e., the linear order of a pronoun and a full NP in an anaphoric relation. For example, c-command enables us to explain via a structural rule why the (a)-sentences in (7) and (8) are acceptable with regard to the coreference relations marked, even though they are characterized by backward anaphora, i.e., the pronouns precede their respective
5
6
Implicatures in Discourse
antecedents. Likewise, c-command accounts for the fact that the (b)-sentences are coreferentially unacceptable, even though the antecedent precedes the pronoun. (Examples (7a–b) are taken from Blackwell (1998: 610). The English version in (8b) is from Reinhart (1983a: 36). An asterisk indicates that the coreference relation marked in italics is not acceptable. Translations re¶ect preferred interpretations in the absence of additional contextual information (cf. Levinson 2000).)2 (7) a.
Con su madre with {her/his/their/your-non-fam} mother muy bien. very well ‘With her mother Alice gets along very well.’ b. *Con la madre de Alicia {ella/Ø} se with the mother of Alice {she/pro} 3refl *‘With Alice’s mother she gets along very well.’
Alicia se lleva 3refl carries
lleva muy bien. carries very well
puede hablar con Benjamín de No se3 not pro-arb can speak-inf with Benjamin of sus problemas. {his/her/their/your-non-fam} problems ‘You/people/one can’t talk to Ben about his problems.’ b. *No se puede hablar con él de los problemas not pro-arb can speak-inf with him of the problems de Benjamín. of Benjamin *‘You can’t talk to him about Ben’s problems.’
(8) a.
According to Wasow (1986), the c-command condition has fared better than previous constraints proposed as structural conditions on intrasentential anaphora, such as those proposed by Langacker (1969) and Lasnik (1976). However, he also points out that Reinhart’s constraint is not without problems, citing McCray (1980), who presents examples such as the following, in which c-command is violated (example from McCray 1980: 331; see also Blackwell 1998: 17): (9) He didn’t give her a diamond ring because, although he’s madly in love with her, Walter’s just not ready to tie the knot.
Wasow agrees with McCray, who argues that such examples do not prove that the c-command condition is wrong, but rather that it can be overridden by pragmatic factors. Thus, while Reinhart’s c-command constraint can be ex-
Introduction
pected to constrain coreference between deªnite pronouns (both null and overt) and their NP antecedents in Spanish sentences, this constraint may be overridden by contextual and pragmatic conditions, as the authors cited suggest.
1.5 Theoretical approach, data, and methodology The rest of this book will focus on intended or pragmatic coreference as deªned by Reinhart (1986). I shall argue that what ultimately determines coreference relations is the calculation of the speaker’s intentional reference for a given NP in a given context through pragmatic inference. The basic theme for which we will seek support has been developed by Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000) and centers on the notion of minimization of linguistic expression and its inferential implications. The broader paradoxical generalization that sums up this theme is, “under certain speciªed conditions, ‘the less you say, the more you mean’” (Levinson 1987a: 62). In other words, ‘the less you say, the more you allow to be inferred.’ The central research objective is to determine the extent to which the revised Gricean framework proposed in this study explains patterns of anaphora in the transmission of information to addressees, the exchanges that occur between the speech participants, and the process by which anaphoric expressions are simultaneously interpreted. The framework used in this study is based primarily on the work of Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000) and Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b), as well as Reinhart (1983a, 1986), who in turn propose the use of Gricean maxims of conversation (Grice 1975) to deal with the problem of anaphora use and interpretation. Following this framework, I examine the extent to which Spanish NP anaphora in conversational and narrative discourse can be explained in terms of a set of neo-Gricean speaker/hearer pragmatic principles, in conjunction with ‘consistency’ and grammatical constraints.4 In the chapters that follow, I analyze reference to third persons in Spanish in two types of data, spontaneous conversations and oral narratives. The conversations involve naturally occurring speech produced by diŸerent groups of interlocutors from northeastern Spain, whose relationships varied (e.g. conversations between close family members, conversations among less intimate family members and friends, etc.). They also represent various ‘conversational sub-genres’, including casual conversation, conversational storytelling, and gossip. These features of the conversations are crucial in this study, since, as we shall see, patterns of anaphora use and interpretation in conversational
7
8
Implicatures in Discourse
discourse may be in¶uenced by the purpose of the talk and the interlocutors’ socially and culturally-based assumptions resulting from their interpersonal relationships. The narratives were elicited from ªfteen native speakers of Spanish from the Province of Zaragoza in northeastern Spain. Each participant (or ‘narrator’) was asked to retell the events of a brief ªlm known as ‘the pear ªlm’ (Chafe 1980) to another native speaker, referred to as the ‘listener’, who, participants were told, had never seen the ªlm. Each of the oral narratives was video- and audiotaped. This method of data collection elicited numerous references to the events, objects, and actors in the pear ªlm, and thus numerous anaphoric NPs produced under the same circumstances. The conversational and narrative data are analyzed qualitatively using a combined discourse and conversation analytic approach. As Geluykens (1994: 5) notes, the discourse analytic approach views discourse “mainly as the transmission of information from a speaker (writer) to a hearer (reader), and certain constraints or discourse ‘rules’ can be formulated to explain why discourse information is structured the way it is.” The data in this study are also analyzed using core notions and objectives from conversation analysis. That is, both the elicited narratives and the naturally occurring conversations are transcribed using conventions from conversation analysis, and they are examined in an attempt to uncover how the participants use and understand anaphoric expressions in their turns at talk.
1.6 Outline of the book The remainder of this book is organized in the following manner. In Chapter 2, I argue that anaphoric interpretations may be considered Gricean implicatures, and I present the neo-Gricean theoretical framework to be used in my analysis of the Spanish conversations and narratives. Chapter 3 identiªes some fundamental notions used to explain anaphora and the use of referring expressions in discourse, which in turn support the pragmatic principles and consistency constraints on implicatures of coreference that are proposed in the neo-Gricean pragmatic framework. In Chapter 4, I analyze the use of anaphoric and non-anaphoric referring expressions in naturally occurring conversations between and among Spaniards. In this chapter, I seek evidence of the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles, and of the consistency constraints on anaphora in the conversations. In addition, I examine the in¶uence of social
Introduction
and cultural factors generating the background assumptions, which in turn disambiguate the meaning of the referring expressions used. In Chapter 5, the analysis turns to the use of both anaphoric and non-anaphoric NPs (i.e. ‘referring expressions’) in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives in light of the proposed theoretical framework. Finally, in Chapter 6, I summarize the major ªndings reached from this study, and I draw some general conclusions with regard to the neo-Gricean approach to anaphora.
9
Chapter 2
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
2.
Introduction
Over the last two decades there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of pragmatics in studies dealing with anaphora and reference. This trend has resulted in part from the recognition that sentence-level grammars, and speciªcally, Chomsky’s (1981, 1982) binding conditions, are unable to deal with coreference relations involving ‘intended’, or ‘pragmatic coreference’. Several researchers have advocated using Grice’s (1975) maxims of conversation or some revised version of the maxims to account for anaphora (e.g. Dowty 1980; Mittwoch 1983; Reinhart 1983a, b, 1986; Kempson 1984, 1988; Levinson 1987a, b, 1991, 2000; Huang 1991, 1994, 2000a, b; Geluykens 1994). Others have accounted for the distribution of referring expressions in discourse from the perspective of Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) Relevance Theory (e.g. Ariel 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996; Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski 1993; Fretheim and Gundel 1996; Matsui 1998, 2000). For instance, Ariel argues that the cognitive notion of ‘accessibility’ of the antecedent determines the speaker’s choice of NP type. Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993; henceforward, Gundel et al.), who also take a cognitive approach, propose that the use of diŸerent referring expressions signals diŸerent memory and attention states, or ‘cognitive statuses’, and that these statuses interact with the Gricean maxim of Quantity to account for the distribution of the various expressions. More recent studies also suggest that both the cognitive status of a referent and the Gricean maxim of Quantity are needed to account for the use of name expressions (Mulkern 1996) and of referring expressions in general (Gundel and Mulkern 1998). The main premise upon which the ensuing discussion is based is that anaphora interpretation involves utterance interpretation, which is in turn an inferential process involving conversational implicatures. This notion is summarized by Kempson (1984: 4) as follows:
12
Implicatures in Discourse
Utterance interpretation is an inferential, largely deductive exercise which involves the construction by the hearer of a context set of premises which combine with the propositional form of what he hears to yield indirect implications (the implicit content of the utterance — roughly equivalent to implicatures). Thus, contextual information is not in general antecedently given, nor accumulated throughout a discourse: it is the construction of the context that is an essential part of utterance interpretation.
I begin this chapter by outlining Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature in Section 2.1, and then by showing in Section 2.2 that instances of intended coreference may be considered conversational implicatures. Subsequently, in Section 2.3, I discuss some clashes between the original Gricean maxims and attempts by Atlas and Levinson (1981) and Horn (1984) to revise the original maxims. In Section 2.4, I present Levinson’s (1987a, b, 1991, 2000) neo-Gricean approach to anaphora. Next, following Levinson’s proposal, I show how the neo-Gricean pragmatic framework may account for the interpretation of NP types in Spanish, which have previously been dealt with in syntactic terms via Chomsky’s binding principles. In Sections 2.5–2.7 I discuss some of the weaknesses in Levinson’s approach, as well as some of the problems it poses for certain facts of Spanish. I then describe an alternative neo-Gricean proposal developed by Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b). Finally, I outline the neo-Gricean pragmatic framework of analysis used in the present study of anaphora in Spanish, which incorporates portions of both Levinson’s and Huang’s proposals.
2.1 Grice’s theory of conversational implicature The notion of conversational implicature provides an explicit account for how it is possible to mean more than what is actually said, i.e. “more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions uttered” (Levinson 1983: 97). Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature (1975, 1978, 1982, 1989) represents an attempt to handle patterns of inference in natural language that cannot be completely explained by the formal devices of logic. According to Grice (1975), the divergences in meaning from the standpoint of philosophical logic and meaning in natural language, or ‘speaker meaning’, can be better understood by understanding the conditions governing conversation. For instance, he observes that there can be a diŸerence between what a speaker ‘says’ and what a speaker implies, suggests, means, or, as Grice puts it, ‘implicates’.
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
Grice’s theory comprises a set of four well known maxims for the e¹cient and eŸective use of language in conversation. Together these maxims express one underlying principle, which Grice calls the ‘Cooperative Principle’ (1975: 45): (10) The Cooperative Principle: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.
The four maxims proposed by Grice (1975) are those of Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner, which may be summarized as follows: (11) Grice’s Maxims of Conversation: Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true. Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange, but no more informative than is required. Relevance: Make your contribution relevant. Manner: Be perspicuous; speciªcally, avoid obscurity and ambiguity, be brief (avoid prolixity), and be orderly.
These maxims specify what participants should do in order to converse in a rational and cooperative manner. Although no speaker actually adheres to all of these guidelines all of the time, Grice maintains that participants in a conversation assume that the principles are being followed on at least some level. According to Gricean theory, an addressee can infer a speaker’s implicature based on the assumption that the speaker is being cooperative and is adhering to Grice’s maxims. However, when a speaker violates or ‘¶outs’ one or more of the maxims, an implicature is also generated, which Verschueren (1999: 33) explains as follows: On many occasions, the maxims will be breached or ‘¶outed’. But since speakers are expected to be co-operative by using language in accordance with the maxims, any clear breaching or ¶outing will be interpreted by a co-operative interlocutor as a conscious act signaling special (implicit) meaning.
Grice also maintains that in order for the addressee to be able to calculate an implicature, s/he must know, or believe s/he knows the following (Levinson 1983: 113): (12) ii(i) the conventional content of the sentence (P) uttered (ii) the co-operative principle and its maxims
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(iii) the context of P (e.g. its relevance) (iv) certain bits of background information (e.g. P is blatantly false) i(v) that (i)–(iv) are mutual knowledge shared by speaker and addressee
The felicitous interpretation of an implicature is therefore dependent upon the knowledge shared between speaker and hearer, including linguistic, contextual, background, and real-world knowledge, as well as the mutual assumption of conversational cooperation. Grice (1975) also distinguishes between ‘generalized’ implicatures and ‘particularized’ implicatures. Generalized implicatures arise without the need for any particular context. For example, according to Levinson (1983: 126), Grice points out that in uttering (13a), one is implicating (13b), regardless of the context in which it is spoken: (13) a. I walked into a house. b. The house was not my house.
On the other hand, particularized implicatures require a particular context, setting, or situation in order to be calculated, as is the case for the following Spanish expression: (14) ¡Anda! walk-3sg
The implicature derived from this utterance is entirely dependent upon the context and the way in which it is uttered. For example, the literal meaning of anda is third-person singular ‘walk’, which can also be used as a singular familiar command. However, it can also implicate various other meanings, including ‘What a nice surprise,’ ‘I don’t believe it,’ ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ ‘Get the hell out of here,’ or simply ‘Oh,’ or ‘Really’, depending on the situation and the intonation used. Grice (1975) also draws a distinction between conversational implicatures (also referred to as simply ‘implicatures’) and conventional implicatures. Conventional implicatures are derived from the conventional meaning of the words and “non-truth-conditional inferences that are not derived from superordinate pragmatic principles like the maxims, but are simply attached by convention to particular lexical items or expressions” (Levinson 1983: 127). In other words, conventional implicatures are inherently and invariably attached to the linguistic forms from which they arise. Furthermore, conventional implicatures are not characterized by the properties Grice proposed for conversational implicatures (e.g. defeasibility, non-detachability, etc.). For example, the conjunction but
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
conventionally implicates that there is some contrast between the conjuncts, regardless of the context in which it is used (Levinson 1983: 127, citing Grice 1961). Other examples of this type of implicatures include socially deictic expressions such as address forms and honoriªcs. For instance, in the case of the t/ v pronouns (e.g. French tu/vous and Spanish tú/usted), tú (‘you-sg-fam’) in Spanish can have the non-truth-conditional, conventional implicature that the addressee is socially equal to the speaker, while usted (also ‘you-sg-non-fam’) implicates social distance or unequal status. Of interest in this study are Grice’s maxims of Quantity and Manner, as these provide the basis for the neo-Gricean principles proposed to account for anaphora in Spanish. Adherence to the ªrst sub-maxim of Quantity results in the pragmatic inference that the statement uttered is the informationally strongest expression the speaker could make in a given situation. We can see how this maxim operates in the following example, where by uttering the sentence: (15) Ø Llevo cinco años viviendoen Madrid. pro carry-1sg ªve years living in Madrid ‘I’ve been living in Madrid for ªve years.’
the speaker implicates is that s/he has lived in Madrid for only ªve years but no more than ªve. From the absence of an informationally stronger expression (e.g., Llevo veinte años viviendo en Madrid — ‘I’ve been living in Madrid for twenty years’), the listener infers that the interpretation associated with the use of this stronger expression does not hold. Grice’s Quantity Maxim has also been used to account for ‘scalar Quantity implicatures’. According to Levinson (1983: 132), these implicatures arise from sets of contrasting linguistic alternates of the same grammatical category that can be placed in linear order by degree of informativeness, or semantic strength. If a speaker asserts the stronger item in the set, the weaker item is entailed, but not vice versa. However, in asserting the weaker expression, a speaker negates that the stronger item on the scale obtains, i.e., s/he implicates that the stronger expression does not hold. A frequently cited example of such a set is
in which the use of all semantically entails some, but the use of some implicates not all. For instance, in uttering (a) below, a speaker implicates (b): (16) a. Some of the boys went to the party. b. Not all of the boys went to the party.
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In Gricean terms, the speaker who utters (a) would be breaching the maxim of Quantity if in fact all of the boys went to the party. Therefore, the addressee, by assuming that the speaker is following the maxims, infers (b) from utterance (a). However, as shown in (17), such an implicature is readily defeasible through the addition of the phrase in fact all, and thus it fulªlls one of the deªning criteria of conversational implicatures, namely, ‘defeasibility’ (Levinson 1983: 133): (17) Some of the boys went to the party, in fact all.
Another type of scalar inference that has been explained by Grice’s Quantity Maxim is known as a ‘clausal Quantity implicature’. Levinson simpliªes Gazdar’s (1979) formulation of this type of implicatures in the following manner (from Levinson 1983: 136, examples (18) and (19) also his): if I use some linguistic expression that fails to commit me to some embedded proposition, in preference to another available stronger expression that would so commit me, then I may be taken to implicate that I am not in the (epistemic) position to make the stronger statement.
Thus, if a speaker says (18) instead of (19), (18) I believe John is away (19) I know John is away
the speaker implicates that it is possible, for all s/he knows, that John is in fact not away. Clausal implicatures are therefore like scalar Quantity implicatures in that they involve contrasting pairs of stronger and weaker expressions, the weaker of which implicates the negation of the stronger one. The eŸect of generalized scalar and clausal Quantity implicatures is to enrich utterance meaning by inducing the negation of a stronger possible proposition. This inferential strategy is based on Grice’s ªrst Quantity Maxim, which states, “make your contribution as informative as is required” (1975: 45). Inferences from the assumption that the maxim of Manner is being observed can arise from the choice of a simpler, shorter expression over a more prolix one (‘be brief’). Similarly, they may arise from the choice of a more complex or prolix, and thus more explicit and possibly more informative form to ‘avoid obscurity’ or ‘ambiguity’. A speaker who uses an unusually lengthy, complex or detailed form instead of an available simpler one might be taken to implicate that the details are of particular importance, or that an alternative message was intended, which the use of a simpler form would not have conveyed.
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
Adherence to the Manner Maxim is also evidenced in the presentation of a sequence of events in their chronological order (‘be orderly’). In retelling a story, the hearer can infer from the speaker’s presentation of the events that they occurred in that order. In addition, the ‘be orderly’ sub-maxim may also be seen to operate on anaphora in the tendency of speakers to prefer forward anaphora to backward anaphora. That is, speakers tend to introduce entities ªrst by the use of a non-anaphoric NP, which may serve as an antecedent, before making reference to these entities anaphorically. However, as we observed in Chapter 1, it is not the linear ordering of the antecedent and anaphor which determines whether coreference in sentences is syntactically possible, but rather the structural properties of the sentences themselves. Nevertheless, at the level of syntax, natural languages are characterized more often than not by ‘unmarked’ word order, which includes forward pronominalization; that is, forward anaphora is more frequent across languages universally. Furthermore, some languages, including Chinese, do not allow backward pronominalization under any condition, regardless of the structural characteristics of the sentence, and there are no languages that only have backward anaphora (Lust 1986: 27). The fact that forward anaphora is much more common in natural language may re¶ect some universal facts about pronominalization. The most obvious of these facts is that all language exists in real time with respect to production and comprehension. As a result, a set of potential antecedents from any preceding discourse is available to speech participants (as well as readers) for the purposes of anaphor interpretation at the point in discourse at which the anaphor occurs, whereas antecedents used in succeeding discourse are not (Lust 1986: 31). It seems, therefore, that the universality of forward pronouns in natural language may be an instantiation of principles of general cognition and discourse structure, and also of the Gricean sub-maxim of Manner, ‘be orderly’.
2.2 Anaphoric expressions as conversational implicatures Can the use of anaphoric NPs be considered a case of conversational implicature? To answer this question, we must ªrst determine the extent to which anaphoric expressions are characterized by the features of conversational implicatures outlined by Grice. Grice (1975) identiªes six properties of conversational implicatures. The ªrst property is that implicatures are ‘defeasible’ or ‘cancelable’. This means that it is possible to cancel an implicature by adding something to the utterance or
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placing it in a diŸerent linguistic or non-linguistic context. The property of defeasibility, or cancelability, appears to characterize the interpretation of anaphoric expressions involving ‘pragmatic’, or ‘intended’ coreference. For example, as previously noted in Blackwell (1998: 610), by adding a phrase to (20a), the interpretation of the anaphoric pronouns su (interpreted in this context as possessive ‘her’) and le (indirect object ‘her’) can be canceled, and an alternative interpretation is promoted, as (20b) demonstrates. (The coreference relations marked by the indices represent ‘preferred interpretations’ (Levinson 2000) in the absence of other contextual information.) (20) a.
Anai no llevó sui bañadorj en el viaje porque Øi no creía que Øj lei hiciera falta. Ann not carried-3sg {her/his/your-non-fam/their} bathing suit in the trip because pro not believed-1 /3sg her/him-dat made lack.of ‘Anni didn’t take heri bathing suitj on the trip because (shei) didn’t think shei needed itj.’ b. Anai no llevó sui/k bañadorj en el viaje porque Øi no creía que Øj lek hiciera falta a la niñak. Ann not carried-3sg {her/his/your-non-fam/their} bathing suit in the trip because Ø not believed-1 /3sg her/him-dat made lack.of to the child-fem ‘Anni didn’t take heri/k bathing suitj on the trip because (shei) didn’t think the little girlk needed itj.’
However, coreference that is grammatically determined, as in the case of clitic re¶exive se and its subject NP antecedent in (21a) (example (3) in Chapter 1), cannot be suspended by the addition of contextual information. Likewise, utterances characterized by grammatically stipulated non-coreference from the use of a pronoun in a clitic re¶exive environment, as in (21b) (example (4a) in Chapter 1), cannot be rendered coreferential by the addition of a phrase or other contextual material. The non-defeasibility of (21b) is illustrated in (21c), where adding the phrase a María (‘acc Maria’) yields the same noncoreferential relation between the subject María and the object pronoun as the one in (21b) (examples from Blackwell 1998: 611): (21) a.
María se viste. Mary 3refl dresses ‘Mary dresses herself.’ Or ‘Mary gets dressed.’ b. *María la viste. Mary {her/it-fem} dresses ‘*Mary dresses her.’
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
c. *María la viste a María. Mary {her/it-fem} dresses acc Mary ‘*Mary dresses Mary.’
Whereas the coreference and non-coreference relations in (21) are not cancelable by the addition of contextual material, coreference between a pronoun and a full NP that is syntactically prohibited by Reinhart’s c-command constraint can be rendered acceptable when placed in a larger context. For example, the original implicature of non-coreference in (22a) may be canceled by the addition of a clause in (22b) (examples from Blackwell (1998: 611).1 (?? indicates that the coreference relation marked in italics sounds unacceptable. English pronouns in parentheses represent null pronouns (zeros) in Spanish.) (22) a. ??Ø No le va a pagar los estudios porque el padre de Guillermo cree que cada uno de sus hijos debe pagar su propia carrera. ??‘(He) is not going to pay for his/her studies because Guillermo’s father thinks that each one of his children ought to pay for his/her own college education.’ b. Ø No le va a pagar los estudios porque, aunque le sobra el dinero, el padre de Guillermo cree que cada uno de sus hijos debe pagar su propia carrera. ‘(He) is not going to pay for his/her studies because, even though he’s got more than enough money, Guillermo’s father thinks that each one of his children ought to pay for his/her own college education.’
In other words, the relations of non-coreference and coreference in (22) are characterized by cancelability or defeasibility, and thus they fulªll one of the deªning requirements of all conversational implicatures. Another feature of importance to conversational implicatures is their nondetachability. According to Grice (1978: 115), an “implicature is nondetachable in so far as it is not possible to ªnd another way of saying the same thing (or approximately the same thing) which simply lacks the implicature.” Although Grice has suggested that a conversational implicature may exhibit a fairly high degree of non-detachability, he adds that this feature is not a necessary condition for all conversational implicatures, partly because …it does not appear if the implicature depends on the manner in which what is said has been said, and it is also subject to the limitation that there may be no other way of saying what is said, or no way other than one which will introduce peculiarities of manner, e.g. by being artiªcial or long-winded Grice (1978: 115).
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In the case of implicatures of coreference, it is important that we remove the requirement of nondetachability, as Grice has suggested, because in many instances there are other ways to express the same coreference relations expressed by, for instance, a pronoun or null subject, but which have diŸerent additional conversational implicatures. For example, an epithet, a deªnite description, or a demonstrative can implicate the same coreference relation as a pronoun, whereas a pronoun does not always convey the same additional implicatures that the more marked (i.e. more prolix, complex, eŸortful) forms express. Example (23) illustrates this point. (The coreference relations marked represent possible interpretations.) (23) Tan pronto como llegó Juan al trabajo {el cabrón/ese chico/él/Ø} empezó a contar rumores. as soon as arrived-3sg John at.the work {the bastard/that boy/he/pro} started-3sg to tell rumors ‘As soon as John got to work {the bastard/that boy/HE/he} started spreading rumors.’
Here, besides implicating coreference, the use of the epithet el cabrón conveys (implicates) a negative attitude on the part of the speaker, and the demonstrative NP ese chico might be either pejorative or exclamatory, while the overt subject pronoun may be used emphatically. However, the use of a null subject in the same linguistic context, while implicating the same coreference relation, does not carry the same additional implicatures as the other anaphoric expressions. The property of calculability, meaning that the hearer should be able to calculate the appropriate inference, is clearly a characteristic of pragmatic coreference and of reference in general. Farmer and Harnish (1987: 549) point out, for example, that “given that successful communication involves H’s recognizing S’s communicative intention, successful communicative reference will involve H’s recognition of S’s referential intents.” With respect to anaphora, the hearer’s recognition of a speaker’s intended meaning for an anaphoric element (i.e. its intended antecedent, and hence its referent, or interpretation) requires not only understanding the meaning of the expression uttered, but also calculating the speaker’s communicative and referential intentions when using a particular expression. Another feature of implicatures proposed by Grice (1975) is that they are non-conventional, i.e., they are not part of the conventional meaning of linguistic expressions. Obviously, the conventional meaning of a pronoun alone cannot lead the listener to infer its reference. For example, the pronoun él (‘he’,
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
‘him’) has the conventional meaning of ‘third person, singular, masculine, subject pronoun or pronominal object of a preposition’. However, its coreferential interpretation must be ‘implicated’ and inferred or ‘calculated’ in its context of use. According to Grice (1975: 58), utterances with a single meaning can result in diŸerent implicatures depending on the situation in which they are used. For instance, in the following sentence from Green (1989: 26) (cited in Chapter 1, example (2)), several possible implicatures can arise from the pronouns used, depending on the situation, the larger linguistic context, and ultimately, the speaker’s intended meaning: (24) The dean expelled John because he discovered his secret.
In other words, intended coreference may be considered ‘non-conventional’, as long as the intended meaning (or interpretation) of the anaphoric expression is not encoded in its linguistic form, but instead depends on the situation in which it is used. In summary, intended, or pragmatic coreference exhibits three major distinguishing features of implicatures proposed by Grice, cancelability, calculability, and non-conventionality, which suggests that it qualiªes as a case of conversational implicature. One ªnal characteristic of Gricean conversational implicatures is that they are inferences based on utterances rather than sentences. Although the use of anaphoric expressions is not limited to spoken language, this criterion of conversational implicature emphasizes the importance of viewing anaphora relations in their context of use, i.e. as conversational or discourse phenomena rather than sentence-level phenomena.
2.3 Clashes, revisions, and reductions in the original Gricean maxims Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000), Geluykens (1994), and Huang (1991, 1994, 2000a, b) propose that the two Gricean maxims relating directly to the linguistic realization of referential elements in discourse, and speciªcally anaphoric expressions, are those of Quantity and Manner. Geluykens (1994) points out, however, that both of these maxims give con¶icting instructions to the speaker. For instance, the Quantity maxim instructs speakers to be as informative as possible, but also advocates supplying information in the most economical way possible. Similarly, the Manner maxim says that one must avoid ambiguity, thus suggesting the use of maximally clear linguistic expressions, but at the
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same time, it tells us to be brief and maximally economical in our choice of linguistic expressions. Observations such as these, as well as other criticisms of the maxims, have led to several attempts to revise and reduce them (e.g. Atlas and Levinson 1981; Leech 1981, 1983; Sperber and Wilson 1982, 1986/1995; Horn 1984; Levinson 1987a, b, 1991, 2000). For the purposes of this study, the most relevant revisions of the Gricean maxims, besides Levinson’s, are those proposed by Horn (1984) and Atlas and Levinson (1981). Horn (1984) starts out by citing Zipf (1949), who proposed the ‘Principle of Least EŸort’ to explain natural language in general, and “almost everything else in the human universe” (Horn 1984: 11). Horn goes on to describe two competing forces in language use that Zipf identiªed: (1) the ‘Force of Uniªcation’, or ‘Speaker’s Economy’, which promotes simpliªcation and therefore the use of unmarked (simpler, less eŸortful) linguistic forms; and, (2) the antithetical ‘Force of Diversiªcation’, or ‘Auditor’s Economy’, which leads toward the establishment of as many diŸerent linguistic forms as there are messages to communicate (Horn 1984: 11). Horn argues that these two competing forces are responsible for generating Grice’s maxims and the pragmatic inferencing procedure derived from them. In light of this, he suggests that Grice’s original maxims may be collapsed into two principles, the Q- and R-principles, which re¶ect the two competing forces observed by Zipf (Horn 1984: 13): (25) Horn’s Q- and R-principles (a) The Q-Principle (Hearer-based): Make your contribution su¹cient (cf. Quantity 1); Say as much as you can (given R) (b) The R-Principle (Speaker-based): Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity 2, Manner); Say no more than you must (given Q)
Horn’s Q-principle corresponds to Grice’s Quantity 1 maxim and is essentially a restatement of Zipf’s Auditor’s Economy, while his ‘R-principle’ encompasses Grice’s Relation maxim, his Quantity 2 maxim, and, according to Horn, “possibly all the Manner maxims” (1984: 14). The quintessential examples of Q-based implicatures are the classic scalar Quantity implicatures discussed earlier in this chapter, whereby in making a weaker statement, the speaker implicates the negation of a more informative message. And, according to Horn, the R-principle mirrors the eŸect of the Q-principle in that “a speaker who says ‘…p…’ may license the R-inference that he meant ‘…more than p…’” (1984: 14).
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
Besides identifying his R-principle with Zipf’s concept of a speaker’s economy, Horn also relates it to Atlas and Levinson’s (1981) I(nformativeness)principle or ‘I-principle’. This principle instructs the recipient of a message to read as much into an utterance as possible and seek the most informative interpretation “among the competing interpretations that is consistent with common ground” (Atlas and Levinson 1981: 41). According to Atlas and Levinson, adherence to the I-principle results in an “inference to the best interpretation,” where the ‘best interpretation’ takes into account “the shared background presumptions in the context and the communicative intentions attributable to the speaker in light of ‘what he has said’” (1981: 42). In addition, Atlas and Levinson maintain that such inferences take into consideration noncontroversial aspects of common knowledge, including stereotypical relations between events and individuals. Thus, a key notion of Atlas and Levinson’s Ibased inferences is that of ‘inference to stereotype’, whereby hearers draw a more informative, stereotypical inference from a more general, less informative utterance. Horn (1984) recognizes that the Q-principle and the R-principle are in opposition to each other, which leads him to propose a pattern for the resolution of this con¶ict by invoking the notion of markedness. He summarizes this solution in the following ‘Division of Pragmatic Labor’ (Horn 1984: 22): (26) Horn’s Division of Pragmatic Labor The use of a marked (relatively complex and/or prolix) expression when a corresponding unmarked (simpler, less ‘eŸortful’) alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message (one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed).
According to Horn, the pattern, or ‘equilibrium’ achieved by the Division of Pragmatic Labor is instantiated in the grammar of English by the almost complementary distribution of overt pronouns and unrealized PRO. Chomsky attempts to capture this distribution in his ‘Avoid Pronoun Principle’ (1981, 1982), which dictates that one choose a null pronoun over an overt pronoun wherever possible (Chomsky 1982: 65). In other words, in constructions in which either zero or an overt pronoun is structurally possible, zero or PRO will be preferred, as predicted by the Avoid Pronoun Principle (Chomsky 1982: 25). For instance, in the sentence: ‘John likes {?his/Ø} winning the race’, the use of the pronoun his instead of zero (PRO) yields a preferred reading of disjoint reference. Furthermore, Chomsky (1982: 65) suggests that the Avoid Pronoun Principle might be regarded in pragmatic terms “as a subcase of a
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conversational principle of not saying more than is required,” which is equivalent to Grice’s (1975) Quantity 2 maxim. Horn relates the Avoid Pronoun Principle to his R-principle of least eŸort and to conventional rules and constraints characterizing the grammar of a language, and coreference relations in particular. The parallels between Chomsky’s Avoid Pronoun Principle and Horn’s Division of Labor may be observed in environments in English where either PRO or an overt pronoun may be used, as opposed to those in which only a pronoun can be used. Where both alternates can occur, as in (27a), the choice of an overt pronoun, his (the ‘marked’ form, in Horn’s terms), is interpreted as non-coreferential. However, where PRO (zero) cannot occur, as in (27b), in which his cannot be deleted, the use of a pronoun may be interpreted coreferentially (examples from Horn 1984: 23): (27) a. John would much prefer his going to the movie. b. John would much prefer his (own) book.
Horn maintains that in the Division of Labor, abstract or unrealized pronouns are interpreted diŸerently from overt pronouns in environments where both can occur as a result of the interaction of the Q- and R-principles. In other words, wherever both zero or an overt pronoun may occur, there will be a tendency toward the use of zero; but, when a pronoun is used in place of zero, it will tend to implicate that the meaning associated with the use of zero does not apply. Huang summarizes this interaction, stating, “the R-principle generally takes precedence until the use of a contrastive linguistic form induces a Qimplicature to the non-applicability of the pertinent R-implicature” (1994: 7).
2.4 Levinson’s neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora Horn’s reduction of the Gricean maxims to the Q- and R-principles is called into question by Levinson (1987a, b). For instance, Levinson (1987a) observes that, while Horn identiªes his R-principle with Atlas and Levinson’s (1981) I(nformativeness)-principle and with Zipf’s Least EŸort Principle, he never distinguishes clearly between semantic minimization (semantically general terms are preferred to semantically speciªc ones) and expression minimization (briefer units of speech require less eŸort, and thus are preferred to longer ones). Levinson also notes that Horn, like Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995), identiªes Grice’s Quantity 2 maxim with Relevance. This, according to
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
Levinson, is erroneous because “relevance is not primarily about information-relevance is a measure of timely helpfulness with respect to interactional goals” (1987b: 401). In an attempt to remedy these problems, Levinson oŸers an alternative revised Gricean proposal, which takes into consideration the diŸerences between semantic (informational) minimization and expression (or ‘surface’) minimization (1987a, b, 1991, 2000). It consists of three principles, which Levinson argues may be used to account for general “patterns of preferred interpretations for lexical NPs, pronouns and gaps” (1987b: 400). These include two revised Gricean maxims of Quantity and a maxim of Manner, each of which includes a speaker’s maxim and a corresponding recipient’s corollary. Levinson’s ªrst maxim of Quantity, called the ‘Q(uantity)-principle’, states (1987b: 401): (28) Levinson’s Q-principle Speaker’s Maxim: Do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows, unless providing a stronger statement would contravene the I-principle. Recipient’s Corollary: Take it that the speaker made the strongest statement consistent with what he knows, and therefore that:2 (a) if the speaker asserted A(W), and <S, W> form a Horn scale (such that A(S) entails A(W)), then one can infer K~(A(S)), i.e. that the speaker knows that the stronger statement would be false; (b) if the speaker asserted A(W) and A(W) fails to entail an embedded sentence Q, which a stronger statement A(S) would entail, and {S, W} form a contrast set, then one can infer ~ K(Q), i.e. the speaker does not know whether Q obtains or not.
According to Levinson, the Q-principle’s Recipient’s Corollary is motivated by generalized scalar Quantity implicatures. He proposes that it be used to account for patterns of anaphoric reference in all environments where a re¶exive, the semantically stronger expression, can be used in place of a semantically weaker, non-re¶exive pronoun.3 In such environments, Levinson maintains that the contrast forms a Horn-scale, whereby use of a pronoun induces a non-coreferential interpretation, since a re¶exive (the informationally stronger expression) could have been used to encode coreference but was not. For instance, if a Spanish speaker chooses to assert the utterance María la viste (‘Mary dresses her’) and not the informationally stronger and more speciªc utterance María se viste (‘Mary gets dressed’, but
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literally, ‘Mary dresses herself’), the listener must infer that an interpretation of non-coreference between María and the pronoun la (‘her’) in María la viste was intended. Therefore, essentially, the Q-principle provides a pragmatic account for the contrast between re¶exives and pronouns, which traditionally has been considered a grammatical one. Levinson’s second principle, the Principle of (I)nformativeness or ‘I-principle’, is supposed to operate in the opposite direction of his Q-principle, leading the listener to infer a semantically stronger, more informative interpretation from the use of a semantically weaker expression (1987b: 402): (29) Levinson’s I-principle Speaker’s Maxim: the Maxim of Minimization Say as little as necessary, i.e., produce the minimal linguistic information su¹cient to achieve your communicational ends (bearing the Q-principle in mind). Recipient’s Corollary: the Enrichment Rule Amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance by ªnding the most SPECIFIC interpretation, up to what you judge to be the speaker’s m-intended point. Speciªcally: (a) Assume that stereotypical relations obtain between referents or events, UNLESS (i) this is inconsistent with what is taken for granted, (ii) the speaker has broken the Maxim of Minimization by choosing a prolix expression. (b) Assume the existence or actuality of what a sentence is ‘about’ if that is consistent with what is taken for granted. (c) Avoid interpretations that multiply entities referred to (assume referential parsimony); speciªcally, prefer coreferential readings of reduced NPs (pronouns or zeros).
According to Levinson, the interaction of the speaker’s ‘Maxim of Minimization’ and the hearer’s ‘Maxim of Inferential Maximization’ results in “a preference for the maximally rich interpretation of minimal, informationally reduced forms” (1987b: 402). For the purposes of NP interpretation, Levinson’s notion of minimization refers to both semantic minimization (e.g., a pronoun is nearly always semantically more minimal and hence less semantically speciªc than a lexical NP), and expression minimization, which refers to surface length and complexity, such that zeros and then pronouns are (hierarchically) phonetically more minimal than lexical NPs.4 The idea captured in
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
this principle is that, from the use of a semantically general expression, an inference to a semantically more speciªc and more informative interpretation can be made, as long as the interpretation is in line with stereotypical expectations (Levinson 1987a: 66). Levinson (1987a, b, 2000) argues that several diŸerent kinds of conversational inferences provide evidence of the I-principle’s Recipient’s Corollary. These inference-types include the following, in which the (a) utterances tend to implicate the (b) propositions. (Examples (30)–(35) are from Levinson 1987b: 403; (36) is cited in Levinson 1987a: 65; see also Levinson 2000.) (30) ‘Conjunction buttressing’ (Atlas and Levinson 1981) a. John turned the key and the engine started b. p and then q (temporal sequence) p therefore q (causal connectedness) A did X in order to cause q (teleology, intentionality) (31) ‘Conditional perfection’ (Geis and Zwicky 1971) a. If you mow the lawn, I’ll give you ªve dollars. b. If and only if you mow the lawn, will I give you ªve dollars. (32) ‘Bridging’ (Clark and Haviland 1977) a. John unpacked the picnic. The beer was warm. b. The beer was part of the picnic. (33) ‘Inference to stereotype’ (Atlas and Levinson 1981) a. John said ‘Hello’ to the secretary and then he smiled. b. John said ‘Hello’ to the female secretary and then he (John) smiled. (34) ‘Mirror maxim’ (Harnish 1976: 359) a. Harry and Sue bought a piano. b. They bought it together, not one each. (35) ‘Preferred co-reference’ (Levinson 1987b) a. John came in and he sat down. b. Johni came in and hei sat down. (36) ‘Frame-based inferences’ (e.g. Charniak 1972) a. John pushed the cart to the checkout. b. John pushed the cart full of groceries to the supermarket checkout in order to pay for them.
In all of these cases, the (b) inferences are more informative than the (a) utterances that give rise to them in that they entail the (a) utterances, but are more precise or speciªc. These categories of inference may therefore be considered instantiations of Levinson’s I-principle, or ‘I-implicatures’, since en-
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riched, more informative, and more speciªc interpretations are drawn from semantically weaker, less informative utterances. According to Levinson, the preference for coreferential interpretations is derived from the I-principle because such interpretations reduce the number of entities referred to in the domain of discourse. He compares the following sentences to illustrate this point (1987b: 405): (37) a. John1 loves his1 father. b. John1 loves his2 father.
The interpretation assigned to (a) (as indicated by numerical indices) is that both the subject John and the possessive his make reference to the same person. However, in the case of (b), John and his have two diŸerent real-world referents, thus multiplying the number of ‘entities’ referred to in the sentence. Therefore, whereas the coreferential interpretation, indicated in (a), ‘reduces’ the number of entities referred to, the non-coreferential interpretation, indicated in (b), does just the opposite. Another argument Levinson uses in support of the notion that the preference for coreferential interpretations is induced by the I-principle deals with informativity and speciªcity at the level of sense rather than reference. Levinson (1987b: 406) explains: In John came in and he sat down, regardless of the domain of discourse, the coreferential reading is obviously more informative ABOUT JOHN. Indeed the coreferential reading is more informative about John than the non-co-referential reading would be about either referent; it is likely therefore to be a better, more informative interpretation.
In other words, from an empirical standpoint, statements receiving coreferential readings are more informative and speciªc than statements receiving noncoreferential ones. The instructions given in the I-principle’s Recipient’s Corollary raise certain questions. For example, what is meant by ‘m-intended point’, and how is this determined by the addressee? Levinson (1987a: 122) explains that by ‘mintended’ he is referring to “Grice’s (1957, 1968) concept of a meaning intention, where a speaker produces an utterance with the intention of inducing a speciªc belief in the addressee by means of the recognition of this intention.” Grice (1957) calls this notion of intentional communication ‘non-natural meaning’, or ‘meaning-nn’. He maintains that meaning-nn is what we attempt to explain by analyzing utterances, while in cases of natural meaning, the wishes or intentions of the speaker are of no consequence in conveying the
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
desired message. As Wright (1975: 369) points out, citing Grice (1957), an utterance constitutes an instance of non-natural meaning (meaning-nn) because of two factors: (1) none of the utterances directly gives the addressee the message the speaker wishes to convey, but rather the addressee must do a certain amount of inferencing; and, (2) the conveyance of the message is a function of the speaker’s intention, the hearer’s recognition of that intention, and the hearer’s response on the basis of this recognition of intention. We noted earlier that the interpretation of ‘intended’ or ‘pragmatic’ coreference (i.e. coreference that is not grammatically stipulated) involves the determination of the speaker’s intended meaning. Therefore, incorporating the notion of meaning-nn as a constraint on inferences of coreference seems to be entirely justiªed. However, some parts of Levinson’s I-principle may still need clariªcation. For instance, Levinson does not explain what is meant by ‘Assume the existence or actuality of what a sentence is ‘about’ if that is consistent with what is taken for granted,’ stated as sub-maxim (b) of the Recipient’s Corollary. Furthermore, although the I-principle instructs recipients to rely on their knowledge of ‘stereotypical relations’ in the process of anaphora resolution, Levinson does not spell out how this factor interacts with other factors that may also intervene to in¶uence coreference relations. These observations suggest the need for a more precise formulation of the I-principle. Levinson proposes a third inferential strategy, called the ‘M(anner)-principle’, to account for what he calls ‘Q/M-implicatures’ (1987a, b), or simply ‘M-implicatures’ (1991). According to Levinson, these implicatures are based on Horn’s Pragmatic Division of Labor and should be attributed to Grice’s Maxim of Manner. This is because the distinction made in the Division of Labor deals with paired expressions that contrast in surface form (i.e. ‘manner of speaking’, including brief versus prolix) to produce implicatures. Levinson’s ‘M-principle’ is summarized by Huang as follows (1991: 306; see also Levinson 2000: 136–137): (38) Levinson’s M-principle Speaker’s Maxim: do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason. Recipient’s Corollary: if the speaker used a prolix or marked expression M, he did not mean the same as he would have had he used the unmarked expression U — speciªcally he was trying to avoid the stereotypical associations and Iimplicatures of U.
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In other words, M-implicatures arise when a speaker uses a marked linguistic expression instead of an unmarked alternative. Levinson explains that the contrast between ‘unmarked’ and ‘marked’ refers to one between usual versus unusual, or brief versus prolix expressions, where the two alternates in a contrast set are assumed to be of roughly equal semantic generality, contrasting only in surface form (Levinson 1987b: 409, 412). With regard to anaphora interpretation, Levinson proposes that use of a minimal, unmarked form (e.g. a pronoun or zero) will tend to implicate coreference with another NP in all positions where a re¶exive could not have been used. However, reversion to a marked lexical NP will tend to implicate a disjoint reading from another NP in the discourse that might otherwise have served as an antecedent. With regard to markedness, Levinson suggests that wherever zero could be used to express coreference, use of a pronoun would be considered the marked form; and, wherever a pronoun could be used to express coreference, a more prolix NP would constitute the marked expression. Levinson uses the following examples to illustrate the operation of the Mprinciple and its interaction with the I-principle (from Levinson 1987a: 100, 102, respectively): (39) a. John turned the switch and {he/Ø} started the motor. b. John turned the switch and the man started the motor.
Here, the pronoun he in (a) and the NP the man in (b) are both semantically general and have roughly the same sense (e.g. third person, singular, masculine), while contrasting only on the level of markedness of linguistic form. And, although the use of the man in (39b) is semantically general and “ripe for Ienrichment” (Levinson 1987a: 102), the hearer infers non-coreference by virtue of the M-principle, since there are alternative unmarked forms, including he and zero, which the speaker could have used to convey coreference. Furthermore, the M-principle explicitly instructs the speaker not to use a prolix or marked form without reason, and there is no apparent reason for using the marked form in (39b) if coreference is intended. Thus, essentially, the Mprinciple restricts the over application of the I-principle by inducing the negation of I-implicated coreference when a marked form is used for no reason.5 Levinson maintains that three types of generalized conversational implicatures, arising from the interaction of the Q-, I-, and M-principles, provide a system by which we can determine preferred patterns of interpretation for anaphoric expressions as follows (1987b: 410):
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
(40) (a) Where the syntax permits a direct encoding of coreferentiality, e.g., by the use of a re¶exive, the use of an informationally weaker expression, e.g., a non-re¶exive pronoun, will Q-implicate a noncoreferential interpretation. (b) Otherwise semantically general, minimally informative expressions (pronouns and gaps) will favor a coreferential interpretation by the I-principle, UNLESS: (c) the use of a marked form, a lexical NP where a pronoun might have been used, or a pronoun where a zero might have occurred, will Q/ M-implicate(or ‘M-implicate’) a non-coreferential interpretation.
According to Levinson, this framework of preferred interpretations may be used to explain many patterns of ‘preferred’ anaphora use and interpretation in discourse, as well as patterns of anaphora normally described in purely syntactic terms (1987b: 410).
2.5 Problems Levinson’s approach poses for Spanish According to Levinson’s neo-Gricean approach, when a pronoun is used where a re¶exive could have occurred, a Q-implicature of disjoint reference is supposedly generated from the application of the Q-principle. However, Huang (1991, 1994) notes that such an implicature presupposes that re¶exives and pronouns are always in complementary distribution. While this is true for Spanish in the case of clitic weak forms (i.e. object pronouns that cannot be separated from the verb such as re¶exive se),6 this is not always the case for non-clitic strong forms (object pronouns that follow the verb and may be separated from it). Consider the following example from D’Introno (1989: 38): (41) El presidentei hablará de {élij/sí mismoi}. the president will.talk-3sg of {him/him self} ‘The presidenti will talk about {himj/himselfi}.’
D’Introno observes that in sentences such as (41), both the pronoun él (‘him’) and the strong re¶exive sí mismo (‘himself’) can be interpreted anaphorically as bound by the antecedent el presidente (‘the president’). As I argue in Blackwell (2000), the Q-principle may not even apply in cases where a lexical pronoun can replace a re¶exive while retaining coreferential status. However, the fact that a Spanish non-clitic re¶exive such as sí mismo (‘himself’) entails core-
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ference and thus is inherently more informative than a pronoun, suggests that a speaker may tend to use the stronger non-clitic re¶exive form when a weaker pronoun might be perceived as ambiguous. If this were the case, the use of a re¶exive in contexts such as (41) might be considered an attempt by the speaker to avoid ambiguity, and thus would be better explained by Levinson’s M-principle. This position is supported by the fact that the alternate sí mismo (‘himself’) is more marked (i.e. more prolix, less minimal, less usual), while also being more informative than the alternate él (‘him’). Levinson’s M-implicatures also pose a problem for Spanish as well as other languages. These implicatures are generated by the use of marked (prolix, nonidiomatic, non-colloquial, unusual) lexical NPs, which, according to Levinson’s scheme, receive non-coreferential interpretations in environments where a more minimal, ‘unmarked’ form would have implicated coreference. However, this prediction fails to account for the use of a full NP instead of a pronoun, or a lexical pronoun instead of zero, when the speaker intends continuity of reference, as in the following case: (42) Marianita tenía todos los juguetes del mundo, pero a la pobre niña le faltaba el cariño que sólo una madre podría darle. Marianita had-3sg all the toys of.the world, but to the poor child-fem her lacked-3sg the love that only a mother could-3sg give-inf.her ‘Marianita had all the toys in the world, but the poor child lacked the love that only a mother could give her.’
Here, use of the anaphoric NP la pobre niña (‘the poor child’ or ‘the poor little girl’), in lieu of a more minimal pronoun or zero, is coreferential with Marianita. However, the use of the marked full NP might also be viewed as an attempt by the speaker to add information, express his/her attitude, or simply provide a richer description, while at the same time implicating coreference. In this sense, use of the full NP does more than just corefer. So we are still left with the following question: When are implicatures arising from the application of the M-principle able to induce non-coreference? In other words, when does the use of a marked form M-implicate non-coreference, and under what conditions does it not? The observations that either a non-clitic (strong) re¶exive or a pronoun can be used anaphorically in the same environment, while a full lexical NP can be used in place of a pronoun or zero to express the same coreference relation, reveal that Levinson’s neo-Gricean predictions are not always accurate. Therefore, while the neo-Gricean principles may in fact account for the behavior of
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
various NP types in very general terms, there appears to be a need for more explicit constraints in order to better account for patterns of coreference and non-coreference.
2.6 Ariel’s arguments against Levinson’s proposal According to Ariel (1994: 4), Levinson’s observation that it is up to the addressee to determine the speaker’s intended antecedent in cases of pragmatic (nongrammatically determined) coreference, “based on common sense knowledge about probabilities of events and other such considerations,” is far from controversial. However, Ariel (1994, 1996) argues that Levinson’s neo-Gricean approach to anaphora is insu¹cient as it is, because it only provides general instructions for generating certain implicatures, while failing to account for a variety of anaphoric expressions. She calls into question how the neo-Gricean principles should be interpreted and how they can be tested for empirical support. Ariel also observes that there are patterns of anaphora use that contradict the predictions generated by Levinson’s framework. One of Ariel’s (1994, 1996) major arguments against Levinson’s proposal is that it never explains which potential NP will be checked for coreference/ disjointness. For instance, she states, “Levinson’s addressees are required to know what the one and only one potential antecedent is, and then all they have to do is establish whether the potentially anaphoric expression at hand is coreferent or disjoint from it” (Ariel 1994: 11). However, she notes that many, if not most anaphoric expressions occur in contexts in which there is more than one potential antecedent, and she cites the following example from Broadbent (1973), where either the feedpipe or the chain could be selected as the antecedent (1994: 11): (43) The feedpipe lubricates the chain, and it should be adjusted to leave a gap half an inch between itself and the sprocket.
Given linguistic facts such as these, Ariel (1994, 1996) argues that Levinson’s approach cannot explain how one decides among more than one potential antecedent. Another criticism by Ariel deals with the prediction of non-coreference from the use of a ‘marked’ form, which Levinson derives from his M-principle. For example, Ariel points out that the use of English stressed pronouns (as opposed to unstressed pronouns) promote coreferential readings, although
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they pick out a less obvious (less salient or less expected) antecedent, as in the following example (Ariel 1994: 12): (44) Mayai kissed Ginatj, and then SHE*i/j went home.
This example illustrates that Levinson’s prediction of non-coreference from the application of the pragmatic M-principle is erroneous, since the marked (stressed) pronoun in (44) does not implicate disjoint reference, but rather an alternative coreferential interpretation. The example does, however, support Levinson’s M-principle’s instructions to the recipient, “if the speaker used a prolix or marked expression M, he did not mean the same as he would have had he used the unmarked expression U” (Huang 1994: 8). Examples such as (44) and (42) (in the previous section), in which marked forms receive coreferential readings, suggest that Levinson’s M-based prediction with regard to ‘reversion to a marked NP’ (summarized in (40c)) should be revised to account for the linguistic facts as follows: (45) Revised prediction from the application of Levinson’s M-Principle: The use of a marked (more complex, prolix) form, e.g. a lexical NP where a pronoun might have been used, or a pronoun where a zero might have occurred, will tend to M-implicate an alternative, nonstereotypical, or less predictable interpretation, which would not have been implicated by the use of a more minimal, unmarked expression.
This generalization carefully avoids predicting coreferentiality, thus resolving the problem of over prediction of non-coreference found in Levinson’s apparatus. On the other hand, as a pragmatic rule, it attempts to describe how the recipient will interpret alternative linguistic forms, regardless of whether they are coreferential or not. Ariel (1994) also points out that Levinson’s predictions of non-coreference from the use of a marked full NP where a pronoun might have been used, are not always borne out (a fact illustrated by example (42)). She uses the following pair of sentences from Haegeman (1984) to illustrate this problem (1994: 13): (46) a. Johni did all the housework while John’s*i wife was ill. b. Johni will study linguistics, while John’si/j father used to teach literature.
Ariel maintains that Levinson’s framework cannot account for the ungrammaticality of (a) and the possibility of coreference in (b). Speciªcally, in both cases, pronouns could have been used in place of John’s to express coreference;
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
however, when marked NPs are used, these should receive non-coreferential readings. According to Ariel, Levinson’s erroneous prediction of non-coreference for sentences like (46b) stem from his failure to take into consideration the relationship between clauses containing the antecedents and those containing the anaphors. Presenting examples from Chinese and Hebrew, Ariel (1994) shows that in some contexts the degree of cohesion between the clauses containing the antecedent and the anaphor determines whether coreference is possible or not. In other words, in such contexts it is not the choice of zero versus a pronoun or a full NP which determines coreference versus disjoint reference. A third major criticism by Ariel deals with the fact that a great variety of referring expressions, including names, deªnite descriptions, demonstratives, pronouns, and zeros can occur in the same linguistic context and still be anaphoric. For instance, according to Ariel’s ªgures on Hebrew taken from naturally occurring texts, deªnite descriptions are interpreted coreferentially with a previously mentioned linguistic antecedent between 56.25% and 81.4% of the time depending on discourse genre (1996: 18; see also Ariel 1990). However, Levinson’s framework fails to take into consideration the diŸerent types of anaphoric devices used by speakers by limiting his analysis to full NPs, pronouns, re¶exives and zeros. With regard to the use of pronouns versus zeros, Spanish may present some of the same problems for Levinson’s analysis as Hebrew and Chinese do. Ariel (1994: 13) makes reference to one of these problems with regard to the facts of spoken discourse, stating: As in Chinese, a Hebrew speaker should have no reason to use an overt pronoun when coreference is intended, for zero is usually allowed. However, overt coreferent pronouns occur quite often, their popularity depending on the genre (much more so in spoken than in written discourse).
As observed in Chapter 1 of this book and earlier in this chapter, Spanish overt subject pronouns may be used in certain environments where null subjects can also be used equally eŸectively to implicate the same coreferential relations. Thus, Levinson’s prediction of non-coreference from the use of a lexical pronoun where zero might have been used coreferentially, is not always accurate for Spanish either. Nevertheless, in naturally occurring discourse, overt subject pronouns occur far less frequently than zero subjects in Spanish, suggesting that Levinson’s I-principle of ‘minimization’ has empirical support as a general rule.
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2.7 The non-complementarity of NP expressions in Spanish The observation that a wide variety of NP expressions may be used coreferentially points to the fact that referring expressions do not always occur in complementary environments. For instance, Spanish names and pronouns (both overt and null) typically contrast with each other with respect to syntactic distribution and coreferentiality in certain contexts, as demonstrated by the following sentences: (47) a. *Luis dijo que Luis se iba. Louis said-3sg that Louis 3refl was.going-3sg ‘*Louis said that Louis was leaving.’ b. Luisi dijo que {él/Ø}ij se iba. Louis said-3sg that {he/pro} 3refl was.going-3sg ‘Louisi said that {HEij/(heij/shej/you-non-fam)} was leaving.’7
Whereas the second instance of Luis in (47a) is not interpreted coreferentially with the subject NP Luis, both the overt pronoun él (‘HE’) and the null subject in (47b) give rise to a default interpretation of coreference in the absence of any information to promote an alternative reading. However, native speakers of Spanish found all the NP options in (48) to be acceptable for expressing coreference, even though the repetition of the name Juan may have a ‘bantering eŸect’, as Bolinger (1979) suggests: (48) A pesar de que Juan es listo, {Juan/él/Ø} no logrará In spite of that John is clever, {John/he/pro} not achieve-3sg-fut su meta. 3poss goal ‘In spite of the fact that John is clever, {John/HE/he} will not achieve his goal.’
Green (1989) notes that in English, the repetition of a name or the use of a deªnite NP cannot be interpreted coreferentially with a potential antecedent in certain environments where pronouns can be. She demonstrates this phenomenon using the following examples (1989: 29): (49) a. Sandy realized that {he/*Sandy} could get into serious trouble. b. Eric Dickerson thought that {he/*the Ram’s running back} would rush for at least 100 yards. c. Philip doubted that {he/*the man/*the bastard} would be caught.
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
Nevertheless, while the anaphoric use of repeated nouns, epithets, and deªnite NPs has been thought to be limited by structural constraints (Reinhart 1976, 1983a, b; Lasnik 1976), there are exceptions to the rule, as Bolinger’s example demonstrates (1979: 297): (50) The committee decided that the committee was the beneªciary.
On the one hand, Bolinger maintains that the appropriate use of repeated nouns to express coreference requires a motive and special intonation. For example, a speaker may want to highlight the topic of the sentence as in (51a), to stress the nature or qualities of the referent as in (51b), or to be ‘underlyingly demonstrative’ as in (51c) (Bolinger 1979: 291–292): (51) a. A: What do you think of Tom? — B: Oh, I líke Tóm. (rise-fall-rise) b. You don’t need sulfur for drying apricots; sulfur ruins the ¶avor. c. When Joe walks down the street, Joe (‘that guy’) struts.
On the other hand, however, when the speaker’s utterance merely describes a point action, it does not lend itself to the repetition of a name or the use of another marked form, as the examples from Green (1989) presented in (49) demonstrate. Various types of deªnite NP expressions besides zeros, pronouns, names, and deªnite NPs may be used anaphorically in Spanish. They include epithets such as el cabrón (‘the bastard’) and el idiota (‘the idiot’) and more commonly, demonstratives and demonstrative phrases, such as ese niño (‘that little boy’ or ‘that kid’) in the following excerpt from a Spanish children’s novel by Elvira Lindo (1998: 11; example from Blackwell 2001: 906–907): 8 (52) 1 2 3
…se me acercó un chaval y me preguntó por todo el morro: refl me came.near a kid and me asked-3sg by all the mouth — Oyes, niño, ¿tú no serás Manolito Gafotas? hear-2sg boy you not will.be-2sg Manolito Gafotas Y yo le dije a ese niño (a él/Ø) que sí que lo era… and I him told to that boy that yes that it was-1sg ‘…a kid came up to me and asked me with every bit of nerve: — Hey, boy, you wouldn’t be Manolito Gafotas, would you? And I told that boy (HIM/him) yes I was…’
Here, the demonstrative NP ese niño (‘that boy’) in the third line is used to implicate coreference with the antecedent un chaval (‘a kid’), in the ªrst line of the excerpt. However, in the same context, either the clitic, indirect object
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pronoun le with an emphatic prepositional phrase a él (‘HIM’), or simply the clitic pronoun le (‘him’) alone, could have been used to express coreference with the same antecedent. (These pronominal expressions are included in parentheses in the example in order to illustrate this point.) We are thus left wondering why one of these more minimal alternates was not used. One reason often given for why a speaker may choose to use a marked or more prolix form to express coreference, even though a more minimal, unmarked form is available, is to avoid ambiguity. In fact, ambiguity avoidance, along with contrast and emphasis, are the reasons traditionally given by Spanish grammarians to explain the use of Spanish overt subject pronouns instead of null subjects (Brucart 1987). Takami (1987) also identiªes ambiguity avoidance as a reason for using a more prolix, eŸortful pronoun as opposed to zero in Japanese. He proposes a pragmatic constraint called the ‘Avoid Ambiguity Constraint’, which is in direct opposition to Chomsky’s (1981, 1982) Avoid Pronoun Principle. It states that the use of a pronoun is preferred “in constructions where a zero pronoun produces ambiguity about its antecedent” (Takami 1987: 181). In Takami’s Japanese examples, a null pronoun is used whenever, based on the nature or content of the sentence, we are able to construe the anaphoric relation between zero and its antecedent from general semantic contextual cues and expectations based on our world knowledge. According to Takami (1987: 182), the increase in ambiguity in a sentence leads to a preference for the use of a lexical pronoun over zero in Japanese. Furthermore, in Japanese, the repetition of a name (instead of using a pronoun such as kare (‘he’)), can also function to avoid ambiguity. These tendencies support the notion that, when a marked form is used to implicate coreference where an unmarked form would serve the same referential purpose, the speaker should have a reason to do so (e.g. ‘avoid ambiguity’). This in turn re¶ects the existence of Levinson’s M-principle, “do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason.” Unfortunately, however, the need to avoid ambiguity does not explain the use of the anaphoric demonstrative NP ese niño (‘that boy’) in (52). In this section, we have observed that speakers often have several possible NP expressions from which to choose in order to encode anaphora relations. Furthermore, the choice of one anaphoric expression over another may be constrained by structural, functional, pragmatic, and discursive factors. However, the linguistic facts of Spanish stemming from the non-complementarity of diŸerent NP types in certain contexts, but not in others, are not fully accounted for by Levinson’s neo-Gricean pragmatic model, thus justifying the need to seek a more explanatory model.
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
2.8 Consistency constraints on implicatures Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) has developed an alternative approach to Levinson’s neo-Gricean framework in order to deal with Chinese anaphora. He argues that pragmatic principles for dealing with anaphora must be constrained by factors such as information saliency and general consistency conditions on conversational implicatures. More speciªcally, he proposes that, by using a combination of neo-Gricean conversational implicatures and a set of ‘consistency constraints’ which organize their interaction, many of the patterns of preferred interpretations for zeros, pronouns, re¶exives, and lexical NPs in Chinese can be more fully explained. Huang begins his analysis by assuming that the following general pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 1991) “is largely an instantiation, in the realm of linguistic reference, of the systematic interaction of the neoGricean pragmatic principles” (1991: 309; 1994: 16): (53) The general pattern of anaphora Reduced, semantically general anaphoric expressions tend to favor locally co-referential interpretations; full, semantically speciªc anaphoric expressions tend to favor locally non-coreferential interpretations.
However, upon examining the facts of Chinese, Huang ªnds that the use of a pronoun where zero can occur does not always M-implicate the contrast in reference with zero that is predicted in Levinson’s proposal. As previously noted in this chapter, the prediction of non-coreference from the use of a pronoun where zero could have occurred is not always borne out for Spanish or for Hebrew (Ariel 1994, 1996). Huang’s solution to the problem of why Mimplicatures apply under certain circumstances and vanish under others is based on what Grice suggested to be the distinguishing properties of conversational implicatures (Grice 1975; Levinson 1983): (1) cancelability or defeasibility, (2) non-detachability, (3) calculability, (4) non-conventionality, and (5) reinforceability. With regard to defeasibility, Huang (1991: 324) explains, “conversational implicatures can simply evaporate in certain linguistic and non-linguistic context.” In other words, in the case of intended coreference, patterns of interpretation of full NPs (e.g. names and deªnite NPs), pronouns, and zero predicted by Levinson’s neo-Gricean system of implicatures can be canceled by contextual information. In addition, Huang maintains that these implicatures can be overridden when there is an inconsistency with (1) back-
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ground assumptions (or world knowledge), (2) meaning-nn, (3) semantic entailments, and (4) priority pragmatic inferences. 2.8.1 The background knowledge constraint on anaphora According to Huang’s proposal, the ªrst way in which an M-implicated contrast in reference can be canceled is when it is not in keeping with background assumptions or world knowledge. This consistency constraint on implicatures includes diŸerent aspects of factual or general encyclopedic knowledge, which Cornish (1986) deªnes as properties of entities, relations between them, causes and consequences of actions and events, and so on. In addition, this constraint involves premises about stereotypical roles and expectations based on familiar ‘scripts’, ‘schema’, ‘scenes’, and ‘frames’. Tannen (1979) discusses how the notions of ‘script’, ‘schema’, and ‘frame’ are related to people’s expectations, which in turn in¶uence their interpretations of new experiences, and their comprehension and production of language. The term script is used by Schank and Abelson (1977) in their work on story understanding to refer to a familiar or stereotypical sequence of events that are associated with a particular situation. Rumelhart (1977) develops a model for the comprehension of stories based on notion of ‘schema’, which he deªnes as “an abstract representation of a generic concept for an object, event, or situation” (1977: 266). According to Tannen (1979), the term frame stems from Bateson (1955), and is associated with the anthropological/sociological work of Hymes (1974) and GoŸman (1974), and with Minksy’s (1975) research in artiªcial intelligence. In his work on the ethnography of speaking, Hymes (1974) refers to the notion of frame as a culturally determined familiar activity and as one of the ‘means of speaking’, which Tannen explains in the following manner (1979: 141–142): In order to interpret utterances in accordance with the way in which they were intended, a hearer must know what ‘frame/s’ s/he is operating in, that is, whether the activity being engaged in is joking, imitating, chatting, lecturing, or performing a play, to name just a few possibilities familiar to our culture.
Tannen also describes Fillmore’s use of the term frame to refer to “any system of linguistic choices that can get associated with prototypical instances of scenes”, and the term scene to refer to “any kind of coherent segment of human beliefs, actions, experiences or imaginings” (Tannen 1979: 143, citing Fillmore 1975: 124). However, regardless of the term used or the way it has been deªned,
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
the main point is that people use their background knowledge, including their knowledge of the world and their knowledge from previous experiences to interpret new experiences. Furthermore, hearers can have culturally determined expectations or assumptions about speciªc situations, events, and activities, which in¶uence the way in which they interpret utterances. We can therefore expect recipients to utilize their background knowledge, expectations, and assumptions in order to interpret anaphoric expressions. Huang uses the following example from Chinese to illustrate the evaporation of the M-contrast between a pronoun and zero due to the consistency constraint of background knowledge (1991: 324): (54) a.
Yisheng shuo bingren zhidao Ø mingtian gei ta kaidao surgeon say patient know Ø tomorrow for 3sg operate ‘The surgeoni says that the patientj knows that {heik/you/we/they…} will operate on himj tomorrow.’ b. Yisheng shuo bingren zhidao ta mingtian gei ta kaidao surgeon say patient know 3sgtomorrow for 3sg operate ‘The surgeoni says that the patientj knows that heik will operate on himj tomorrow.’
Here, our background assumption that surgeons usually do the operating is the overriding factor in determining the interpretations of the anaphoric NPs. This factor cancels out the alternative interpretations for the anaphoric expressions in question. Huang’s example shows that a potential antecedent will tend to be rejected if it is not in keeping with our background or world knowledge. By placing this consistency constraint on neo-Gricean implicatures, the problem of how addressees determine whether potentially anaphoric expressions are to be interpreted as coreferential or disjoint from potential antecedents is partially solved. 2.8.2 Grice’s meaning-nn and the mutual knowledge constraint The second consistency constraint on implicatures proposed by Huang requires that “the M-contrast in reference must be consistent with what the speaker might clearly intend (that is, mean-nn) given the assumed state of mutual knowledge” (Huang 1991: 325). With regard to M-contrasts in Spanish, the prediction of an M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of a pronoun in place of zero, or a full NP in place of a pronoun would be canceled out if (1) the hearer knows that the speaker intends a marked form to be
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interpreted as coreferential; (2) the hearer is expecting the speaker to do so; and (3) the speaker knows that the hearer knows all that. In other words, Huang proposes that M-implicatures of disjoint reference may be canceled by assumptions of mutual knowledge. The notion of mutual knowledge is addressed at length by Clark and Marshall (1981), who deªne it as follows: “A knows that A and B mutually know that p”; and, from the vantage point of speaker B, B knows that A and B mutually know that p (1981: 18). Clark and Marshall go on to point out the following tight relationship between mutual knowledge and deªnite reference (1981: 19): Mutual knowledge, then, is ubiquitous. It is an essential ingredient in convention, in meaning, and in language in general. It isn’t surprising that it should be an essential ingredient in deªnite reference too.
Clark and Marshall (1981) also classify mutual knowledge in terms of its sources in a person’s experience. They distinguish three sources or types of evidence that something constitutes the interlocutors’ ‘common ground’ and therefore mutual knowledge, namely, community membership, physical copresence, and linguistic co-presence (see also Clark and Carlson 1992).9 Ariel (1988: 66) summarizes the three types of mutual knowledge proposed by Clark and Marshall as follows: (55) Mutual Knowledge (a) Community membership mutual knowledge: consists of that knowledge all community members are assumed to possess plus a system of inferencing. (b) Physical co-presence mutual knowledge: that knowledge speakers have by virtue of their attending to the physical situation they are in. (c) Linguistic co-presence mutual knowledge: knowledge shared by speakers because it has been mentioned in the discourse itself.
This tripartite deªnition of mutual knowledge incorporates shared background knowledge, which might be viewed as a subset of the common ground of the speaker and the addressee. Huang (2000a: 166) emphasizes the crucial role mutual knowledge plays in conversation in a speaker’s choice of referring expressions (particularly anaphoric expressions) and the addressee’s recognition of the intended referent, stating: In conversation, both the speaker and the hearer make continuous assessments about each other’s state of knowledge (e.g. Clark and Marshall, 1981)… This holds, of course for referential management in conversation. Given that all referential work in conversation is essentially ‘recipient designed’ (Sacks and SchegloŸ
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
1979; SchegloŸ 1996), the speaker, in deciding on a particular referential form, has to ensure that it is one that can serve for the hearer to identify the intended referent. Thus, anaphoric production in conversation depends crucially on the assumptions made by the speaker about how the hearer will recognize the intended referent.
Given the central role of the interlocutors’ state of mutual knowledge in reference and reference resolution, we can expect this consistency constraint to intervene to (1) in¶uence the use and interpretation of anaphoric expressions; and (2) cancel any implicatures of coreference and non-coreference predicted by Levinson’s model that run contrary to this knowledge. 2.8.3 Semantic entailments and general semantic constraints on anaphora According to Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b), anaphoric interpretations promoted by the neo-Gricean apparatus must be congruent with semantic entailments and general semantic constraints. Semantic entailment is deªned as follows (Levinson 1983: 174): (56) A semantically entails B iŸ [if and only if] every situation which makes A true makes B true (or: in all worlds in which A is true, B is true).
According to Levinson (1983), this relation is basic to semantics and captures inferences derived solely from logical truths or semantic content. Levinson also notes that while pragmatic inferences are defeasible or cancelable, deductive or logical inferences are not. The consistency constraint of semantic entailment can be evoked to explain the cancellation of implicatures of disjoint reference from the use of a marked NP in instances where the meaning of the anaphor is semantically entailed by the meaning of the antecedent. In other words, the predicted Mcontrast in reference between a marked and an alternative unmarked expression can be overruled by semantic entailments. Such entailments depend on the semantic features of the lexicon and the language users’ knowledge of the lexicon. The following example in French from Cornish (1986: 24), involves an implicature of coreference resulting from semantic entailment: (57) 70% des entreprises qui ont été victimes d’un incendie important cessent leur activité dans les trois années qui suivent le sinistre. (Advertisement, Le Monde, 26.10.71). ‘70% of ªrms suŸering a serious ªre stop working within three years of the disaster.’
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Here, although Levinson’s proposal predicts that the full (i.e. ‘marked’) lexical NP, le sinistre (‘the disaster’), should receive a non-coreferential reading, this reading is canceled, since the antecedent, un incendie important (‘a serious ªre’), semantically entails the anaphoric NP, le sinistre (‘the disaster’). Carter (1987) refers to anaphoric relations such as the one between the two full NPs in (57) using Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) term reiteration, which Carter deªnes in the following manner (1987: 41): In the case of reiteration, an approximate information constraint usually operates: that is, the anaphoric lexical item must usually contain no information that its antecedent lacks. This is because the function of an anaphor is typically to access given information rather than to introduce new.
Carter uses the following example to illustrate his point (1987: 41): (58) John has bought a new car. The (car/vehicle/thing/?Jaguar) goes at quite a speed.
Carter explains that the anaphoric use of the Jaguar is odd, since it introduces new information, whereas the other three deªnite NPs, the car, the vehicle, and the thing contain no more information than their antecedent, a new car contains, and thus a coreferential reading for these NPs is acceptable. With regard to Spanish, this semantic relation is illustrated by the following examples from Blackwell (2001): (59) a.
Juan habló con su esposai. La mujerij le John spoke-3sg with his wife. The {woman/wife} him dio un beso. gave-3sg a kiss ‘John spoke with his wifei. The {woman/wife}ij gave him a kiss.’ b. Juan habló con la mujeri. Su esposaj le John spoke-3sg with the woman/wife. His wife him dio un beso. gave-3sg a kiss ‘John spoke with the {woman/wife}i. His wifej gave him a kiss.’
In (a), su esposa (‘his wife’) semantically entails la mujer (‘the woman’ or ‘the wife’), since the word la mujer contains no more semantic information than its antecedent, su esposa. Therefore, la mujer can be interpreted as referring anaphorically to su esposa. However, in (b), the ªrst NP, la mujer, does not semantically entail su esposa, and therefore coreference is not possible. This example demonstrates how a full NP, where a pronoun could have been used
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
coreferentially, can implicate coreference when the antecedent semantically entails the marked expression. In other words, semantic entailment can promote the cancellation of an M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of a marked NP where a more minimal, unmarked expression could have been used to implicate coreference by virtue of Levinson’s I-principle. 2.8.4 Antecedent saliency and the ‘aboutness’ hypothesis According to Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b), another consistency constraint on inferences arising from the application of the neo-Gricean principles involves ‘antecedent saliency’. Speciªcally, Huang argues that M-contrasts are overridden when there is inconsistency with what is relevant or salient. For instance, he notes that when there is a topic in Chinese, the M-implicated referential opposition associated with the use of a pronoun where a zero anaphor could occur seems to evaporate (1994: 140; 2000b: 244). As a result, both zero and a pronoun, which would otherwise signal a contrast in reference, are interpreted as coreferential with the topic of the sentence. Huang (2000b: 244) ties the intuition “that the topic is the most salient element in a topic construction, around which the comment clause centers” to “various versions of what is called the ‘aboutness’ hypothesis concerning the well-formedness of a topic construction in a language.” According to Bosch (1983), the intended referent for an anaphoric expression must be the most salient entity (i.e. potential antecedent) in the domain of discourse at the moment of the utterance. However, he goes on to point out that the abstract notion of ‘salience’ is not very useful for explaining the use of anaphoric pronouns, unless it is related to discourse in terms of aboutness, which he describes as follows (1983: 57–58): Within a discourse, the most salient object at any point is always the object the discourse at that point is about… anaphoric pronouns refer to objects which the sentences (of which the pronouns form a part) are about, provided the objects are semantically suitable with respect to the pronoun form.10
Bosch further explains that, because a pronoun itself excludes too few possible referents in any actual situation (i.e., too many possible NPs in any domain of discourse could be the antecedents of he, she, or it), the most likely referent for a given pronoun must be what is most relevant or salient in the discourse at a given moment. Therefore, Huang’s consistency constraint of antecedent saliency, which may be viewed as a graded notion, is determined by the condition of ‘aboutness’.
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Both aboutness and antecedent saliency are directly related to the notions of ‘topic’ or ‘theme’, and ‘givenness’ (see, for example, Chafe 1976; Bolinger 1979; Prince 1981; Givón 1983; Reinhart 1981, 1983a). Furthermore, from a cognitive standpoint, they deal with the notions of ‘foregrounded status’ of the intended antecedent (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983), and ‘focus’, or ‘in focus’ (e.g. Linde 1979; Reichman 1981; Marslen-Wilson et al. 1982; Gundel et al. 1993). These related notions will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 3. Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) proposes that any interpretation implicated by the interaction of the neo-Gricean M- and I-principles is constrained by ‘information saliency’ in general, and, more speciªcally, that “implicatures to coreference may be preferred according to the saliency of antecedent in line with the following hierarchy: topic > subject > object, etc.” (1994: 17). He suggests that, in the absence of any other consistency constraints on anaphora, addressees will tend to favor as antecedents topics over subjects, subjects over objects, and objects over any other NPs.11 The tendency to choose subject NPs as antecedents over object NPs is instantiated by Spanish listeners’ interpretations of the following utterance, which was included in an experiment to test for interpretations of anaphoric expressions in Spanish utterances (Blackwell 2001): (60) Al llegar a casa Juani besó a sui mujerj y entonces Øij se puso a preparar la cena. ‘Upon arriving at home Johni kissed hisi wifej and then {‘hei/shej’} started to prepare dinner.’
In this study, 105 Spaniards listened to a series of Spanish utterances on a tape recording, in which each utterance was read twice out loud by a native speaker of Spanish. After hearing each utterance twice, the participants selected their preferred interpretation of the antecedent for the anaphoric expression in question by responding to a multiple-choice test question. In response to the question ¿Quién preparó la cena? (‘Who prepared dinner?’), which corresponded to the utterance in (60), 88 of the 105 respondents (84%) selected Juan as the antecedent of the null subject, whereas 11 (11%) selected the other potential antecedent, su esposa (‘his wife’), and an additional ªve respondents answered ‘don’t know’. These results reveal the in¶uence of antecedent salience in the process of anaphora interpretation. That is, when faced with two plausible antecedents for an anaphoric expression, the majority of the listeners interpreted the most salient NP (in this case, the subject) as the antecedent. In neo-Gricean terms, this ‘preferred interpretation’ constitutes a simple I-impli-
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
cature of coreference in the absence of any pertinent information that might cancel it. For instance, if one knew for a fact that Juan hated to cook, never did the cooking, or was in some way incapacitated and could not cook, one would likely infer that the alternative potential antecedent su mujer (‘his wife’) was the intended one. In other words, an interpretation based on the potential antecedents’ salience would be overridden by inferences based on the recipient’s background knowledge. The inclusion of antecedent saliency as a consistency constraint on the neo-Gricean implicatures attempts to further address the problem of how to determine which of several possible NPs is the intended antecedent within the neo-Gricean program. In other words, whereas, “Levinson seems to pick the most accessible antecedent” (Ariel 1994: 11), thus simply relying on saliency to select the intended antecedent, Huang’s model is more explicit, since it speciªes the role of this constraint in the implicature cancellation process. Notwithstanding, Ariel (1994) observes that if we choose the most salient NP as the preferred antecedent for a pronoun, we do not account for patterns of anaphora involving stressed pronouns in English. She uses the following example to illustrate this problem (1994: 12): (61) Mayai kissed Ginatj, and then SHE*i/j went home. As Ariel points out, stressed pronouns should be classiªed as marked, according to Levinson’s markedness scale, and therefore, they should promote noncoreferential readings where unstressed pronouns could have been used coreferentially. However, as (61) reveals, the stressed pronoun promotes a disjoint reading with the most ‘accessible’ (i.e. most salient) antecedent (the subject Maya), while picking “a less obvious candidate as antecedent” (1994: 12). This observation lends further support for the revised M-principle, proposed in (45) of this chapter, which states that the use of a marked expression (e.g. a stressed pronoun), where an unmarked form (e.g. an unstressed pronoun) could have occurred, will tend to implicate an alternative, non-stereotypical, or less predictable interpretation. This version of the M-principle accounts for the fact that a marked form, in place of an unmarked alternate, will implicate a contrast in meaning, which may also involve coreference.
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2.9 Summary and proposed framework of analysis Huang’s revised neo-Gricean approach to anaphora and Ariel’s (1994, 1996) critique of Levinson’s (1987a, b) proposal uncover some of the ways in which his apparatus does not accurately pick the intended antecedent in contexts with more than one potential antecedent. An examination of Huang’s (1991, 1994, 2000b) proposal and a consideration of the facts of Spanish and other languages provide arguments to support the inclusion of a set of consistency constraints on the neo-Gricean system of implicatures proposed by Levinson. The facts point to the need to modify Levinson’s M-principle and his predictions of non-coreference based on this principle. The strength of Huang’s proposal appears to be the recognition that, even though a basic pattern of preferred anaphora interpretation can be captured in terms of Gricean implicatures, this pattern will be restricted by the consistency constraints. As we have seen, these constraints include semantic constraints and entailments, antecedent saliency, and general constraints on implicatures based on background and mutual knowledge. According to Huang (1991: 330–331), the consistency constraints will have a twofold function: (1) they will force an evaporation of any interpretation that runs contrary to them; and (2) they will simultaneously promote another interpretation. Huang hypothesizes that this procedure will continue “recursively until the interpretation that is most compatible with our knowledge about the world is achieved” (1991: 331). Based on Huang’s proposal that pragmatic implicatures may be canceled by semantic and pragmatic constraints, I propose that patterns of anaphora in sentences and discourse may be accounted for in general terms by the Q-, Iand M-principles. However, anaphora interpretations can be expected to be constrained by the following factors, which may either support Levinson’s neo-Gricean predictions of coreference or non-coreference, or cancel them and simultaneously promote alternative interpretations: (62) Grammatical and Consistency Constraints on neo-Gricean implicatures derived from the Q-, I- and M-principles: a. Grammatical constraints on coreference (e.g. agreement, c-command, and other (binding) constraints) b. Antecedent saliency: topics, usually grammatical subjects (but also objects), will tend to be preferred antecedents. However, such implicatures of coreference must be consistent with general implicature constraints, including the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the addressee (e.g. background and world knowledge and assump-
The neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora
tions), and semantic constraints (consistency constraints (c) and (d)) c. Mutual knowledge of the speaker and addressee based on (i) community membership mutual knowledge; (ii) physical co-presence mutual knowledge; (iii) linguistic co-presence mutual knowledge; and (iv) general, presumably shared, world knowledge and background assumptions d. Semantic constraints including lexical constraints, semantic entailments, and logical semantic relationships.
In essence, what I am proposing by following Huang’s approach and including a set of consistency constraints on implicatures of coreference/noncoreference, is that such constraints be given a more prominent role in the neo-Gricean theory of anaphora. Also, whereas Levinson’s neo-Gricean principles are set up to deal with “preferred interpretations in the absence of contextual cues to the contrary” (1987b: 410), the consistency and grammatical constraints proposed here attempt to identify, and account for, those ‘contextual cues to the contrary’ and any other factors that intervene in the process of anaphora production and resolution. By combining both the neoGricean principles and the constraints predicted to limit their application in one theoretical framework, I hope to provide a fuller, more explanatory account of Spanish anaphora.
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Chapter 3
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
3.
Introduction
In Chapter 2, I outlined Levinson’s neo-Gricean approach to anaphora. In this approach, three pragmatic principles interact in the production and comprehension of anaphora. These principles are based on the quantity of information provided by the speaker, its informativeness, and the manner of linguistic expression in terms of markedness in both form and meaning. I also argued that, for such an approach to accurately predict the speaker’s choice of a referring expression, one would have to assume the complementary distribution of NP types. However, it was shown that speakers are often free to use several NP expressions in the same context to ‘implicate’ coreference with a given antecedent. Given this possibility, two basic questions must be addressed. First and foremost, what factors in¶uence and constrain the speaker’s choice of, for instance, a lexical NP instead of a pronoun, or a pronoun instead of a null subject? Secondly, to what extent are the factors in¶uencing the use of NP expressions, as identiªed in the literature, compatible with the revised neoGricean approach proposed at the end of Chapter 2, and in particular, Huang’s (1991, 1994, 2000b) notion of consistency constraints on implicatures? To address these questions, both conversational strategies and the roles and cognitive statuses of referents are examined in this chapter. Speciªcally, we shall see how two speaker strategies, the use of recipient-designed recognitionals and minimization with regard to both informativeness and surface linguistic form, in¶uence a speaker’s use of referring expressions. In addition, the notion of givenness and the speciªc functions or roles that NPs play, such as the establishment and maintenance of reference, as well as its contrast and continuity, are discussed in light of the revised neo-Gricean framework proposed at the end of Chapter 2. We shall also take into account cognitive factors involved in anaphora, including the relationship between the choice of a linguistic form by the speaker and its ‘accessibility’ in the mind of the recipient (e.g. Ariel 1990,
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1994, 1996), and the assumed memory and attention state of the addressee when a certain NP type is used (e.g. Gundel et al. 1993; Fretheim and Gundel 1996; Gundel and Mulkern 1998).
3.1 Minimization and recipient design in conversation Prince (1981) has pointed out that human language is tailored by the sender to meet the particular assumed needs of the intended receiver. She goes on to note that “information packaging in natural language re¶ects the sender’s hypotheses about the receiver’s assumptions and beliefs and strategies” (1981: 224). Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) take a similar stance, assuming that the ways humans produce speech are closely adapted to the ways humans can comprehend speech. Furthermore, these authors maintain that, if language production is tuned to the properties of the language comprehension system, then this assumption should be evidenced in the patterning of diŸerent referential devices throughout narrative production. The idea that a speaker’s choice of an NP form involves (and should re¶ect) his/her estimates as to what referring expression the hearer will be able to interpret felicitously crops up in the work of Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979), who approach the issue of reference from a sociological perspective. They observe that speakers have two preferences when referring to other persons in conversation, one for minimization and another for recipient design. These preferences, in turn, provide support for Levinson’s Principles of Quantity and Informativeness and a general social economy of information. According to Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979), minimization re¶ects speakers’ overwhelming preference for single forms to express reference to persons in conversation. More speciªcally, they explain (1979: 16–17): For reference to any person, there is a large set of reference forms that can do the work of referring to that one (e.g., he, Joe, a guy, my uncle, someone, Harry’s cousin, the dentist, the man who came to dinner, et cetera). Reference forms are combinable, and on some occasions are used in combination. But massively in conversation, references in reference occasions are accomplished by the use of a single reference form. [As in: (1) Did Varda tell you what happened this weekend? (2) Hey do you have a class with Billy this term? (3) Someone said at the end of the class “Could you pl-please bring in a microphone next time?” (4) If Percy goes with Nixon I’d sure like that.] Thereby a preference for minimization is evidenced.
Recipient design has to do with the tendency to prefer ‘recognitionals’ whenever
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
possible when referring to persons. By this term, Sacks and SchegloŸ mean reference forms which “invite and allow a recipient to ªnd, from some ‘thisreferrer’s-use-of-a-reference-form’ on some ‘this-occasion-of-use,’ who, that recipient knows, is being referred to” (1979: 17). The main point Sacks and SchegloŸ make is that, given the wide range of possible reference forms available for any possible referent, speakers will tend to use forms which they can safely assume will make it possible for the hearer to identify the intended referent.1 Levinson observes that generally, the principles of minimization and recipient design “co-exist quite happily, being typically instantiated in English by the use of a name which is both a minimal form and a recognitional: Bill, Sue, Smith, etc.” (1987a: 91). However, it is precisely when the two principles clash that we ªnd evidence of the interaction of the neo-Gricean Q- and I-principles. For instance, as Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979) illustrate, when a speaker is uncertain that the recipient will be able to recognize the referent, a special form of the minimal recognitional is used. This form is marked by a rising intonation followed by a pause, which is provided for acknowledgment of recognition (Sacks and SchegloŸ call this a try-marker). The following exchange from Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979: 19) reveals this pattern (question marks indicate rising intonation; see Appendix for list of transcription conventions): (63) A: …well I was the only one other than than the uhm tch Fords?, uh Mrs. Holmes Ford? You know uh // the the cellist? B: Oh yes. She’s she’s the cellist. A: Yes B: Ye//s A: Well she and her husband were there…
As Levinson (1987a: 92) explains, when there is no expression of recognition following the try-marked minimal form Fords in the ªrst line, “there is a step by step escalation, from a minimal name to an augmented title plus names, and then from names to descriptions, until recognition is achieved.” This progression re¶ects the tendency to relax minimization gradually and, as it were, reluctantly in favor of recipient design and recognition. Another situation where minimization and recipient design are evident occurs when the speaker supposes that the addressee can identify the referent from a minimal form, whereas in fact, s/he cannot. Levinson (1987a: 92) uses the following exchange from Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979: 20) to illustrate this process:
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(64) A: Hello? B: ‘Lo, Is Shorty there, A: Ooo jest- Who? B: Eddy? Wood//ward? A: Oo jesta minute
Levinson points out that in the sequences presented in (63) and (64), the principles of minimization and recipient design are in con¶ict with each other. But, while the recipient’s recognition of the reference form (i.e. the speaker’s preference for recipient design) takes precedence over minimization, minimization is only relaxed gradually until recognition is achieved. According to Levinson, this step-by-step escalation of informational cues provides evidence of “the existence of some maxim of minimization” (2000: 114). Speciªcally, Levinson (2000: 114) argues, Unless there is some kind of maxim in operation, it would be hard to understand why a speaker would not initially choose, or immediately escalate to, a descriptive phrase that he knew would be more than su¹cient to achieve successful reference.
Levinson (1987a) suggests that the step-by-step escalation of informational cues provides evidence of the interaction of his neo-Gricean Q- and I-principles. For instance, in the case of minimization and recipient design, a speaker can ªrst try a minimal recognitional (e.g. a ªrst name), and this minimal speciªcation would be an instantiation of the I-principle speaker’s Maxim of Minimization, ‘say as little as necessary’. But, if this minimally informative name does not achieve the speaker’s communicational ends, s/he can make adjustments in the amount of information conveyed to the hearer until communication is achieved. By gradually providing informationally stronger statements (i.e. increasingly informative referring expressions), the speaker, in eŸect, gradually shifts toward application of the Q-principle, which instructs the speaker to make the informationally strongest statement consistent with what s/he knows. The move from the application of the I-principle of Minimization to that of the Q-principle of Informativity is evidenced in the sequence in example (64). First, the speaker begins with a minimal recognitional, the nickname, Shorty. He then provides more information by using the ªrst name, Eddy. Finally, by adding the surname Woodward, the speaker uses the semantically strongest recognitional he knows (with the exception of a full name + modiªer, such as a relative clause), thus ruling out any other real world refer-
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
ents, which might also have been referred to via the less informative ªrst name and nickname. Simultaneously, the surname entails both of the informationally weaker names in the set, viz., Edward and Shorty. The tendency toward minimization and the use of recipient designed recognitionals is evidenced in conversational data from Spanish as well. The following excerpt from a conversation between two Spanish women (C and E), who are closely related family members, illustrates the pattern identiªed by Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979). However, it also shows that the context of the conversation and the speech participants’ common ground or shared knowledge license the use of minimal forms to refer to certain people, but not others. First, to make reference to a particular person, C makes a couple of false starts, provides an elliptical deªnite description, la del bar (‘the one from the bar’), but then resorts to the use of a ªrst name (la María Jesús, literally, ‘the María Jesús’), which is the basic sort of recognitional, according to Sacks and SchegloŸ. Spanish null subjects are indicated by ‘Ø’: (65)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
C: ((in a soft voice)) La de, la de: la del bar, la María Jesús, para la comunión del chiquillo los invitó a los dos. E: ¿La María Jesús? = C: = Porque como Ø vivió ahí E: La:// C: la de, la de la Carmelina, como Ø vivió ahí, cuando Ø se casó, en casa de María Jesús= E: = Sí, // sí C: para la comunión de Benita.// E: Ah la María Jesús.// C: Sí (.) Ø los // invitó. E: Sí, //sí, sí. C: Le di mil pesetas, o lo que fuera // queE: Sí, Ø los invitó a comer, pero no-, a tomar pastas, a:: por la tarde, a a a tomar por la tarde sería.// C: Ø dice que Ø los había invitado a la comunión. E: Sería por la tarde. ((Child interrupts; brief break in conversation))
(English pronouns in parentheses represent null pronouns (zeros) in Spanish. English elements in brackets are expressions that are not represented linguistically in the Spanish discourse, but are needed in English to convey the same sense as achieved by the corresponding Spanish construction. See Appendix for a list of transcription conventions used.)
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1 C: ‘((in a soft voice)) The one from, the one fro:m the one from the bar,’ 2 ‘María Jesús, for the little boy’s communion invited the two [of them].’ 3 E: ‘María Jesús? =’ 4 C: ‘= Because since (she) lived there’ 5 E: ‘The://’ 6 C: ‘the one who, the one who’s Carmelina’s [girl], since (she) lived there, 7 when (she) got married, at María Jesús’ house=’ 8 E: ‘= Yeah,// yeah’ 9 C: ‘for Benita’s communion.//’ 10 E: ‘Oh María Jesús.//’ 11 C: ‘Yes (.) (She) invited them.’ 12 E: ‘Yeah,// yeah, yeah.’ 13 C: ‘(I) gave her a thousand pesetas, or whatever (it) was // that-’ 14 E: ‘Yes, (she) invited them for lunch, but not-, to have cookies, to:: in the afternoon, 15 to to to have [something] in the afternoon probably//’ 16 C: ‘(She) says that (she) had invited them to the communion.’ 17 E: ‘(It) was probably in the afternoon ((Child interrupts; brief break in conversation))’
Surprisingly, the NP expression that is the most di¹cult for E to interpret in this excerpt is the one that seems (to the objective analyst) to be the most explicit, namely, la María Jesús (literally ‘the María Jesús’), in the second line of the ªrst turn. This is evidenced by the fact that C must provide additional information after the ªrst use of the deªnite article plus name la María Jesús, in order for E to ªnally recognize who the intended referent is. This additional information is provided by C progressively, in successive turns in lines 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9, until E can ªnally recognize which ‘María Jesús’ is intended. In line 10, E appears to ªnally recognize who is being talked about when she says, ah la María Jesús (‘Oh the María Jesús’). The apparent di¹culty in recognizing C’s intended referent from the initial use of the proper name María Jesús, in the second line of the sequence, could be explained by the fact that both interlocutors know numerous women named ‘María Jesús’, since it is a very common female name in Spain. In contrast, the most minimal form used to introduce a referent in this excerpt, the reduced NP los dos (‘the two [of them]’), in italics in line 2, appears to be the least ambiguous referring expression for E. Thus, after the
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
initial use of the NP los dos in line 2, both interlocutors proceed to use the most minimal pronominal form possible, los (direct object ‘them’), also in italics, in lines 11, 14, and 16, to express coreference with los dos. This segment of Spanish conversation provides evidence of the con¶icting conversational principles of minimization, recipient design and recognition. On the one hand, C’s step-by-step adjustments in the amount of information provided to E re¶ect the fact that recognition takes precedence over minimization. On the other hand, the use of a semantically and lexically minimized antecedent los dos (‘the two [of them]’), and the subsequent use and felicitous interpretation of minimal forms to express coreference with this antecedent, illustrate how speakers abide by a principle of minimization in their use of referring expressions in conversation. The notion that the choice of a referring expression is made with a particular recipient or ‘audience’ in mind is also addressed by Smith and Jucker (1998). They point out that establishing reference is not solely a matter of selecting a particular referring expression, but that it is also an interactive process, whereby the speaker presents the addressee with a relevant context that facilitates the interpretation of the referring expressions s/he uses. In other words, they argue that, in conversational discourse, context and negotiation play a crucial role in the use and interpretation of referential forms. The excerpt of Spanish conversation in (65) illustrates the very point made by Smith and Jucker, namely, that “referring expressions have to be chosen with a particular audience in mind and are dependent on the common ground they have established” (1998: 184). The observed tendencies to use minimal expressions to refer to persons in conversation and to prefer recognitionals also re¶ect Grice’s (1975) original Quantity maxims, which instruct speakers to make their utterances as informative as they need to be, but no more informative than they need to be.
3.2 Givenness, choice of NP expression, and the neo-Gricean framework In the literature on anaphora and reference, a series of notions, referred to by Chafe (1976) as ‘statuses of NPs’, have been identiªed as relevant to the understanding of how NPs function and how they are rendered interpretable. As Chafe observes, “[these notions] all have to do with the speaker’s assessment of how the addressee is able to process what he is saying against the background of a particular context” (1976: 27). One of these notions is ‘givenness’.
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The given-new distinction has been used by many authors to account for how information is conveyed in discourse and understood (e.g. Halliday and Hasan 1976; Chafe 1976; Kuno 1972, 1978; Clark and Haviland 1977; Prince 1981). The distinction has also been particularly useful for explaining various linguistic phenomena, including pronominalization and the use of referring expressions. For instance, Chafe (1976) argues that the choice of an NP to express ideas or make reference to particular entities (‘referents’) varies depending on whether the referent is considered ‘given’ or ‘new’. However, Prince (1981) points out that, while deªnitions of givenness vary, there are at least three types: (1) givenness as determined by predictability/recoverability, (2) givenness in terms of saliency, and (3) givenness based on shared knowledge. In what follows, I attempt to illustrate how these notions ªt into the neoGricean framework, and speciªcally how they relate to the principles of minimization and informativeness, as captured by the Q-, I-, and M-principles, and the proposed consistency constraints on implicatures. 3.2.1 Predictability, recoverability, and minimization of linguistic form Prince (1981: 226) describes givenness in the sense of predictability/recoverability of a linguistic form as follows: (66) Givennessp: Predictability/Recoverability The speaker assumes that the hearer can predict or could have predicted that a particular linguistic item will or would occur in a particular position within a sentence.
Prince relates this sense of givenness to Kuno’s (1978) use of the terms old-new, which he deªnes in terms of predictability and recoverability in the following manner (1978: 282–283): An element in a sentence represents old, predictable information if it is recoverable from the preceding context; if it is not recoverable, it represents new, unpredictable information.
This deªnition leads Prince (1981) to surmise that recoverability correlates with deletability. However, she adds that the criterion of recoverability/ deletability alone does not enable us to judge the givenness of an NP, since it does not account for the diŸerence between the non-deletable pronoun in (67a) versus the deletable pronoun in (67b) (from Prince 1981: 226):
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
(67) a. Mary paid Johni and hei/*Ø bought himselfi a new coat. b. Johni paid Mary and hei/Ø bought himselfi a new coat.
In other words, although there is a tendency toward deleting NPs (i.e. minimization) when those NPs are recoverable from preceding context, this tendency is sensitive to other in¶uences, including, for instance, grammatical constraints on NP deletion and on anaphora relations in general. Furthermore, as both Levinson (1987b) and Huang (2000b) observe, non-given entities in the sense of givennessp can also be encoded by a minimal anaphoric expression, and therefore, givenness in terms of recoverability is not a requirement for the use of reduced anaphoric expressions. Nevertheless, Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) correlate the recoverability of a referent with the degree of lexical speciªcity of the referring expression. Their study looks at the establishment and maintenance of reference to the principal actors in the retelling of a comic strip. According to Marslen-Wilson et al., a speaker’s use of diŸerent referential devices in the course of a narrative, “should re¶ect his presuppositions about the recoverability, by the listener, of the intended referents” (1982: 340). Thus, while Prince’s deªnition of ‘recoverability’ is a strictly linguistic one that relies on deletability, Marslen-Wilson et al. base their deªnition on what the speaker knows or assumes about the listener, and the listener’s ability to infer (i.e. ‘recover’) the intended referent from the speaker’s use of a particular expression. Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) analyze the use of referring expressions with regard to two dimensions, the degree of lexical speciªcity and the depth of embedding in the narrative. The latter dimension does not concern us here; as to the former, it is deªned as the degree to which, from the listener’s perspective, the discourse interpretability of a given referential device depends, on the one hand, on the lexical (semantic) information carried in the surface structure of the referential device, and, on the other hand, on information that must be recovered from the prior or posterior discourse context (1982: 345).
Such referential devices range from ‘names + deªnite descriptions’, which are classiªed as the most lexically speciªc, to ‘zero anaphors’, which are the least lexically speciªc. Marlsen-Wilson et al. observe that when the context for interpretation is more richly speciªed, a less fully speciªed speech input can be tolerated. For example, less acoustic-phonetic information is needed for the unique identiªcation of the intended referent when an appropriate constraining context is available; and, an anaphoric expression can vary in speciªcity
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depending on the availability of other cues that facilitate anaphor interpretation. Marslen-Wilson et al. point out that the more lexically speciªc a device is, the more likely it is to be used to establish discourse reference; in contrast, the less lexically speciªc a device is, the more likely it is to be used to maintain discourse reference (1982: 345). The lexical speciªcity of NP expressions is also addressed by Levinson (1987a, b; 2000). In his neo-Gricean theory of anaphora, it corresponds to the degree of informativeness and linguistic complexity/brevity of a linguistic form. That is, the more lexically speciªc a referential device is, the more semantically informative and, generally speaking, the less ‘minimal’ it will tend to be. On the other hand, the less lexically speciªc a device is, the more semantically general and phonetically minimal (i.e. brief and simple) that form will tend to be (see Levinson 2000: 115). Also, Levinson’s claim that “the more minimal the form, the stronger the preference for a co-referential reading” (1987b: 384), parallels Marslen-Wilson et al.’ s claim that less lexically speciªed (hence more minimal) forms will tend to be used to maintain discourse reference. 3.2.2 Givenness in terms of saliency In Prince’s (1981) terminology, the second sense of givenness is determined by the ‘saliency in one’s consciousness’ of the intended referent, and is referred to as ‘givennesss’ (1981: 228): (68) Givennesss: Saliency The speaker assumes that the hearer has or could appropriately have some particular thing/entity/…in his/her CONSCIOUSNESS at the time of hearing the utterance.
This type of givenness is identiªed by Chafe (1976), who considers the ‘givennew’ distinction in terms of the state of ‘consciousness’ of the hearer at the time of speaking. For Chafe, given (or ‘old’) information is “that knowledge which the speaker assumes to be in the consciousness of the addressee at the time of the utterance,” and new information is “what the speaker assumes he is introducing into the addressee’s consciousness by what he says” (1976: 30).2 For a referent to be considered new, the speaker must be able to assume that the addressee was not thinking about it at the moment the speaker refers to it.3 According to Chafe (1976), givenness tends to be expressed by forms that are more linguistically attenuated than those used to convey new information. For instance, Chafe observes that “given information is pronounced with lower
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
pitch and weaker stress than new, and it is subject to pronominalization” (1976: 31). He goes on to point out the tension created between the tendency to pronominalize given information on the one hand, and the speaker’s need to avoid ambiguity, which also constrains pronominalization: …[pronominalization] can be applied only to items that convey given information, but it tends not to be applied when the speaker is aware that ambiguity would result (when there are two or more given items competing equally for the same pronoun). Thus, the speaker has to monitor his speech not only with respect to what he assumes to be in the addressee’s consciousness, but also with respect to the addressee’s ability to interpret the referents of the pronouns correctly (1976: 31).
Chafe (1976, 1994) maintains, however, that the most common linguistic criterion that enables a speaker to assume that a referent is in the addressee’s consciousness (and thus given) is his or her ‘prior mention’ of the referent in discourse. Notwithstanding, prior mention is not necessarily required to bring an entity into the consciousness of the addressee and license the use of minimal forms. An entity can be brought into the consciousness of the addressee without being previously mentioned because of the interlocutors’ familiarity with the entity or through its association with other entities mentioned or evoked in the discourse context. For example, Clancy (1980) reports instances of ellipsis used by Japanese speakers to introduce new referents in Japanese ªlm narratives. This use of zero in Japanese appears to be due to the speaker’s “presupposition that the listener was familiar with the character in question” (Clancy 1980: 145). With regard to the use of anaphoric expressions in the absence of explicit antecedents, Du Bois (1980: 215) observes that “anaphoric reference items need not refer to meanings introduced through a direct reference, but may refer to meanings introduced indirectly through frames.” He restates this idea in the form of the following principle: “To make a deªnite reference to an object, it is not necessary for there to be in previous discourse a reference to the object; it is only necessary for the idea of the object to have been evoked in some way” (1980: 215). Prince (1981) refers to discourse entities that can be inferred without prior mention as ‘inferrables’. According to Prince, “[a] discourse entity is inferrable if the speaker assumes the hearer can infer it, via logical — or, more commonly, plausible — reasoning, from discourse entities already Evoked or from other inferrables” (1981: 236). Gundel (1996) explains that inferrables, or ‘indirect anaphors’ (Erkü and Gundel 1987), do not have an explicit (coreferential) antecedent in the discourse context. Instead, the referent of an inferrable is linked to some other entity in the immediate discourse
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context through a contextual assumption, i.e. a ‘bridging inference’ (Clark and Haviland 1977). Additionally, the ability to construct an appropriate referent for the inferrable depends on its plausibility in the discourse context and on the degree to which the addressee’s attention is focused on the entity in the discourse context to which the inferrable is linked (Gundel 1996). Inferrables can be expressed using a variety of linguistic forms, although minimal expressions such as pronouns and zeros are typically not allowed for this type of reference. However, Gundel et al. (1993: 282) note: …when the link between an inferrable and its associated discourse entity is strong enough to create (or activate) an actual representation of the inferrable, a demonstrative determiner … or even a pronoun . . . is possible.
As an example, Gundel et al. provide the following text, where “the mention of someone waving towards a boat is enough to create and bring into focus a representation of people in the boat” (1993: 282): (69) There was not a man, woman or child within sight; only a small ªshingboat, standing out to sea some distance away. Harriet waved wildly in its direction, but THEY either didn’t see her or supposed that she was merely doing some kind of reducing exercises. (Adapted from Dorothy Sayers, Have his carcase (1932: 15))
What this means is that a more minimal pronominal form may be used, even in the absence of an explicit antecedent, when the speaker judges that the intended referent is su¹ciently salient in the mind of the addressee. Some anaphoric NPs can have word-internal antecedents, meaning that either a morpheme in word internal position, or part of the sense of an expressed word can serve as antecedents (Ward, Sproat, and McKoon 1991). This type of anaphora is referred to as ‘outbound anaphora’ (Ward et al. 1991; Ward 1997) or ‘anaphoric peninsulars’ (Cornish 1996). The utterance in (70a), spoken by a native speaker of Spanish, is an example of outbound anaphora, as is the English example from Webber (1979: 16) in (70b): (70) a.
Cerca de casa había una churrería. Que Ø eran buenísimos. near of house there.was a churro.stand that pro were good-super ‘Near home there was a churro stand. And (they) were great.’ b. Mary became a violinist because she thought it a beautiful instrument.
Here, the intended referents of the anaphoric expressions in (70a–b) are ‘churros’ (‘strips of deep-fried dough’) and ‘the violin’, respectively. According
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
to Ward et al. (1991), the interpretation of this type of anaphora is clear due to the accessibility of the discourse entity evoked by the word-internal element and to which the anaphor is used to refer. Anaphoric relations such as these help illustrate how minimal expressions may be used in the absence of an antecedent in the traditional sense of the term, provided they can be associated with an implied antecedent which has been made su¹ciently salient in the mind of the addressee. As Cornish (1996: 23) explains, such antecedents “may have become available via an inference based on the processing of prior discourse, or even be accessible from the situational or broader cultural utterance context.” Such observations demonstrate that although prior mention of an entity can bring an entity into one’s consciousness, it is up to the speaker to determine what is and is not salient in the mind of his/her interlocutor at the time of the utterance. Another feature commonly used to determine a referent’s givenness in terms of saliency is recency of mention. This feature is discussed by MarslenWilson et al. (1982) as one of the factors that help the listener identify the correct antecedent of each pronoun in narrative discourse. By ‘recency’ they mean that the intended antecedent is the entity most recently referred to in the discourse that matches the various properties of the pronoun.4 Clancy (1980) examines the referential choice between a full NP and a less explicit form of reference in twenty English and twenty Japanese pear ªlm narratives (Chafe 1980). She maintains that it is the information provided by the linguistic context of the narratives, and thus established as ‘given’ (as deªned by Chafe 1976), which directly in¶uences the speaker’s choice of referring expression in the narrative task. Clancy hypothesizes that two factors, recency and interference, will diŸerentiate the distribution of ‘explicit’ or ‘nominal’ forms (full NPs) versus attenuated forms in each language. In her study, recency was determined by the interval that had elapsed between two successive mentions of the same character within a narrative, as measured by the number of clauses and sentences separating the two mentions. On the other hand, interference was measured by the number of references to other characters occurring between two mentions of a referent. With regard to recency, Clancy found the distributions of English pronouns and Japanese ellipsis (the most minimal NP type in each language, respectively) to be very similar: 71% of English pronouns and 72% of Japanese ellipses occurred within the same clause as, or in the clause immediately following, the last mention of a referent (1980: 140). Clancy also reports that, overall, as the distance from the last mention of a referent increased, there was
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a greater tendency for speakers of both languages to use full NPs. Furthermore, the patterns of use of coreferential English pronouns and Japanese ellipsis were almost identical when interference was considered. Speciªcally, Clancy found that when no other referents intervened between two mentions of the same referent, zero was by far the preferred choice in both languages. And, with only one other intervening referent between two mentions of the same referent, full NPs were only slightly preferred over the more minimal alternatives in both languages. However, when ªve or more referents intervened between two mentions of the same referent, no minimal forms were used in either language (i.e., only full lexical NPs were used) (1980: 138–139). In addition, the occurrence of sentence boundaries also resulted in a higher frequency of use of full NPs in both English and Japanese. Clancy concludes that the distribution of referential expressions in English and Japanese is sensitive to the eŸects of time and interference, and that the percentage of nominal reference (i.e. use of full NPs) serves “as an index of speaker’s response to listeners’ needs in a particular environment” (1980: 141). The preponderance of minimal referring expressions in Clancy’s data from English and Japanese supports the hypothesis that speakers use the neoGricean I-principle of Minimization. Clancy alludes to the tendency toward minimization to express anaphora in both English and Japanese, stating that speakers “preferred inexplicit forms of reference for characters who had already been introduced into their narratives” (1980: 143). However, her results also reveal the English and Japanese speakers’ sensitivity with regard to referents’ relative givenness in terms of saliency (as determined by recency and interference factors), in keeping with a Quantity-based preference for ‘recipient design’ (Sacks and SchegloŸ 1979; see Section 3.1, this chapter), and with a more general principle of ambiguity avoidance. In her analysis of anaphoric expressions by text positions, Ariel (1990) found that anaphoric pronouns (as opposed to demonstratives or deªnite descriptions) tend to occur when their antecedent is in the previous sentence, and that intrasentential coreference almost always favors the use of pronouns (1990: 18). Ariel’s ªndings suggest that the recency of the antecedent creates a favorable environment for semantic and surface-form minimization through the use of pronouns in English. Ariel further points out that her observations are similar to those of Hobbs (1976), who reported that 90% of pronoun antecedents occur within the same sentence, and of Yule (1981), who concluded that attenuated forms (e.g. zeros and pronouns) are used more frequently to refer to ‘current entities’. In contrast, when there is a larger distance
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
between the previously mentioned entities, references to those entities tend to be made via less attenuated referring expressions, including demonstratives, proper names, and deªnite descriptions (Ariel 1990). Ariel’s observations conªrm Clancy’s (1980) ªndings that the distance between an anaphor and its antecedent (i.e. its ‘recency’) aŸects the speaker’s choice of a referring expression. Furthermore, the longer the distance is between two references to the same entity in discourse, the greater the likelihood will be for a speaker to use a non-minimal, more semantically informative and speciªc NP expression to refer to that entity. Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) cite a study by Clark and Sengul (1979), who examined the eŸects of recency on anaphora interpretations and found that anaphoric expressions were understood faster when the antecedent was mentioned only one sentence back than when it was mentioned two or three sentences back. However, van Dijk and Kintsch argue that it is not so much recency, but rather the presence of information in short-term memory, or the strategies for activating information from the text representation,5 the situation model,6 or world knowledge, which would explain this result. Furthermore, van Dijk and Kintsch (1983: 166) point out that results from their own experiments as well as from those of others suggest that the ‘foregrounded status’ of information is more relevant than recency in the process of anaphora interpretation. In other words, while recency may contribute to the foregrounded status of a referent in discourse and its presence in the addressee’s consciousness, it is really the saliency of a referent in the consciousness of the addressee which plays a key role in the use of anaphoric expressions in discourse. The saliency of referents in discourse is directly tied to the concept of ‘focus’ (e.g. Linde 1979; Grosz 1981; Reichman 1981) and the cognitive status of being ‘in focus’ proposed by Gundel et al. (1993). Linde (1979: 345) points out that the term focus has been widely used in linguistics, usually without being clearly deªned. She recommends that the notion of ‘focus of attention’ may be more clearly understood by considering discourse units such as the ‘apartment descriptions’ she analyzes in her study. The following excerpt from Linde (1979: 340) helps to illustrate her point: (71) Then there was a kitchen, and then bathroom, and then the main room was in the back, living room, I guess.
Although Linde provides a more technical explanation of focus of attention, for the purposes of this discussion, it su¹ces to say that with each mention of another
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room in the apartment, the focus of attention changes to that room. In her study, Linde examines the use of the pronoun it and the demonstrative that in order to determine the eŸects of focus of attention on the anaphoric use of these pronouns. She ªnds that both it and that can be used to refer anaphorically to rooms mentioned in the discourse, but that it is used to refer to rooms ‘inside the focus of attention’, whereas that is used to refer to rooms ‘outside the focus of attention’. The following examples support this ªnding and reveal the contrastive function of these pronominal forms (1979: 348, italics mine): (72) a.
On the right was a little kitchenette which means that it was just like one wall with kitchen appliances. b. You entered into a tiny little hallway and the kitchen was oŸ that.
In (72a), it refers anaphorically to the entity brought into focus by the NP a little kitchenette; however, in (72b), the use of that signals anaphoric reference to a tiny little hallway, which is an item outside the current focus of attention (the kitchen). Linde notes that there is a strong tendency to use anaphoric demonstrative that to refer to an entity that previously was in focus, but is out of the focus of attention at the moment of speaking. In contrast, it tends to be used to refer to items in focus at the moment of speaking (although this rule is not categorical). Linde’s study shows how the relative saliency of potential antecedents, as determined by the notion of ‘focus of attention’, in¶uences a speaker’s use of the anaphoric pronominals it and that. Her examples also demonstrate how these two linguistic alternates can pick out diŸerent antecedents and thus are contrastive with regard to anaphoric reference. Gundel et al. (1993) also rely on notions such as ‘attention state’ and ‘in focus’ in the cognitive model they propose to account for the forms of referring expressions in discourse. Speciªcally, they argue that the form of expression used “depends on the assumed cognitive status of the referent, i.e. on assumptions that a cooperative speaker can reasonably make regarding the addressee’s knowledge and attention state in the particular context in which the expression is used” (Gundel et al. 1993: 275). They identify six cognitive statuses, which together form a ‘givenness hierarchy’. Each status in the hierarchy is a necessary and su¹cient condition for the appropriate use of a diŸerent referring form or forms; and, since each status entails all lower statuses, the use of a form signals that all lower statuses in the givenness hierarchy have been realized.7 According to Gundel et al. (1993), the cognitive status of ‘in focus’ entails all lower statuses on their scale. This status requires that the referent to which the expression refers be both in short-term memory and also at the current
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
center of attention, and this is the status necessary for the appropriate use of zero and unstressed pronominal expressions (1993: 279). Gundel et al. also observe that “entities in focus generally include at least the topic of the preceding utterance, as well as any still-relevant higher-order topics” (1993: 279). The determination of entities in focus thus appears to rely on the notion of ‘topic’. In their study, Gundel et al. deªne ‘topic’ as “what the speaker intends the sentence to be primarily about” (1993: 279). Reinhart (1981) proposes a similar deªnition and shows in an analysis of sentence topics that the crucial deªning property of a topic is pragmatic ‘aboutness’ (i.e. what the sentence or utterance is about), rather than old information. In other words, sentencelevel topics are not deªned by their links to previous context, but rather by their eŸect on the ongoing discourse. Topics in discourse are often expressed as grammatical subjects. Chafe (1976) observes that the subject of a given sentence in English is oftentimes what the rest of that sentence is about, and thus the topic, since sentences tend to “package the information in such a way” that what is communicated is information about the subject (1976: 44). Nevertheless, as Givón (1983) has pointed out, the concept of ‘subject’ is a structural notion, whereas that of ‘topic’ is a discourse-functional one; and, although the subject may be viewed as a grammaticalized topic, not all subjects are topics, nor all topics subjects. One crucial point made by Gundel et al. (1993: 280) is that just because an NP is recently mentioned in discourse (and is therefore present in short-term memory), it is not necessarily in focus. For instance, in (73a), the bull mastiŸ is in matrix subject position, where it is most likely to be the topic. It is thus brought into focus and therefore can be appropriately referred to anaphorically by it or that in (73b) (example from Gundel et al. 1993: 280): (73) a. My neighbor’s bull mastiŸ bit a girl on a bike. b. {It’s/That’s} the same dog that bit Mary Ben last summer.
In contrast, in the following example, where the bull mastiŸ has been introduced in a prepositional phrase that functions mainly to restrict the referent of the indirect object, anaphoric reference with it is inappropriate, since the NP the bull mastiŸ is not the focus of the discourse (example from Gundel et al. 1993: 280; ‘#’ indicates unacceptability of It’s in the given context): (74) a. Sears delivered new siding to my neighbors with the bull mastiŸ. b. {# It’s/That’s} the same dog that bit Mary Ben last summer. c. Anyway, this siding is real hideous and…
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Gundel et al. maintain that anaphoric that may be used appropriately to refer to an entity that is not the current focus of attention, as long as the referent to which it refers has been ‘activated’; that is, as long as “the referent is represented in current short-term memory” (Gundel et al. 1993: 278). These observations support the conclusions drawn by Linde (1979) with regard to the appropriate use of it versus that. Furthermore, they reveal that recency of mention is not a su¹cient criterion for the appropriate use of unstressed pronominal expressions and zero. Another important observation made by Gundel et al. (1993) is that, although membership in the in-focus set of referents may be partially determined by the grammatical function of an NP (since subjects and objects are highly salient and thus likely to bring a referent into focus), actual inclusion in the in-focus set depends ultimately on pragmatic factors. For example, a referent may be brought into focus because of its importance in a context. Gundel et al. use the following example to illustrate this point (1993: 280, italics mine): (75) a.
However, the government of Barbados is looking for a project manager for a large wind energy project. b. I’m going to see the man in charge of it next week.
Here, the NP complement of a prepositional phrase is brought into focus due to its importance in the context, and may subsequently be referred to via the use of unstressed it. In Spanish, verbs of the gustar (‘like’) type clearly illustrate that it is not the grammatical function of the NP that determines its salience. Verbs like gustar cast the ‘experiencer’ as the indirect object (Whitley 1995), as do English verbs such as interest and fascinate. For example, in the following Spanish sentence, Jorge functions grammatically as the indirect object, yet this NP is the most salient referent, and thus fulªlls the requirement of being ‘in focus’. It can therefore be referred to anaphorically by use of a minimal zero subject: (76) A Jorge no le gusta la cerveza. Ø preªere el vino. to George not him-dat like-3sg the beer. pro prefers the wine ‘George doesn’t like beer. (He) prefers wine.’
This suggests that for an appropriate use of a minimal (unstressed) pronoun or zero in Spanish, the status requirement of being ‘in focus’ must be fulªlled. In other words, the referent to which the forms refer must be in short-term memory, and it must also be the center of attention.
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
The concept of givenness in terms of saliency in the consciousness of the addressee, as well as the related notions of ‘in focus’ and ‘focus of attention’, have been shown to be useful in explaining the appropriate use of minimal expressions such as unstressed pronouns and zeros. The cognitive status of ‘in focus’ also appears to be directly related to the pragmatic notions of ‘topic’ and ‘aboutness’, or the idea that, “within a discourse, the most salient object at any point is always the object the discourse at that point is about” (Bosch 1983: 57). We can then draw an analogy between the notion of ‘in focus’ and the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency, deªned in terms of aboutness, which was proposed in Chapter 2 as a constraint on implicatures of coreference. Just as the cognitive status of ‘in focus’ provides us with a set of criteria for determining the saliency of the antecedent, the constraint of ‘antecedent saliency’ determines that any implicature of coreference from the use of a minimal referring expression (e.g. a pronoun or zero) must be consistent with what is most salient; the latter, in turn, is likely to be what the sentence or utterance is about. As noted in Chapter 2, Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) predicts that hearers will draw implicatures of coreference in accordance with the relative salience of the antecedent, such that potential antecedents that are more salient will be preferred over those that are less salient. In Huang’s hierarchy, topics and subjects will be more salient than object NPs (1994: 17, 145–146). However, the antecedent saliency constraint may be more clearly deªned through the cognitive concept of the salience of the referent in the addressee’s consciousness (givenness in terms of saliency) and cognitive notions such as ‘in focus’ and ‘focus of attention’. 3.2.3 Givenness in terms of shared knowledge Although we may be able to determine which referents are most salient at a given moment in discourse, and therefore which NPs are potential antecedents, inferences of coreference based solely on antecedent saliency do not always result in the intended interpretation. An addressee’s felicitous interpretation of anaphoric expressions may also depend on inferences based on various types of background knowledge. Likewise, the speaker’s choice of a referring expression may be in¶uenced by the knowledge s/he assumes to be ‘shared’ by the addressee. The notion of ‘shared knowledge’ is viewed as a type of givenness by Prince (1981: 230):
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(77) Givennessk: Shared Knowledge The speaker assumes that the hearer ‘knows,’ assumes, or can infer a particular thing (but is not necessarily thinking about it).
Prince relates this type of givenness to Clark and Haviland’s (1977) distinction between ‘given’ and ‘new’, which is based on information the speaker assumes to be shared by the hearer (‘given information’), and information the speaker assumes to be unknown to the hearer (‘new information’). Kuno’s (1972) notion of anaphoric/non-anaphoric is also captured by givennessk, since, as Prince (1981: 231) explains (citing Kuno 1972: 270), An NP is anaphoric if “[its] referent…has been mentioned in the previous discourse” or is “in the permanent registry (p. 270),” where “the permanent registry” corresponds to what the speaker assumes about the hearer’s assumptions.
In other words, referents that are given in terms of shared knowledge include those entities that are in the interlocutor’s long-term memory, as well as entities introduced in the immediate linguistic context. This means that givenness in terms of shared knowledge and givenness in the sense of saliency and predictability are not mutually exclusive. In fact, Prince suggests that givenness in terms of shared knowledge may be a prerequisite to an understanding of the other two types of givenness (1981: 232). Similarly, Grosz (1981: 84), in her discussion of ‘focusing’, alludes to the inclusion of givenness in terms of saliency as a sub-type of shared knowledge: Finally, the entities that the speaker and hearer focus on are entities in their shared reality. Focusing, then, is the active process, engaged in by the participants in a dialogue, of concentrating attention on, or highlighting, a subset of their shared reality.
Essentially, this means that if a referent is given in terms of saliency, it is also given in the sense of shared knowledge. Clark and Marshall (1981) point out that, among linguists and philosophers, few have addressed the problem of shared knowledge, and that those who have addressed it often use the term “without saying which kind of shared knowledge” they mean (1981: 20). In an attempt to clear up this confusion, Clark and Marshall propose replacing the notion of ‘shared knowledge’ with the more technical notion of ‘mutual knowledge’, based on a tripartite classiªcation of knowledge re¶ecting the sources of a person’s experience. This classiªcation is summarized by Ariel (1988: 66) as follows (repeated from Chapter 2, (55)):
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
(78) Mutual Knowledge (a) Community membership mutual knowledge: consists of that knowledge all community members are assumed to possess plus a system of inferencing. (b) Physical co-presence mutual knowledge: that knowledge speakers have by virtue of their attending to the physical situation they are in. (c) Linguistic co-presence mutual knowledge: knowledge shared by speakers because it has been mentioned in the discourse itself.
In the revised neo-Gricean framework outlined in Chapter 2, mutual knowledge acts as an overarching constraint on interpretations of coreference, and it entails background knowledge, which was proposed by Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) as a consistency constraint on implicatures. Clark and Marshall’s mutual knowledge also incorporates Prince’s ‘givenness in the sense of shared knowledge’, as well as Grice’s notion of ‘meaning-nn’ (i.e. the speaker’s intentional meaning, given the assumed state of mutual knowledge), which was identiªed by Huang as another consistency constraint on implicatures (see Huang 1991, 1994, 2000b). According to Givón (1983), the interlocutors’ state of mutual (‘shared’, or ‘given’) knowledge is what makes up the ‘discourse context’, which he deªnes much like Clark and Marshall (1981) deªne ‘mutual knowledge’ (Givón 1983: 16, italics his): (79) Givón’s Deªnition of Discourse Context (a) Generically shared knowledge coded in the culturally shared lexicon and known semantic likelihoods. (b) Speciªcally shared knowledge of the particular discourse, what was said earlier and various inferences thereof, including verbal or non-verbal feedback. (c) Speciªcally shared knowledge of the particular speaker and hearer, what they know or tend to assume about each other, their respective knowledge, motivation and propensities, not excluding possible telepathy, however unlikely on general grounds.
Givón observes that the omnipresence of the discourse context is what allows for a “less-than-perfect” correlation between code and message. This “lessthan-perfect” correlation between code and message makes it necessary for the addressee to often rely on shared (i.e. ‘mutual’) background knowledge for successful interpretation of referring expressions in discourse.
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Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) realize the need for an inferentially-based constraint on pronoun interpretation that involves the use of a ‘pragmatic checking strategy’, in which the hearer must determine whether the properties predicated of the anaphoric expression are consistent with what is already known about the potential antecedent. For instance, they note: In many cases, this type of inferentially based ‘pragmatic checking’ will appear to be the only way of discriminating among antecedents — as, for example, in the following utterance-pair: ‘Bill took his dog to the vet this morning. He injected him in the shoulder and he should be alright now’. The resolution of the various pronouns in the second sentence primarily depends on an inferential assessment of the three possible antecedents in the light of pragmatic assumptions about the likely agents and patients of the action of injecting, taking into account the relationships between the antecedents that the ªrst sentence suggested (1982: 361).
According to Marslen-Wilson et al., such a ‘pragmatic check’ does not place unusual demands on the listener, but only re¶ects the fact that inferential assessment is a basic and normal process required for the pragmatic interpretation of an utterance in its discourse context. Therefore, they suggest that “what we are really dealing with is a general process of utterance resolution, rather than a series of separate processes, one of which is pronoun resolution” (1982: 361). Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) report on a number of cases of anaphoric reference in their data whose successful resolution obviously depends on inferences based on background knowledge. In these cases, anaphora interpretation exclusively based on strategies such as focus (i.e. aboutness), recency, or agreement would result in the selection of an antecedent with which the subsequent properties predicated of the pronoun are pragmatically incompatible. To illustrate their point, Marslen-Wilson et al. present the following excerpts from their narrative data (1982: 362) (the authors use numbers in subscript to indicate contrasts in reference): (80) a.
…and they1 go at it again…and the woman comes up…and the guys with the laser cannon or whatever it is come up…and …somewhere in there…they2 sort of left out a frame where The Thing has turned his eyes to the side for a second… b. …and they1 wrestle and fall oŸ the edge of the building…as they2 do in all good comic strips and cartoons…and when they1 fall oŸ the edge of the building…
According to the authors, they1 refers to the two main comic-book characters, ‘The Hulk’ and ‘The Thing’, while they2 in (a) refers to the authors of the comic-
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
book, and they2 in (b), to comic-book characters in general. As Marslen-Wilson et al. point out, although the immediate context provides lexically appropriate antecedents for they1 by both focus and recency criteria, when it comes to determining the other instances of the pronoun they, “what determines its actual interpretation is the pragmatic implications of the further properties predicated of the pronoun in the clause in which it occurs” (1982: 362). In other words, antecedent saliency, based on aboutness or in focus status, is not enough to successfully determine all the intended antecedents in (80). Here, the addressee must rely on background knowledge, including knowledge obtained from the discourse itself as well as general world knowledge, in order to construe anaphora relations. Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982) ªnd evidence in their data that background knowledge is needed to infer the correct antecedent of a pronoun in narrative discourse. In the following excerpt, neither a recency strategy nor a focus strategy would assign the correct antecedent to he2 (1982: 363): (81) …so The Thing has to get down to…to the ground level…before The Hulk recovers enough…while he1’s still stunned…so he2 rips open the elevator doors and just sort of slides down the cable…
Marslen-Wilson et al. maintain that, for the interpretation of the utterance containing the pronoun he1, the critical information is carried by the verb stunned, which “pragmatically implicates The Hulk, whom we know to be recovering from the eŸects of a 60-storey fall, which would be likely to stun even The Hulk” (1982: 363). They add, “the importance of the verb is shown by the fact that we could just as well make the utterance refer to The Thing, by changing it to something like: ‘…while he’s still got the advantage…’” (1982: 363). Marslen-Wilson et al. also point out that the same explanation applies in the case of he2. The critical information for the interpretation of this anaphoric pronoun involves the pragmatic implications of ‘ripping open the elevator doors’, since this action is inconsistent with being stunned, while it is consistent with The Thing’s already established desire to get to the ground in a hurry. The example in (81) illustrates how an addressee may have to draw upon his/her knowledge of the relevant properties of referents referred to at particular moments in the discourse in order to infer the meaning of anaphoric expressions. It further demonstrates that the resolution strategies of focus and recency, which relate directly to the proposed consistency constraint of antecedent saliency, are not necessarily successful in determining the appropriate antecedent in contexts where there are two or more main actors. Under these
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circumstances, the interpretation of coreference relations in discourse requires the hearer to use his or her background knowledge, including an accumulation of the relevant discourse properties of the possible antecedents. In neo-Gricean terms, when more than one referent is in focus in the domain of discourse, an implicature of coreference may be canceled or reinforced by background knowledge. In the neo-Gricean approach to anaphora proposed by Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b), the need for a ‘pragmatic checking strategy’ is explicitly recognized. Among Huang’s central claims is that pragmatic implicatures of coreference evaporate when they are inconsistent with background assumptions, world knowledge, or assumptions of mutual knowledge. As noted in Chapter 2, assumptions of mutual knowledge may result from factual knowledge about the properties of entities, relations between them, and causes and consequences of actions and events, as well as from personal knowledge of individuals, objects, institutions, etc. (Cornish 1986). And, as we have seen, such knowledge, or ‘given’ information, may be obtained from various sources, including the discourse context, the speech situation, and the experiences shared by the interlocutors.
3.3 Topic continuity in discourse and choice of NP type Givón’s (1983) compilation of articles deals with the notions of saliency and recency as they relate to the availability (or ‘accessibility’), identiªability, and continuity (or ‘persistence’) of topics in discourse. The studies under review attempt to correlate the linguistic devices used by speakers to code topics in discourse with the degree of di¹culty addressees have in identifying topics (referents) in discourse (i.e. the degree of topic ‘availability’ or ‘accessibility’), and with the maintenance of reference, or ‘topic continuity in discourse’. On the one hand, Givón points out that the availability of a topic to the hearer in¶uences a speaker’s choice of an NP expression, and that this choice involves the speaker’s assessment of whether or not the hearer will be able to identify, and thus interpret appropriately, the expression used. On the other hand, according to Givón, topic continuity is motivated by the following set of assumptions (1983: 12): (82) a. What is continuing is more predictable b. What is predictable is easier to process;
or conversely
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
c. What is discontinuous or disruptive is less predictable d. What is less predictable, hence surprising, is harder to process.
Givón presents a scale, ranking the most commonly occurring grammatical coding devices (cross-linguistically) along a graded continuum from most accessible/continuous to most inaccessible/discontinuous topics (see Givón 1983: 17). From this scale, he arrives at a more general subscale of phonological size that provides a ranking of types of NP expressions in order from more continuous to less continuous (1983: 18): (83) more continuous/accessible topics zero anaphora unstressed/bound pronouns (‘agreement’) stressed/independent pronouns full NPs more discontinuous/inaccessible topics
To interpret this scale, Givón proposes the following iconicity principle (1983: 18): (84) Givón’s Iconicity Principle: The more disruptive, surprising, discontinuous or hard to process a topic is, the more coding material must be assigned to it.
Givón reports that referential indeªnite full NPs that are introduced into the discourse for the ªrst time “should be considered maximally surprising/disruptive/discontinuous” (1983: 25). As a result, such full NPs would be the most likely to be interpreted non-coreferentially or as implicating a switch in reference. Givón suggests that his Iconicity Principle may be translated into the following “relatively sane psychological and indeed motobehavior principle” (1983: 18): (85) Expend only as much energy on a task as is required for its performance.
With regard to the speaker’s use of NP expressions, this general principle (which according to Givón, is similar to an economy principle) is incorporated into Levinson’s I-principle under its speaker’s maxim, which instructs the speaker to produce the minimal linguistic information su¹cient to achieve the communicational objective. However, whereas Givón predicts that more minimal forms will correlate with more continuous and accessible topics, and thus focuses on the cognitive status of the referents, Levinson takes a pragmatic, implicature/
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inference-based approach. Furthermore, Givón’s scale of grammatical coding devices and his subscale of phonological size provide a more detailed ranking than does Levinson’s broader generalization, which he summarizes using the following scale (1987b: 384): (86) Lexical NP > Pronoun > Ø
According to Levinson, moving to the right on this scale favors a coreferential reading, while a reversion to the left implicates non-coreference. Levinson bases this scale on the following observation regarding anaphora patterns in both Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian language, and English: “zeros (NP-gaps) pick up reference from prior relevant NPs. Reversion to a full lexical NP, and even to an overt pronoun, will tend to implicate disjoint reference” (1987b: 384). Levinson’s analysis of anaphora patterns in both the Australian language and English leads him to an additional generalization, namely, “the more ‘minimal’ the form, the stronger the preference for a coreferential reading” (Levinson 1987b: 384).8 While Givón’s scale (presented in (83)) takes into account a greater variety of NP types than Levinson’s, from the functional standpoint, their generalizations are compatible. For instance, Givón predicts that more heavily stressed linguistic devices are used to code more discontinuous/inaccessible topics than is the case for their unstressed counterparts, stress being one type of phonological material. Therefore, stressed forms may be considered relatively more eŸortful/prolix, and thus present themselves as marked, when compared with their unstressed alternates. In Levinson’s scheme, one would prefer a stressed pronoun, after a more minimal, unstressed alternative, in order to implicate a contrast in reference (or what Levinson refers to as ‘disjoint reference with a prior relevant NP’). This pattern ªnds support in Givón’s observation that when comparing zero anaphora, stressed and unstressed pronouns, and agreement, stressed independent pronouns (the most marked of the alternates) are the least continuous, or the most ‘disruptive’; consequently, they are used either contrastively or as topic switchers (1983: 30). Thus, cross-linguistically, the relatively more marked, stressed pronouns may be used to implicate a switch in reference (although they do not necessarily implicate non-coreference). In contrast, according to Givón, unstressed pronouns, zeros, and agreement (as in the case of Spanish obligatory subject-verb agreement) will tend to encode continuity of reference and less surprising/disruptive, more stereotypical and expected interpretations. This generalization lends support to Levinson’s Iprinciple, which instructs recipients to prefer coreferential readings of minimal
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
NPs, taking into consideration stereotypical relations as well as “connections between described situations and events, consistent with what is taken for granted” (Levinson 2000: 114–115). Bentivoglio (1983) has analyzed Spanish conversational data in an attempt to identify the most common linguistic forms used by Spanish speakers to “maintain or reassess the topic-NP continuity” (1983: 259). Bentivoglio’s data consist of spoken Spanish narratives from Mexico City, Caracas, and Santiago de Chile. Only tokens of third-person references were analyzed. Spanish null subjects were classiªed and interpreted as instances of ‘verb agreement’. Verb agreement and unstressed clitic pronouns for non-subjects were considered the most continuous/predictable on the scale of continuity and predictability. Only verbs with an explicit subject were taken into account in this study. In other words, subjectless verbs such as llover (‘rain’) and impersonal constructions such as dicen (‘(they) say’) were not considered. Bentivoglio’s data provide examples of minimization of linguistic form to maintain continuity of reference to the most salient referent in the context of the discourse, typically expressed as the subject and introduced initially by a proper name. Whereas zero (a null subject) is possible in subject position, clitic le (‘him/her/you-non-fam) with verbs such as gustar (‘like’) is the minimal linguistic form available in this grammatical position, and, as Bentivoglio points out, “[in] this case, dative is semantically very much like a subject…” (1983: 268). The following excerpt from Bentivoglio’s data illustrates this point (1983: 266–67, translation and gloss mine; null subjects and clitic object pronouns are indicated in italics): (87) Ø Era un muchacho, para esa época, sumamente inquieto: le gustaba escalar, le gustaba nadar, le gustaba la investigación, Ø no podía quedarse ni un minuto tranquilo. pro was a boy, for that time, extremely active: him-dat liked climb-inf, him-dat liked swim-inf, him-dat liked the investigation, pro not could-3sg remain-3refl neither one minute tranquil ‘At that time (he) was an extremely active boy: he like to climb, he liked to swim, he liked [doing] research, (he) couldn’t stay still for even a minute.’
In other words, the dative clitic le used with gustar refers anaphorically to the topic (the most salient referent in the context, and what the discourse is about), just as zero in subject position does. According to Bentivoglio, Spanish stressed pronouns “appear to closely
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follow” verb agreement (null subjects) and clitics on the scale of continuity (1983: 269). In Bentivoglio’s study, the expressions which she categorizes as ‘stressed pronouns’ include overt (expressed) third-person subject pronouns and demonstratives. Bentivoglio observes that, in may instances in her data, use of a stressed pronoun “is due to a contrastive situation or to switch reference, and not really to the necessity of disambiguating the referent…” (1983: 271). Bentivoglio’s observation that stressed (overt) Spanish pronouns are used to mark contrasts or switches in reference is in line with Levinson’s M-principle, which instructs the speaker not to use a marked form without reason, while instructing the hearer to infer an alternative message when a marked expression is used. However, in Bentivoglio’s examples, the choice of a more prolix, overt pronoun in contexts where a more minimal zero subject could have been used, does not promote an implicature of ‘non-coreference’ as Levinson predicts (cf. 1987b: 410), but rather one of coreference. Bentivoglio observes that human topics are more persistent than nonhuman ones, in that uninterrupted references to the same NP-topic are most likely to occur when the referent in question is human; furthermore, successive references are expressed most frequently by null subjects (1983: 301). This generalization may simply re¶ect the fact that human topics tend to be grammatical subjects more often than non-human referents, and that subjects tend to be more salient than non-subjects; thus, they are more likely to be expressed by more minimal (and ‘more continuous/accessible’) expressions than nonhuman entities. Bentivoglio also concludes from her analysis of NPs that maximum continuity of reference is expressed by Spanish null subjects (her ‘verb agreement’) and unstressed clitics and/or stressed pronouns. On the other hand, maximum discontinuity is indicated by the use of ‘existentials and presentatives’ with indeªnite NPs, e.g. había un hombre (‘there was a man’); estaban unas tablas (‘there was (some) lumber’) (1983: 279), or by the use of deªnite NPs modiªed by relative clauses. These NP types turned out to be most commonly used by the Spanish speakers to introduce a new topic or to reintroduce a topic after a long gap, as measured by number of clauses since last mention (Bentivoglio 1983: 301). Bentivoglio’s observations with regard to the use of null subjects and unstressed pronouns versus less minimal ‘stressed’ pronouns (e.g. overt subject pronouns and demonstratives) coincide with ªndings from studies dealing with anaphora in other languages (see for example Ariel 1990). Furthermore,
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
her data illustrate how the switch to a linguistic form that is characterized by more phonological material (thus a relatively more ‘marked’ form) indicates a switch in reference in Spanish, triggering an alternative interpretation of, or another antecedent for, the anaphoric expression in question.
3.4 Accessibility Theory Ariel (1988, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996) proposes a ‘theory of accessibility’ to account for the use of referring expressions in discourse, whereby each NP type is associated with a speciªc degree of accessibility of its antecedent. According to this approach, the use of a linguistic form to refer to an entity in discourse depends on the speaker’s assessment of the degree of accessibility of the mental entity/referent/antecedent in the memory of the addressee. Consequently, and because it is impossible to attribute each use of a deªnite NP expression to only one type of contextual information or only one ‘givenness type’, Ariel maintains that the notion of ‘given’ should be replaced by ‘accessibility’. Ariel (1990) points out that some potential antecedents are more accessible than others due to various factors, which in turn aŸect the speaker’s choice of referring expressions. These include (1) recency (Ariel’s ‘distance factor’); (2) the relative saliency of a potential antecedent when compared with other potential antecedents (e.g. whether the antecedent is a topic or nontopic); (3) the degree of semantic connectivity between the antecedent and the anaphor; (4) the number of competitors for the role of antecedent; and (5) the degree of ‘unity’ in the discourse context, as determined by whether the antecedent is considered within the same world, frame, or point of view, or is found in the same discourse or text segment (e.g. paragraph) as the anaphor. Accessibility Theory makes some general predictions with regard to the eŸects of these factors on the choice of NP expressions in discourse, and therefore, on the distributional pattern of referring expressions in discourse. These predictions relate directly to the neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora, especially as regards consistency constraints on implicatures; for instance, interpretations of NPs are subject to consistency with various types of contextual information that are available, i.e. ‘accessible’, to the speaker and addressee. With regard to the use of NP expressions and antecedent saliency, Ariel’s examination of English texts shows that deªnite descriptions and proper names (Levinson’s ‘full NPs’), which are classiªed by Ariel as ‘low accessibility markers’,
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should occur when their antecedents are not currently salient (1990: 17). On the other hand, pronouns, along with other minimal referring expressions, occur most frequently when the antecedent is highly accessible, and thus very salient, as determined by the degree of activation in the mind of the addressee. In essence then, antecedent salience correlates with the use of high accessibility markers, including zeros, unstressed and cliticized pronouns, agreement markers, and re¶exives. These ‘high accessibility markers’ are, in Levinson’s neo-Gricean terms, more ‘minimal’ linguistic forms, both phonologically and semantically. As I noted earlier in this chapter, the notion of topic is inextricably tied to the notion of aboutness, and therefore to the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency. With respect to accessibility, Ariel maintains that topics “have a privileged standing with respect to ease of accessing” (1990: 24). Thus, there is a higher likelihood that, once a discourse topic has been established, it will be referred to subsequently via the use of ‘high accessibility markers’. Ariel goes on to cite a study by Broadbent (1973), who found that in contexts in which there was ambiguity with regard to the interpretation of a pronoun, as in the following example (previously cited as (43) in Chapter 2), people tended to interpret pronouns as referring to the discourse topic (the feedpipe), rather than to the non-topic (the chain), even though the latter was closer in terms of ‘recency’ (see above) (Ariel 1990: 23): (88) The feedpipe lubricates the chain, and it should be adjusted to leave a gap half an inch between itself and the sprocket.
This example lends further support to the idea that the discourse topic, which is typically expressed as the grammatical subject, is usually the most salient entity in the discourse. And, due to its salience, subsequent reference to that topic is likely to be expressed through the use of minimal linguistic forms, which are interpreted coreferentially. Ariel (1990, 1994, 1996) also points out that the nature of the connection between the clause that contains the anaphor and the clause that contains the antecedent in¶uences the speaker’s assessment of the degree of accessibility of an entity, and thus the speaker’s choice of a referring expression. This observation is supported by Li and Thompson (1979), who identify ‘clause connectivity’ as a factor in¶uencing the speaker’s choice of zero versus a pronoun in Chinese. According to these authors, zeros are the unmarked choice of anaphoric expression in Chinese; however, a pronoun is preferred when the clause in which it occurs is semantically less connected with the preceding text. This is
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
in accordance with what Accessibility Theory predicts, viz. that as the degree of relatedness between two clauses increases, the speaker will prefer a higher accessibility marker (e.g. zero or an unstressed pronoun) to a lower one. Likewise, Foley and Van Valin (1984) have observed that, across languages, there is a relationship between the degree of interclausal semantic connectivity and the use of anaphoric expressions. According to Foley and Van Valen, “the tighter the linkage, the more likely the coreferential argument will be expressed as zero” (1984: 366). Interclausal semantic connectivity is also identiªed by Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) as a consistency constraint on any interpretation, including contrasts in reference that are predicted to arise from the use of marked expressions. For example, Huang ªnds that for Chinese, an M-contrast in reference resulting from the use of a marked NP tends to evaporate when such an inference is contradicted by the close ‘semantico-conceptual’ relationship between two clauses. Levinson (1987a) also observes that tight semantic linkages between clauses can override predicted M-contrasts in reference, and that such semantic relations (e.g. close temporal sequences, relations of causality) tend to favor a “same agent/patient as the last clause eŸect” (Huang 1994: 141; see also Levinson 1987a: 100–102). The leveling of the predicted M-contrast in reference as a result of tight semantic linkages between clauses is also supported by experimental evidence from Spanish, gathered in a study by Blackwell (2001), in which Spanish overt subject pronouns were interpreted coreferentially by native Spanish speakers in contexts where zero subjects could have been used to implicate coreference. In several cases, moreover, the apparent leveling in the predicted contrast in meaning between Spanish overt and null subjects was due to interclausal semantic linkages. Thus, in neo-Gricean terms, while greater semantic connectedness between two clauses will induce the use of a minimal linguistic expression to implicate coreference, semantic linkages also serve as consistency constraints on interpretations of coreference and noncoreference predicted in the neo-Gricean program. Ariel (1990, 1994, 1996) proposes an accessibility marking scale in which referring expressions are arranged according to the degree of accessibility of the speciªc antecedent at the point at which a particular type of referring expression is used. The scale makes the following distinctions with regard to NP type in rank order from high accessibility to low (1996: 21):
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(89) Ariel’s Accessibility Marking Scale zero < re¶exives < agreement markers > cliticized pronouns < unstressed pronouns < stressed pronouns < stressed pronouns + gesture < proximal demonstrative (+NP) < distal demonstrative (+NP) < proximal demonstrative (+NP) + modiªer < distal demonstrative (+NP) + modiªer < ªrst name < last name < short deªnite description < long deªnite description < full name < full name + modiªer
This scale, although more complex than Givón’s (1983), and much more so than Levinson’s, is determined by three coding principles. These include informativity, which Ariel likens to Levinson’s semantic minimality; rigidity, meaning how uniquely referring the expression is; and attenuation, which is akin to Givón’s phonological size and Levinson’s formal minimality criterion (Ariel 1996: 21). With regard to the graded notion of accessibility, the lower the degree of accessibility of a referent is, the more unattenuated, informative, and unambiguous the NP type will be. Therefore, low accessibility markers correspond to deªnite descriptions and proper names; they are more informative or ‘richer in information’, and more rigid as designators; and, they are used to “retrieve relatively inaccessible antecedents” (Ariel 1990: 33). In other words, the more information the speaker provides in the NP expression s/he uses, the less accessible s/he assumes the NP expression to be for the addressee (Ariel 1990: 34). Also, some deªnite descriptions and proper names are richer in information than others, and therefore lower in their relative degree of accessibility. This observed relation between the accessibility of a referent and the informativeness of the NP expression used by a speaker lends support for the neo-Gricean hypothesis that the speaker’s choice of referring expressions is driven by Gricean maxims of Quantity, and speciªcally Levinson’s Q-based Principle of Informativeness. Ariel also observes that low accessibility markers tend to be used as initial referring expressions and thus non-anaphorically. However, she notes that “names, though not deªnite descriptions, normally require some degree of familiarity with the referent” (1990: 40), and that furthermore, all names do not enjoy the same degree of accessibility, with full ªrst and last names being the least accessible, followed by last names, and then ªrst names. She points out, for example, that very familiar or salient ªrst names can even be used “[discourse] initially”, and that “this distribution is parallel to that of pronouns, which normally require a linguistic antecedent…but which can sometimes, when their referents are extremely salient, appear discourse initially” (1990: 410).9 Nor-
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
mally, however, entities introduced into a discourse for the ªrst time are not salient enough to be able to be referred to initially by a pronoun (Ariel 1990: 41). In addition, the use of deªnite descriptions and names should be suited to the addressee. For instance, Ariel points out, “a choice [between a name and a deªnite description] only exists if we can assume that the addressee is actually familiar with the name assigned to the particular referent. If we can not, a deªnite description is better, in fact the only, retriever” (1990: 39). On the other hand, with respect to the form deªnite descriptions should take, Ariel maintains that “a speaker should tailor her description in such a way that her description of the referent will enable the addressee to indeed access the intended memory item” (1990: 35). This observation by Ariel echoes the Principle of Recipient Design, which, as I pointed out earlier in this chapter, interacts with and tends to win out over the Principle of Minimization, that is, the speaker’s tendency toward minimization of linguistic form. With regard to recency, Ariel ªnds that deªnite descriptions and proper names (although neither constitutes a homogeneous group) rarely refer to antecedents in the same sentence, but tend to refer to antecedents mentioned further away, either in previous sentences or across paragraph boundaries (1990: 43). Ariel (1996) later notes that these ªndings are not at odds with Levinson’s (1987a, b) prediction that the use of a lexical NP, where a zero or a pronoun might have been used to implicate coreference with a prior relevant NP, will tend to implicate non-coreference with that NP. Although it is beyond the scope of this section to provide a more in-depth discussion of Accessibility Theory, the distinctions Ariel makes in her Scale of Accessibility provide a taxonomy of types of referring expressions, such as one could expect to ªnd in the Spanish discourse analyzed in the following chapters. Furthermore, the Accessibility Scale may serve as a ‘scale of relative linguistic markedness’, in which low accessibility markers are viewed as relatively more ‘marked’ expressions, while high accessibility markers are considered relatively less marked (zero being the least marked and most highly accessible).
3.5 Focal stress and contrastiveness According to Breheny (1998) focal stress, which refers to prosodic prominence placed on a part or parts of an utterance, can in¶uence the interpretation of English utterances in a variety of ways, and can encode “information about how to process an utterance” (1998: 107). The following example illustrates how
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focal stress can in¶uence interpretation in diŸerent ways (Breheny 1998: 106): (90) Mary introduced BILL to Sue.
Breheny notes that focal stress on Bill could be a relevant response to the question, Who did Mary introduce to Sue?, or it could “lead to the implicature that Mary introduced no one else to Sue” (1998: 106). However, it could also allow the utterance “to be understood as contradicting some assumption by the audience, [or] could give [the utterance] a force similar to Mary even introduced BILL to Sue” (Breheny 1998: 106). Thus, focal stress on an element (e.g. a name or other NP type) can be contrastive, giving rise to implicatures that do not arise from the use of the element without focal stress. Chafe (1994: 71) has observed a relationship between stressed and unstressed NP expressions and the given/new distinction. For instance, in the following utterances, a láwyer and Lárry are expressed with a full NP and primary accent, whereas reference to the speaker is achieved with an unstressed I: (91) a. …I tàlked to a láwyer last nìght, b. …I tàlked to Lárry last nìght,
As Chafe explains, the use of primary stress on the full NPs a láwyer and Lárry, which introduce new information, suggests that “language gives more prominence to new ideas than to given ones” (1994: 71). Chafe further points out that such prominence is also recognizable due to the use of full nouns (more prominent expressions) versus pronouns (less prominent expressions), and of strong versus weak accent. According to Chafe (1994), new items in discourse may or may not constitute shared (i.e. mutual) knowledge. On the other hand, given items, as deªned by Chafe (1994), are by deªnition shared and accessible to the addressee, since “the speaker believes them to be already active or semiactive in the listener’s mind” (1994: 96). Information that is given is therefore more attenuated, and often (though not always) realized as a weakly accented pronoun or even as zero in some languages (e.g. Spanish, Italian, Japanese). However, given information can also be expressed via a weakly accented full NP, as in the following example, where the question was asked in a context where ‘Jennifer’ had been active in the preceding discourse (Chafe 1994: 76): (92) …how did Jennifer reáct.
Chafe explains that the full, unstressed NP, Jennifer, was used instead of the pronoun she in a context in which both Jennifer and Helen were being dis-
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
cussed, because the immediately preceding discourse dealt with Helen, who was referred to as she just before the utterance in (92) occurred. In other words “there was competition for the pronoun she: two referents, both given, for whom it could be used. At this moment, however, she would have been more appropriate for Helen, since it had just been used for her” (1994: 76). Chafe’s explanation for the use of the name Jennifer in (92), instead of a more minimal pronoun, instantiates the revised neo-Gricean M-principle proposed in Chapter 2. Recall that this principle states that reversion to a more marked form (e.g. a full NP), where an unmarked alternative (e.g. a pronoun) would have implicated coreference with the last relevant NP, does not necessarily promote a non-coreferential interpretation, but rather an alternative one. In other words, reversion to a full NP (e.g. unstressed Jennifer in (92)) implicates a diŸerent meaning than that implied by use of the unmarked choice (e.g. she in place of Jennifer, in (92)). A speaker can also convey contrasts in meaning through contrastive stress, or what Chafe (1994) simply calls ‘contrastiveness’, an NP status that operates independently of the given-accessible-new distinction. In other words, a contrastive referent may be given, accessible, or new.10 In a contrastive sentence, ‘contrastive stress’ on an NP singles out its referent as the intended one, as opposed to the other possible candidates. And, in many contrastive sentences, the speaker may actually contradict “a belief of the addressee’s” (Chafe 1976: 34). However, Chafe adds that the only consistent condition on contrastiveness with regard to the set of possible candidates “seems to be that the speaker assumes that a limited number of candidates is available in the addressee’s mind” (1976: 34). When there is an unlimited number of referents for a role, the sentence is no longer contrastive. Chafe also points out that contrastiveness involves the assertion of which candidate is the correct one. In other words, the speaker identiªes, via the use of contrastive stress, which of a set of possible candidates s/he has in mind. One way of determining whether a particular form is contrastive is to try and insert rather than…, not…, or instead of… after the linguistic element that is the focus of the contrast. For instance, in the following sentence, where the contrastive focus is on Rónald, we can felicitously insert not Mary after the focus ((93a) from Chafe 1976: 35, example (b) mine): (93) a. Rónald made the hamburgers. b. Rónald made the hamburgers, not Mary.
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Chafe also maintains that, in the case of a contrast, the addressee could easily be thinking of the referent of the contrastive stress or focus. In other words, the focus of a contrast need not be new, which explains why pronouns can be the focus of contrast, as illustrated by the following examples (Chafe 1976: 35, material in parentheses mine): (94) a. Hé did it (not Mary). (contrastive focus on Hé) b. Í did it (instead of Mary). (contrastive focus on Í)
Chafe observes that contrastive stress in English is achieved linguistically through the use of higher pitch and stronger stress on the focus item. In the following section, we shall see how focal stress and contrastiveness may be used to explain the choice between NP expressions in Spanish, particularly when the choice of linguistic expressions is between a zero (null) subject and an expressed (overt) subject pronoun.
3.6 Contrastiveness, markedness, and the null/overt subject pronoun contrast in Spanish Spanish has a rich verb in¶ection, which makes subject omission (‘pro-drop’) possible as long as the discourse and syntactic context allow for it (Brucart 1987). Also, while ªrst and second-person verb forms are morphologically marked for speaker and addressee, third-person verb forms depend on the context of use for their disambiguation. In addition, third-person subject omission results in the loss of semantic content in terms of the gender distinction between third-person pronouns, as the following examples illustrate (Brucart 1987: 191): (95) a.
Él llegó a las cinco. he arrived at the ªve ‘He arrived at ªve.’ b. Ella llegó a las cinco. she arrived at the ªve ‘She arrived at ªve.’ c. Ø Llegó a las cinco. pro arrived-3sg at ªve. ‘{He/She/You-sg-non-fam} arrived at ªve.’
Furthermore, third-person singular verb forms with null subjects may be
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
‘three-way’ ambiguous, given the fact that three diŸerent lexicalized subject pronouns, él (‘he’), ella (‘she), and usted (singular, non-familiar ‘you’), could replace zero in the same syntactic environment, as seen from the English translation of (95c). Therefore, although a Spanish speaker will tend to use null subjects in contexts in which s/he can assume that the information lost by subject omission is somehow ‘recoverable’, overt third-person pronouns are nevertheless semantically more informative than null pronouns. Studies have demonstrated that, in pro-drop languages such as Spanish, lexical pronouns and null subjects behave diŸerently depending on the context. In particular, their interpretation with regard to coreference may vary, as shown by Rigau (1986). For instance, in the following sentence, reversion to an overt pronoun after a null subject results in a disjoint interpretation (Rigau 1986: 148; the author uses ‘pro’ instead of ‘Ø’ to indicate null subjects; in the English translations, I use parentheses around the English pronoun that corresponds to the Spanish null subject): (96) *pro hizo la cena y él preparó un cóctel. pro made the supper and he prepared a cocktail ‘(He) made the supper and he prepared a cocktail.’
In this construction, the pronoun cannot be coreferential with the preceding null subject. This pattern supports Levinson’s (1987a, b) ‘basic pattern of anaphora’, which predicts that reversion to a more prolix pronoun or lexical NP after a null subject will tend to result in a disjoint reading. However, these initial observations raise some questions. For instance, under what circumstances can the use of a pronoun instead of a null subject implicate a contrast in anaphoric reference? And, on the other hand, under what conditions may these alternates be used in the same context to implicate the same coreference relation? The rest of this section will explore the null/overt subject pronoun contrast in Spanish as it relates to the unstressed/stressed contrast in non-prodrop languages like English, and I will show how these contrasts support the neo-Gricean pragmatic approach to anaphora proposed in Chapter 2. Three reasons are frequently given by traditional Spanish grammarians to account for the use of a lexical subject pronoun instead of a null subject: (1) emphasis, (2) contrast, and (3) to avoid ambiguity (e.g. Bello 1954; Fernández Ramírez 1951, 1985; Brucart 1987). Some would also include a fourth reason, namely, (intentional) redundancy in contexts where the presence or absence of an overt pronoun makes no diŸerence in interpretation (Brucart 1987: 209, citing Gili Gaya 1943). If overt subject pronouns are indeed ‘marked’ expres-
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sions (and we shall consider them as such), then these rules suggest what Levinson’s neo-Gricean M-principle states explicitly: ‘do not use a prolix, obscure or marked form [in this case a subject pronoun] without reason’. As noted in Chapter 2, Chomsky (1981, 1982) attempts to account for the null/overt subject pronoun alternation in pro-drop languages by proposing the ‘Avoid Pronoun Principle’. According to Haegeman (1994), this principle follows from a postulated general principle of economy, as “the omission of the subject pronoun requires less eŸort than the overt expression of the pronoun, and therefore subject pronouns will only be present when the added eŸort of overtly expressing them has some yield” (1994: 217). However, as Brucart (1987) has shown, there exist two types of grammatical emphasis that require the use of overt referring expressions in Spanish: ‘contrastive focus’ and ‘exhaustive listing interpretations’ (Kuno 1972). In cases of contrastive focus, the emphasized element contrasts with another constituent of the same category, and the emphatic (intonational) stress marks a contrast between what is considered true information, and previous assumptions which are judged to be incorrect ((97) from Brucart 1987: 211, 213; translation mine): (97) Contrastive Focus {LUIS/Él/*Ø} es un amigo, y no toda esa panda de hipócritas. {Luis/He/*pro} is a friend, and not all that bunch of hypocrites. ‘{LUIS/HE/*he} is a friend, unlike that whole bunch of hypocrites.’
As to exhaustive listing, distinctive, but non-contrastive interpretations provide new information in the discourse, as in the following examples, where use of a name or an overt pronoun represents new information, while use of a null subject is unacceptable (Brucart 1987: 213, 216, citing Kuno 1972; translations mine): (98) Exhaustive Listing Interpretation A: ¿Quién quiere el divorcio? who wants the divorce ‘Who wants the divorce?’ B: {Ella/*Ø} quiere el divorcio. (Ella = new information) she/pro wants the divorce ‘She wants the divorce.’
But, when a constituent represents known, or given information, as in (99), or when the entire sentence represents unknown information, as in (100), either a lexical (non-contrastive) pronoun or a null subject may be used (Brucart 1987: 216; translations mine):
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
(99) A: ¿Qué desea ella? what wants she ‘What does she want?’ B: {Ella/Ø} quiere el divorcio. (Ella/Ø = old information) {she/pro} wants the divorce ‘She wants the divorce.’ (100) A: ¿A qué se debe tanto revuelo? to what pro-arb owes so.much commotion ‘What’s all the commotion about?’ B: {Ella/Ø} quiere el divorcio. (the whole sentence is unknown {she/pro} wants the divorce information) ‘She wants the divorce.’
Brucart concludes that what pronouns with contrastive focus and those with exhaustive listing interpretations have in common is that they provide new information, and therefore they must be realized phonetically. He proposes to account for these uses of overt pronouns via his so-called Principio de Lexicalización de los Pronominales (‘Principle of Pronominal Lexicalization’), which, in his view, is part of a more general requirement to express any new information lexically (1987: 219; translation mine): (101) Principio de Lexicalización de los Pronominales Cualquier pronominal que aporte información nueva debe tener realización fonética. ‘Any pronominal that contributes new information must be expressed phonetically.’
This rule supports the notion that the choice of a more marked pronoun in an environment where zero is also syntactically possible is not an arbitrary choice, as the use of overt pronouns can perform a pragmatic function which zero cannot, namely, that of providing new information in the discourse. Montalbetti (1984) ªnds that in Spanish, lexical pronouns behave diŸerently than null ones in sentences with antecedents that function as formal variables. Speciªcally, while null pronouns can be linked to quantiªers or whtraces, the use of lexical subject pronouns is constrained by the following principle, which Montalbetti calls the ‘Overt Pronoun Constraint’ (1984: 94): (102) Montalbetti’s Overt Pronoun Constraint Overt pronouns cannot link to formal variables iŸ [if and only if] the alternation overt/empty obtains.
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The operation of this rule is illustrated by the following examples (based on Montalbetti 1984: 95; translations mine:11 (103) a.
Muchos estudiantes creen que {Ø/*ellos} son inteligentes. many students believe that {pro/they} are intelligent ‘Many students believe that {(they)/*THEY} are intelligent.’ b. Nadie cree que {Ø/*él} es inteligente. nobody believes that {pro/he} is intelligent ‘Nobody believes that {(he/she)/*HE} is intelligent.’
As Montalbetti points out, in (a) and (b), linking the overt pronouns with formal variables (muchos, nadie) is impossible, and therefore the overt pronouns cannot be interpreted as bound pronouns, i.e., as being c-commanded by, and coreferential with, the formal variables. Without going into the details of Montalbetti’s analysis, once again, we ªnd that the use of an overt pronoun results in an interpretation which contrasts with the interpretation associated with a null subject used in the same environment (see Montalbetti 1984, Chapter 3 for a more in-depth discussion). Montalbetti’s Overt Pronoun Constraint lends support to Levinson’s (1987a, b) prediction that lexical pronouns will tend to give rise to interpretations other that those that would normally follow from the use of a more minimal, unmarked null subject. Furthermore, it supports the notion that “reduced forms, and zero-anaphors in particular, tend to be associated with the most informative interpretations” (Levinson 1987a: 109).12 A similar null/overt pronoun contrast in reference occurs in Spanish and other pro-drop or zero anaphora languages where ‘arbitrary interpretations’ are possible (Suñer 1983; Jaeggli 1986; Huang 2000b).13 ‘Arbitrary reference’ occurs in the so-called ‘impersonal’ sentences in Spanish (King and Suñer 1999). According to Suñer (1983), there are two Spanish constructions for which a null pronoun (‘pro’) receives an arbitrary interpretation: with thirdperson plural verbs, “where pro has the indeªnite/unspeciªed reading of third person plural” (1983: 189), and in “instances of what is known as the ‘impersonal se construction’” (1983: 190). These two constructions are used to indicate that the intended referent is human, but that its identity need not be speciªed, as in the following examples (Suñer 1983: 189, examples hers):14 (104) a.
Ø dicen que Ø va a nevar. pro say-3plthat pro goes to snow-inf ‘They say that it is going to snow.’
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
b. Ø se dice que va a nevar. pro se-imp says that goes to snow-inf ‘One says/people say that it is going to snow.’
In the case of Spanish, whenever a null subject can be interpreted as ‘arbitrary in reference’, an overt pronoun used in the same context cannot. This contrast is illustrated by the following examples from Jaeggli (1986), cited by Huang (2000b: 234) (my translations include the possible interpretations for these sentences): (105) a.
Ø llaman a la puerta. pro call-3pl at the door ‘{People/They} are knocking at the door.’ b. Ellos llaman a la puerta. they call-3pl at the door ‘{*People/They} are knocking at the door.’
In (a), the null subject can receive either an arbitrary (i.e. non-speciªc) or a non-arbitrary (speciªc) interpretation, whereas in (b), the overt pronoun ellos (‘they’) cannot be interpreted as arbitrary. This contrast in interpretation, between overt and null subject pronouns, is captured by the following constraint proposed by Jaeggli (1986: 66) (he dubs it the ‘Condition on Arbitrary Pronominals’): (106) Jaeggli’s Condition on Arbitrary Pronominals Overt pronouns may not be arbitrary in reference if and only if the overt/empty alternation obtains.
Like Montalbetti’s (1984) Overt Pronoun Constraint, Jaeggli’s Condition on Arbitrary Pronominals lends further grammatical evidence in support of our argument that overt subject pronouns and null subjects will tend to contrast in reference in Spanish, wherever these two forms can alternate. Furthermore, as Huang (2000b: 235) argues, both constraints “follow directly from the I- and M-principles,” since the use of a marked, overt pronoun, in contexts where these constraints apply, implicates a diŸerent reading than the one implicated by the use of an unmarked null pronoun. Luján (1985, 1986) examines the issue of null versus lexical (overt) pronouns in pro-drop languages, particularly Spanish. She points out that null pronouns in Spanish and other pro-drop languages behave like regular pronouns of non-pro-drop languages like English, whereas lexical pronouns in pro-drop languages do not always follow this pattern. For example, in the
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following sentences, Spanish null subjects (like the English pronouns) may be coindexed with the subjects of the main clauses; however, Luján notes that the use of an overt pronoun in the same contexts “induces disjoint reference” (1985: 426, examples Luján’s):15 (107) a.
Cuando{*él/Ø} trabaja, Juan no bebe. when {he/pro} works, John not drinks ‘When he works, John doesn’t drink.’ b. Si {*ella/Ø} no duerme, Ana se irrita. if {she/pro} not sleeps, Ann 3refl irritates ‘If she doesn’t sleep, Ann gets irritated.’
However, when the adverbial and conditional clauses are postposed, both the null subjects and lexical pronouns may be interpreted coreferentially, even though, as Luján observes, “in these examples the null pronouns would lend themselves more easily to the coreferential reading” (1985: 427): (108) a.
Juan no bebe cuando {él/Ø} trabaja. John not drinks when {he/pro}works ‘John doesn’t drink when he works.’ b. Ana se irrita si {ella/Ø} no duerme. Ann 3refl irritates if {she/pro} not sleeps ‘Ann gets irritated if she doesn’t sleep.’
From her analysis of Spanish and other pro-drop languages, Luján concludes that, in contexts where overt and null pronouns can alternate, overt pronouns cannot be interpreted coreferentially with a potential antecedent that follows them. As the examples cited in (107) demonstrate, overt pronouns that are used before their antecedents in contexts where null subjects are possible imply a contrast in meaning. According to Luján (1985) this is the ‘disjoint reference’ resulting from the use of an overt pronoun. However, she further explains that the unacceptable coreferential reading for preceding lexical pronouns, as in (109a) (repeated from (107a)), can be rendered acceptable when the pronouns are embedded in appropriate discourse, as (109b) illustrates (examples from Luján 1985: 426, 432): (109) a.
Cuando {*él/Ø} trabaja, Juan no bebe. when {he/pro} works, John not drinks ‘When he works, John doesn’t drink.’
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
b. Juan y su mujer trabajan y beben, pero cuando {él/*Ø} John and his wife work and drink, but when {he/pro} trabaja, Juan no bebe. works, John not drink ‘John and his wife work and drink, but when he works, John doesn’t drink.’
Although the obligatory coreference in (109b) appears to contradict Luján’s constraint, in reality, it does not, because even though the pronoun is intended to be coreferential with the second instance of Juan, the antecedent for the pronoun is in fact the ªrst use of Juan in the preceding (ªrst) clause. Luján (1985, 1986) argues that the overt/null pronominal distinction in Spanish and other pro-drop languages is analogous to the stressed/unstressed opposition found in non-pro-drop languages such as English. She shows that Spanish null subjects function like unstressed English pronouns, while overt subject pronouns in Spanish are used like English stressed pronouns, and can have a contrastive function. According to Luján (1985), a crucial factor in determining the contrastive function of an overt pronoun is its precedence. She therefore proposes a universal constraint to account for the diŸerent interpretive behavior of unstressed/null and stressed/overt alternates, which states that “stressed pronouns cannot precede their antecedents where they alternate with unstressed pronouns” (1986: 249). This constraint allows for forward anaphora in sentences like the following, regardless of which alternate is used (from Luján 1985: 426): (110) Pedro dijo que {él/Ø} vendrá. Peter said that {he/pro}will-come ‘Peter said that he will come.’
Luján’s constraint also accounts for use of a pronoun before its antecedent in positions unavailable to null subjects, as in the following sentences (from Luján 1986: 249): (111) a.
Cuando{él/*Ø} y su mujer trabajan, Juan no bebe. when {he/pro} and his wife work, John not drinks ‘When he and his wife work, John doesn’t drink.’ b. Cuando Ø hablan de {él/*Ø}, Juan se irrita. when pro speak-3pl of {él/pro}, John refl-3 irritates ‘When (they) speak about him, John gets irritated.’
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c.
La mujer que {él/*Ø} ama odia a Juan. the woman that {él/pro} loves hatesacc Juan ‘The woman that he loves hates John.’
The contrastive function of Spanish overt versus null pronouns is also demonstrated by what is known as the ‘parallel function strategy’ (Cowan 1980; Solan 1983), viz. “the preference to match grammatical function in the interpretation of pronoun-antecedent pairs” (Luján 1986: 255). This strategy is illustrated by the following examples (from Luján 1986: 255; glosses mine): (112) a.
Ana ama a Elsa y {Ø/ella} lo sabe. (Ø=Ana; ella=Elsa) Ana loves acc Elsa and {pro/she} it knows ‘Ana loves Elsa and {she/SHE} knows it.’ (she=Ana; SHE=Elsa) b. Ana ama a Elsa, y Eva la odia {Ø/a ella}. (Ø=Elsa; ella=Ana) Ana loves acc Elsa, and Eva her hates {pro/acc her} ‘Ana loves Elsa, and Eva hates {her/HER}.’ (her=Elsa; HER=Ana)
According to Solan (1983, 1984), whenever the parallel function strategy is operative, stressed alternates (e.g. Spanish overt subject pronouns) pick out ‘unexpected’ antecedents, which their unstressed alternates would not select. These facts support our neo-Gricean generalization that the use of a marked (e.g. stressed) form promotes an alternative reading (i.e. selects a diŸerent antecedent), unlike the usual, expected, or stereotypical interpretation associated with the more minimal unmarked (e.g. unstressed and thus more minimal) form. Essentially, this is what Levinson claims his neo-Gricean M-principle predicts. In summary, there are a number of contexts in which Spanish null subjects promote a coreferential reading; here, the use of overt pronouns implies an alternative reading. In some circumstances, however, the two alternates may be used interchangeably to implicate coreference, as in the examples in (108) and (110) above. In such cases, as Rigau (1986) points out, we must rely on other factors besides the overt/null contrast to interpret the referential expressions in question.
3.7 Summary In this chapter, I have illustrated how social and conversational strategies of recipient design and minimization, as well as a series of key pragmatic, cognitive, and linguistic factors identiªed in the literature on anaphora and referring
Social, functional, and cognitive approaches to reference
expressions provide support for the neo-Gricean framework proposed in Chapter 2. Speciªcally, I have argued that several notions, which have been used in the past to explain anaphora and the use of referring expressions in discourse, are accounted for by the general rules of language use stipulated in the neo-Gricean principles and by the consistency constraints on implicatures. These notions include givenness in terms of predictability/recoverability, saliency, and shared knowledge, as well as topic continuity, accessibility, stress, and contrastiveness.
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Chapter 4
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
4.
Introduction
Because the neo-Gricean principles proposed to deal with anaphora are based on Grice’s (1975) original maxims of conversation, it is particularly in conversation that we should expect to ªnd evidence of their operation. In fact, Levinson (1987a) argues that a requirement of any neo-Gricean theory must be that its principles can be shown to guide actual conversational activity. He underpins this argument by showing how his Q- and I-principles are clearly evidenced in the details of conversational organization. For example, classical studies in conversation analysis (e.g. SchegloŸ 1972; Sacks 1975; Terasaki 1976; SchegloŸ 1979; Sacks and SchegloŸ 1979) reveal an observable ‘economy of information’ and ‘minimization’ of linguistic form resulting from the interlocutors’ considerations of mutual knowledge and their sensitivity to their addressees’ communicational needs (Levinson 1987a).1 In this chapter, I will analyze conversations among Spanish speakers in light of the neo-Gricean framework proposed in Chapter 2. One of the main objectives of this analysis is to ‘unearth’ the assumptions and inferences the Spanish speakers and addressees need to make in the process of producing and interpreting anaphoric expressions. Several representative excerpts of naturally occurring conversations have been included in this chapter in order to illustrate observed patterns of anaphora use and to show the extent to which the neo-Gricean principles and consistency constraints account for these patterns and make the interlocutors’ mutual understanding possible. The data presented in this chapter come from a series of spontaneous conversations among Spanish speakers who are either members of the same family or close friends. The topics of conversation vary widely and so do the entities referred to through the use of anaphoric and non-anaphoric expressions. In addition to the lack of constraints on the length, topic, setting, direction, or purpose of the conversations, what makes the study of anaphora in the Spanish conversations diŸerent from the analysis of the elicited narratives discussed in Chapter 5, is the fact that we take into consideration the
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interlocutors’ mutual knowledge resulting from their intimate relationships with one another. Alluding to some of the challenges conversation analysts face, SchiŸrin states that “some of the very same qualities that make conversation an important topic for linguistic attention also make conversation a di¹cult topic for linguistic analysis” (1988: 251). For instance, SchiŸrin observes that the fact that we must draw inferences about the causes of a certain phenomenon, solely basing ourselves on the observation of its use in conversation, is one of the reasons why the linguistic analysis of conversation is so di¹cult. Furthermore, speech participants’ inferences based on factors such as ‘assumptions of mutual knowledge’ are often less obvious to the analyst or observer, given the fact that s/he cannot ‘get inside the speakers’ heads’ to verify these assumptions. Nevertheless, understanding the nature of such inferences is often of the essence in explicating anaphoric expressions in conversation. Smith (1982) oŸers a simple example of the importance of the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge for the appropriate interpretation of utterances in general. He points out that it makes little sense to ask someone the score if they have no means of determining which game one is talking about. In order to do this, hearers “need to know the interests and immediate preoccupations of the speaker, who, in turn must normally know that the hearer knows he has these preoccupations” (Smith 1982: xii). Clearly, the state of mutual knowledge of the participants in a conversation can be expected to in¶uence the speaker’s choice of an expression to refer anaphorically in conversation, as well as the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s intended reference. In addition, the interactional nature of spontaneous conversations makes it all the more necessary to analyze the data “on a case-by-case (or environment-by-environment) basis” (SchegloŸ 1996: 437), which is one of the analytical techniques characteristic of conversation-analytic work. Section 4.1 below addresses the nature of conversation and some important issues and objectives associated with the methodological approach known as conversation analysis. In Section 4.2, I describe the method used to collect and transcribe the Spanish conversations, as well as the demographic characteristics of the participants. In Section 4.3, I illustrate how the ‘basic pattern of anaphora’ is instantiated in the conversational data, and how it may be accounted for in large part by the interaction of the neo-Gricean I- and Mprinciples and by the saliency of the antecedent. Sections 4.4 through 4.6 deal primarily with the eŸects of background assumptions and mutual knowledge,
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
or the interlocutors’ common ground. The chapter is rounded oŸ by a summary of the conclusions reached from the analysis.
4.1 Conversation and conversation analysis Conversation may be deªned as “that familiar predominant kind of talk in which two or more participants freely alternate in speaking, which generally occurs outside speciªc institutional settings like religious services, law courts, classrooms and the like” (Levinson 1983: 284). SchiŸrin (1988) maintains that conversation is a more basic, unmarked mode of communication than other communicative genres, and it is supposedly the genre in which the most basic principles of pragmatics can be discovered. Furthermore, she argues that the only way the structures used in conversation can be explained is on the assumption that they have been developed for face-to-face communication. One important caveat that SchiŸrin points out, which is also relevant to this study, is that conversations which seem more like monologues because they are produced mostly by one speaker, are also valid sources of conversational data. As we shall see, several of the excerpts from the Spanish conversations analyzed in this study are quite monologic, since they often involve personal stories being told to one or more addressees. Conversation analysis involves a rigorously empirical approach, which avoids premature theory construction, and employs methods that are essentially inductive in nature. Recurring patterns are sought across several records of naturally occurring speech, a practice which contrasts with the immediate categorization of (usually) restricted data typical of earlier approaches. Instead of placing emphasis on a theoretical set of rules such as those used in syntactic description, conversation analysis focuses on the interactional and inferential consequences of the choice between alternative utterances (Levinson 1983: 287). Additionally, rather than basing its explanations on acceptability judgments (as is done in syntactic studies), conversation analysis places emphasis on what is actually found to occur in conversation. Because the analysis of the Spanish conversations in this study focuses on describing actual talk (e.g. as opposed to categorizing data), the approach taken in the present study is primarily ‘conversation-analytical’. However, the analysis will also address the issue of how the sequences of turns at talk involving anaphoric reference ªt together and make sense to the speech participants themselves.
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As to methodology, SchiŸrin (1988) notes that it is only through the analysis of actual verbal interactions between speakers that internal evidence for the function of a particular conversational device can be found. In addition, she notes that only repeated observation of patterns of use of a particular device in conversations provides evidence that speakers and hearers use a particular device in the way proposed by an outside analyst. The approach used in this study is in accordance with the methodological constraints formulated by SchiŸrin; only through close examination of numerous instances of referring expressions (both anaphoric and non-anaphoric) can we provide a heuristic, descriptive, and explanatory account of the use and interpretation of anaphoric expressions in Spanish conversation. Another crucial aspect of conversation analysis is the importance placed on transcription. Questions inevitably arise about how broad or narrow transcriptions should be and which phenomena, such as false starts, intonation, pacing, laughter, and non-verbal gestures, etc. are analytically important. However, according to SchiŸrin (1988), it is in the subsequent analysis that important details are often revealed, which suggests that it might be best for the analyst to carry out as narrow a transcription as possible. The transcription conventions used in this study attempt to re¶ect many, if not most of the features of the conversations themselves, including pauses, points of overlap, lengthened syllables, and basic intonation contours; however, prosodic features were not transcribed in detail. (More will be said about transcription conventions in the next section.) Finally, while analysts may disagree on how detailed a system of transcription should be, there is even less agreement as to what constitutes an adequate corpus for analysis. SchiŸrin (1988) identiªes two general approaches to corpus selection. On the one hand, a ‘sequentially accountable’ approach takes into consideration a few sequences of talk and tries to account for the way in which each utterance ªts into its text. On the other hand, a ‘distributionally accountable’ approach focuses on multiple sequences and attempts to explain why a particular feature occurs in texts in general. In my analysis of the Spanish conversations, I attempt to combine these approaches. On the one hand, I aim to explain selected occurrences of anaphora, showing how the neo-Gricean principles and consistency constraints can account for these particular expressions. On the other hand, I seek a general explanation for the observed patterns of anaphora. Thus, the main objective of my analysis is best summarized by Gumperz (1982: 35–36) as follows:
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 101
The analyst’s task is to make an in depth study of selected instances of verbal interaction, observe whether or not actors understand each other, elicit participants’ interpretations of what goes on, and then (a) deduce the social assumptions that speakers must have made in order to act as they do, and (b) determine empirically how linguistic signs communicate in the interpretation process.
Unfortunately, once the conversational data were transcribed, it was impossible to return to the places in Spain where the conversations were taped and interview the speakers to ªnd out exactly what they meant (or ‘implicated’) by the use of particular anaphoric expressions. To remedy this, I made every eŸort to check my own analysis and interpretations of anaphoric expressions in the data with those of an objective, native speaker of Spanish who was neither trained in linguistics nor aware of my research objectives.
4.2 Data collection, transcription, and participants To gather the conversations for the present study, I tape-recorded numerous native speakers of Spanish, who were close family members or friends, talking to each other at home in natural and spontaneous face-to-face conversations. A total of twenty ninety-minute tapes of conversation were collected in Spain over the course of six weeks. Prior to taping each conversation, I explained to the participants that I was interested in studying Spanish conversations, and I requested permission to record their conversations for my study. I also explained that it did not matter what they talked about, since I was simply interested in studying the Spanish of native speakers. I was present during the taping of practically all of the conversations. Because of my presence, and because I knew all of the interlocutors participating in the study personally, I participated in some of the conversations, albeit minimally, since my goal was to record as much spontaneous speech as possible from the native Spanish speakers. After collecting the data, eight conversations were selected from the larger corpus of tape-recorded data and transcribed for the present study. These eight conversations were chosen because of the intelligibility and clarity of the recorded speech. Other conversations were not transcribed for various reasons, e.g., because several speakers were speaking at the same time, or because there was a lot of background noise, which rendered the conversations unintelligible. I intentionally selected conversations involving diŸerent groups of interlocutors whose relationships to one another varied (e.g. friends speaking
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together, close family members speaking, family and friends, etc.), and whose conversations dealt with diŸerent topics and genres (e.g. casual conversation, story-telling, and informative conversation). These factors were important, since, given the limited amount of data used in the study, the inclusion of diŸerent groups of participants speaking in diŸerent conversational contexts was felt to lessen the likelihood that referential patterns were practiced in idiosyncratic ways. The conversations were transcribed using standard Spanish orthography. In doing this (as opposed to using phonetic transcription), I attempted to re¶ect some prominent features of the pronunciation of the speakers using this system. For example, when a speaker deleted /d/ in words ending in -ado such as gustado (‘liked’), this deletion was represented orthographically in the transcriptions as gustao. Also, ‘ªller expressions’ were transcribed as ‘eh’, ‘ehh’, ‘nn’ in an attempt to re¶ect the actual sounds made by the speakers. Most of the notational conventions used in the transcriptions are taken from Levinson (1983: 369–370). In accordance with these conventions, uppercase letters were used to indicate words or utterances marked by amplitude, pitch, or duration, as well as places where speakers changed their pitch and intonation dramatically. However, a detailed analysis of the prosodic and intonational cues, the length of pauses, and the alignment of the points where overlaps ceased was not considered.2 An additional two transcription conventions, one used to indicate that a phrase is truncated, and another to indicate that a word is truncated, come from Du Bois et al. (1994). (A list and description of all of the conventions used in the transcriptions may be found in the Appendix.) The eight conversations took place in Zaragoza, a major city in northeastern Spain, and in Maleján, a small rural town of about 350 inhabitants, approximately forty miles west of Zaragoza. They can be grouped into two general categories. Four involve one speaker telling an audience of one or more a story, or a series of stories, recounting personal experiences. In these conversations, the ‘storyteller’ talks substantially more than the other participant(s).3 The other four conversations are characterized by a more equal participation by all the parties present (myself excluded), and the majority of the discourse does not involve storytelling. Altogether eight native speakers of Spanish participated in the conversations used in this study. I was present for the recording of seven of the conversations, and therefore participated in them. Four of the native speakers were from the town of Maleján, and two from Zaragoza, with close family ties in Maleján. Two speakers lived in Zaragoza, although one of them was origi-
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 103
nally from a small town near Valladolid, a city in north central Spain, while the other was originally from Cáceres, a city in Extremadura, a region in southwestern Spain. Of the native Spanish speakers, six were women ranging in age from fortynine to approximately eighty-ªve. The two men were thirty-six and ªfty years old. The youngest woman and the two men were college educated, while the ªve older women had attended primary school only. The fact that most of the conversational data in my study are from conversations among women, and particularly the older women, has a simple and practical explanation. With one exception, I know the women well through family ties and spend quite a lot of time with them. As a result, they were both available and willing to have their conversations taped. Also, because conversation is a main pastime among the participants, opportunities for tape-recording arose naturally. In fact, the conversations chosen for analysis were extremely spontaneous, as the speakers appeared to have forgotten that I was taping them. Therefore, regardless of the lack of data from male-male conversation and conversation among younger speakers, the obvious spontaneity and naturalness of the conversations help to strengthen the conclusions reached from this study. In the transcriptions and analysis, I refer to each of the eight speakers by a diŸerent capitalized letter only (e.g. ‘speaker C’, or simply ‘C’), while I am represented as ‘I’. All turns are numbered successively. The third-person references that are of importance for the analysis appear in italics, while relevant coreference relations are marked by subscript indices. In this study, I do not analyze re¶exives, as their use is grammatically stipulated, and, generally speaking, the speaker has no choice of referring expression where re¶exives are concerned. Thus, even though third-person re¶exives are essentially anaphoric, they are not the focus of the analysis, and therefore do not appear in italics and are not marked by indices.
4.3 The basic pattern of anaphora The basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000) to deal with NPs, pronouns, and zero, which we discussed in Chapter 2, will serve as the point of departure for our analysis. According to this pattern, reduced NPs (pronouns and zero) will tend to be coreferential with prior relevant NPs, while reversion to a full lexical NP will tend to implicate disjoint reference. This generalization is borne out in the following excerpt, in which the
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speaker (‘C’) is telling about the lunch she and her cousin packed for a trip to Santiago de Compostela. We shall refer to this story as El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’). Initially, C makes reference to entities using full lexical subject and object NPs, thus bringing the referents associated with the NPs into focus; she goes on to use minimal forms to implicate coreference with these NPs. (113) El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’) C: María Jesúsi tenía gallina, Øi hizo un caldoj, Øi loj puso en un termo ((both participants laugh)) en un termo. Yo tenía sesosk, unas cabezask. Y los sesosk losk hice huecos y ((laugh)) unas tortillas. (.) Resumiendo que preparamos la la comida. ‘María Jesúsi had chicken, (shei) made some brothj, (shei) put itj in a thermos ((both participants laugh)) in a thermos. I had brainsk, some headsk. And (I) made the brainsk breaded and deep-fried and ((laugh)) some tortillas. (.) In sum, (we) prepared lunch.’
Here, the anaphoric relations between the subject antecedent María Jesúsi and the subsequent null subjects, as well as the object antecedent un caldoj (‘some broth’, though literally, ‘a broth’) and the anaphoric object pronoun loj (‘it’), respectively, illustrate the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson. Furthermore, in neo-Gricean terms, the minimally informative forms implicate coreferential interpretations and may be considered simple I-implicatures, or ‘Iinferences’, since they follow the sub-maxims under the I-principle. These include the preference for coreferential interpretations of minimal forms, which are arguably more informative and speciªc than non-coreferential interpretations, as well as the assumption of “referential connectedness [between described situations or events], and the presumption of stereotypical relations and the actuality of referents” (Levinson 2000: 116). As noted in Blackwell (1998), these coreferential interpretations also re¶ect the ‘parallel function strategy’ (discussed in Chapter 3, Section 3.6; see examples in (112)), as well as the operation of the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency. That is, the subject NP, María Jesúsi is referred to anaphorically by null subjects in the subsequent discourse, while the object NP, un caldoj (‘some brothj’) is referred to by a coreferential object pronoun, thus revealing the parallel functioning of the antecedents and their anaphors. Furthermore, the entities to which the antecedent NPs refer are the most salient entities in the discourse at the point at which their respective anaphors occur. Given these conditions, use of the most minimal forms possible to refer anaphorically to these entities is predicted by the I-principle.
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In the second sentence of this excerpt, C’s reversion to the marked pronominal subject NP Yo (‘I’), when she says Yo tenía sesosk, unas cabezask (‘I had brainsk, some headsk’), illustrates an M-implicature of non-coreference in an environment where a null subject (e.g., Ø tenía sesos, ‘(she/he/I/you) had brains’) would have implicated coreference with the most salient potential antecedent María Jesúsi, which is also a subject. Finally, when C uses two full NPs in apposition, to refer to the same entity in the utterance Yo tenía sesosk, unas cabezask, the last relevant object NP ripe for a subsequent I-implicature of coreference is the NP unas cabezask. The subsequent use of a full NP, in this case, los sesosk (‘the brainsk’) immediately after unas cabezask (‘some heads’), should promote an Mimplicature of non-coreference; but this inference is canceled by semantic entailments. That is, los sesosk contains no more semantic information than the preceding NPs, and the meaning of the anaphoric NP, los sesosk, is semantically entailed by the antecedent NPs sesosk, unas cabezask, and a coreferential reading is triggered. Simultaneously, use of the object NP los sesosk, in sentence-initial position, brings the associated referent (‘the brains’) into the foreground. In this instance, a coreferential interpretation of the pronoun losk (‘themk’), which occurs immediately after los sesosk, is grammatically obligatory due to its syntactic environment. However, its use is also explicable in terms of the pragmatic I-principle and the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency: the pronoun is a minimal form that refers anaphorically to the last relevant and most salient NP which serves the same grammatical function. In the following segment, from the same story (‘The Trip to Santiago’), the use of minimal versus marked lexical NPs re¶ects the interaction of the neoGricean I- and M-principles. In this excerpt, C continues telling me (‘I’) about the trip she took with some family members to Santiago de Compostela: (114) El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’) C: …Y vamos los tres los tre- o sea María Jesús y Patricioi (.) y Øi van siempre a las mejores ca- habitación o sea que para que Øi pudieran descansar porque Patricioj tenía que estar todos los días bastantes horas, conduciendo. Los chicosk e- en nuestra habitación, una cama para ellosk, otra para nosotros, camas grandes que suele haber, y los chicosk para que no se fuesen solos ellosk, bueno. ‘… And the three the thre- of us go- that is to say María Jesús and Patricioi (.) and (theyi) always go to the best hou- room or in other words so that (theyi) could rest because Patricioj had to spend quite a few hours every day, driving. The boysk i- in our [hotel] room, one bed for themk, another for us, big beds, which is usually the case, and the boysk, so that theyk weren’t alone, anyway.’
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First, the speaker uses a full subject NP María Jesús y Patricioi (‘María Jesús and Patricioi’), which brings the intended referent into focus. The subsequent two null subjects promote simple I-implicatures of coreference with this antecedent, since it refers to the most salient entity in the domain of discourse at this point in the story, ‘María Jesús and Patricio’. However, C’s reversion to a marked singular NP, Patricioj, in the subordinate clause, porque Patricioj tenía que estar todos los días bastantes horas, conduciendo (‘because Patricioj had to spend quite a few hours every day, driving’), implicates non-coreference for two reasons. From the pragmatic standpoint, reversion to the full NP, Patricioj, M-implicates non-coreference with the last relevant NP expression; however, the switch in reference is also promoted by agreement, since the NP Patricioj is singular, and therefore does not agree with the previous anaphoric null subjects with third-person plural verbs. The next NP in the segment, los chicosk (‘the boysk’), implicates another switch in reference (i.e. non-coreference), since, according to the M-principle, if the speaker had intended to express coreference with the last relevant NP, Patricioj, she would have used a more minimal, unmarked expression (e.g. a null subject). The subsequent use of the prepositional pronoun ellosk (‘them’) after los chicosk, in the utterance Los chicosk e- en nuestra habitación, una cama para ellosk (‘The boysk i- in our [hotel] room, one bed for themk’), is the most minimal expression possible in this context. It therefore receives a coreferential interpretation with the last relevant NP, as predicted by the I-principle. Next, C uses two non-coreferential NPs, nosotros (‘us’) and camas grandes (‘big beds’), to change the focus of the discourse momentarily. This in turn justiªes the subsequent reference to ‘the boys’ with the full NP los chicosk, in the utterance y los chicosk para que no se fuesen solos ellosk, bueno (‘and the boysk so that theyk wouldn’t be alone, anyway’). Finally, the postposed overt subject pronoun ellosk (‘theyk’) at the end of this utterance, where it is not needed for referential purposes, appears to be used emphatically by the speaker to provide an explanation (so that they didn’t have to sleep alone), which in turn may be interpreted as “being contrary to expectation” (Huang 2000b: 230).4 The following excerpt is from a conversation between two close friends, C and T, both of whom are elderly women. Here we ªnd further evidence of the basic pattern of anaphora in an exchange in which the two speakers express coreference through the use of several successive minimal expressions. In this dialogue, C and T are discussing some bullªghts; therefore, we shall refer to it as Las corridas (‘The Bullªghts’). I was present and participated in the conversation, albeit minimally; my turns are coded by the letter ‘I’.
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(115) La corridas (‘The Bullªghts’) 1 C: Mañana hay corrida en la tele. 2 T: Mañana hay corridai en la tele una bue-= 3 C: = Mañana. 4 I: ¿Y de dónde? ¿de Madrid? 5 C: La corridai ¿de dónde es Øi? 6 T: No sé dónde es Øi. Me lo5 ha dicho un: - = 7 C: = El otro día Øi fue de Benidorm. 8 T: El otro día Øi fue de Benidorm y el día antes Øi fue también de otro sitio por ahí. 9 C: Sí. 10 T: ¿No ves que ahora empiezan en en Huesca las corridas de San Lorenzo? 11 C: San // Lorenzo. 12 T: Y Øarb dicen que va a torear Palomo Linares con el hijo del Cordobés. 1 C: ‘Tomorrow there’s a bullªght on TV.’ 2 T: ‘Tomorrow there’s a bullªghti on TV a good one=’ 3 C: ‘=Tomorrow.’ 4 I: ‘And where [is it] from? From Madrid?’ 5 C: ‘The bullªghti,where is (iti) from?’ 6 T: ‘ (I) don’t know where (iti) is. A:-= [e.g. friend] told me.’= 7 C: ‘=The other day (iti) was from Benidorm.’ 8 T: ‘The other day (iti) was from Benidorm and the day before (iti) was also from another place around there.’ 9 C: ‘Yes.’ 10 T: ‘Don’t (you) see that the bullªghts of San Lorenzo are starting now in in Huesca?’ 11 C: ‘San // Lorenzo.’ 12 T: ‘And (theyarb) say that Palomo Linares is going to ªght [the bulls] with El Cordobés’ son.’
In the ªrst turn of this exchange, C introduces the topic of the conversation with an indeªnite NP, corrida (‘bullªght’), and T conªrms C’s assertion that there is a bullªght on TV by repeating C’s utterance in turn 2. When I ask T where the bullªght is taking place, in the fourth turn, ¿Y de dónde? ¿de Madrid? (‘And where [is it] from? From Madrid?’), C asks the question again, only more explicitly: La corridai ¿de dónde es Øi? (‘The bullªghti, where is (iti) from?’). The full NP, la corridai (‘the bullªghti’), where an unmarked, anaphoric zero could have occurred felicitously, appears to have been used by C to
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clarify I’s question. That is, it seems to be an attempt on the part of the speaker to avoid ambiguity or miscommunication, and thus may be accounted for by the M-principle: ‘only use a marked NP if you have a reason to do so’. After the full lexical NP, La corridai (‘The bullªghti’) in turn 5, anaphoric reference with this subject (and topic) NP is expressed ªve consecutive times in turns 5–8. In this segment of the conversation, La corridai is the most salient NP (and referent) in the exchange, licensing the series of null subjects. Subsequently, reversion to a marked subject NP, las corridas de San Lorenzo (‘the bullªghts of San Lorenzo’) in turn 10, when T says, ¿No ves que ahora empiezan en en Huesca las corridas de San Lorenzo? (‘Don’t (you) see that the bullªghts of San Lorenzo are starting now in in Huesca?’) serves to M-implicate noncoreference and a switch in reference, and thus a change in the focus of attention. Finally, in the last turn of this excerpt, T uses the third-person plural verb dicen with a null subject to express impersonal or ‘arbitrary reference’ (indexed as ‘arb’). As Suñer points out, when this impersonal third-person plural pro construction is used, “what is crucial to the interpretation of pro as arbitrary…is not the pragmatic determination of the plausible referents as [±plural], but rather the signaling that it is immaterial for what is being stated to identify the referents” (Suñer 1983: 189). In other words, in the case of dicen (‘(they) say’), in turn 12 of (115), where there is no relevant antecedent for the null subject, specifying the subject and agent of the action is irrelevant and unnecessary for the comprehension of the utterance as a whole.6 The following two excerpts demonstrate how continued focus on one actor in a story, in addition to the focus on the speaker herself, enables the speaker to use minimal forms to express coreference. In the following exchange, which is a funny episode within the larger story, ‘The Trip to Santiago’, C is telling about the time her cousin put her hands into a bowl thinking it was a ªnger bowl, but then realized that is was a bowl of hot broth. I shall refer to this anecdote as El caldo gallego (‘The Galician Broth’): (116) El caldo gallego (‘The Galician Broth’) 1 C: María Jesúsi, ni corta ni perezosa, oyes ((laughing)), ni cor-ta ni perezosa, vio el tarro aquelj, Øi dijo estoj7 es paa — y Øi se mete y Øi se lava las manos. Y Øj era el cal-k y ellai dice // ((laughing)) 2 I: ((laughing)). 3 C: Es que, aquello fue morirnos. // Aquello fue morirnos. 4 I: En la sopak ((laughing)). En la sopak.
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 109
5 C: Y Øi mete e- e- allí Øarb ponen la la tarrinaj y ellai se mete ni corta ni perezosa claro lavándose las manos. Los hombres se quedaron así mirando. Yo ((unintelligible)) y me dice María Jesúsi ¡AY, ESTÁ MUY PEGAJOSO ESTOk! ((laughing)) Ay, nos salimos de allí= 6 I: =¡Øk estaba caliente! ((laughing)) 7 C: Que Øk estaba caliente y pegajoso porque Øk era el caldo gallegok. Salimos de allí que nos partíamos de risa y no podíamos. Nos entró un agobio y una cosa ((technical interference))…’ 1 C: ‘María Jesúsi, without a moment’s hesitation, (you) hear ((laughing)), without hesitating, saw that bowlj, (shei) said thisj is for — and (shei) sticks in heri8 and (shei) washes heri hands. And (itj) was the bro-k and shei says // ((laughing))’ 2 I: ((laughing)). 3 C: ‘The thing is, that was hilarious. // That was hilarious [i.e., ‘We died laughing’].’ 4 I: ‘In the soupk ((laughing)). In the soupk.’ 5 C: ‘And (shei) sticks heri [hands] i- i- (theyarb) put the the bowlj there and shei sticks heri [hands in] without a moment’s hesitation, of course washing heri hands. The men just sat/stood there staring. I ((unintelligible)) and María Jesúsi says to me ¡OH, THISk IS VERY STICKY! ((laughing)) Oh, (we) left the place=’ 6 I: ‘=(Itk) was hot! ((laughing))’ 7 C: ‘ (Itk) was hot and sticky because (itk) was the Galician brothk. We left the place since (we) were cracking up and (we) couldn’t [control ourselves]. It got to be too much for us and something ((technical interference))…’
In the ªrst turn of this segment, C uses the proper name, María Jesúsi, and then a series of three null subjects, which I-implicate coreference with this name. She states, Øi dijo estoj es paa — y Øi se mete y Øi se lava las manos (‘(shei) said thisj is for — and (shei) sticks heri and (shei) washes heri hands’). Then, C mentions that ‘that bowl’ was ‘the broth’ (which she had referred to earlier in the same conversation as el caldo gallego ‘Galician broth’), when she explains, Y Øj era el cal-k (‘And (itj) was the bro-k’). This brief switch in the focus of attention to the broth, resulting from the speaker’s use of the truncated NP el cal-k (‘the bro-k’), may explain her reversion to the marked pronoun ellai (‘shei’) in lieu of zero, to express coreference with the antecedent, María Jesús, at the end of the ªrst turn. In this instance, the overt pronoun not only implicates non-coreference with the last NP, el cal-k (‘the bro-k’, i.e. ‘the broth’), but it also serves to refer
110 Implicatures in Discourse
anaphorically and refocus the attention on the protagonist, María Jesús. This explanation appears to be supported by C’s second use of the overt subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’), as opposed to a null subject, in turn 5, when she says, Y Øi mete e- e- allí Øarb ponen la la tarrinaj y ellai se mete… (‘And (shei) sticks heri [hands] i- i- (theyarb) put the the bowlj there and shei sticks heri [hands in]…’). Once again, C momentarily switches the focus of attention from María Jesús to another referent, an arbitrary, plural, third person (‘theyarb’), expressed as zero with the third-person, plural verb ponen (‘put’), and then to another entity, la tarrinaj (‘the bowlj’). This appears to trigger the subsequent use of the marked pronoun, instead of a null subject, in the utterance y ellai se mete (‘and shei sticks heri [hands in]’), which in turn brings the focus of attention back to the protagonist, María Jesús. This pronoun is su¹cient to refer to the intended referent successfully, because María Jesús is the only person the speaker is talking about at this point (besides the speaker herself), and therefore, a more marked form such as a proper name or lexical NP is unnecessary. C then reverts to a full subject NP, los hombres (‘the men’), in the next utterance in turn 5, when she states, Los hombres se quedaron así mirando (‘The men just sat/stood there staring’). This full NP serves to M-implicate non-coreference with the last relevant NP, and it switches reference, changing the focus of attention momentarily to the men. Subsequently, in the same turn, C uses another full NP, María Jesús, to M-implicate non-coreference with los hombres (‘the men’), which brings the focus of attention back to the main character in the story. When C imitates María Jesús, her deictic reference to the soup, ¡AY, ESTÁ MUY PEGAJOSO ESTOk! (‘OH, THISk IS VERY STICKY!’), is su¹cient to change the focus of attention to the soup. She thus provides a context of reference for a series of minimal expressions, including I’s use of a null subject, ¡Øk estaba caliente! (‘(itk) was hot!’), followed by C’s reiteration of I’s comment and her own interpretation of the situation, Que Øk estaba caliente y pegajoso porque Øk era el caldo gallego (‘(Itk) was hot and sticky because (itk) was the Galician brothk’). The segment of conversation in (116) illustrates how the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency interacts with the I- and M-principles and aŸects the speaker’s choice of NP expressions. The most minimal, unmarked linguistic form for subject expression, zero, is used when the intended referent is clearly the most salient entity in the discourse context and thus the focus of attention. On the other hand, when a potential antecedent is not the most salient NP in the discourse context, the speaker reverts to a less minimal, marked form (e.g. a pronoun instead of zero). The marked form produces an
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
M-implicature of non-coreference with the last, most salient potential antecedent at that point in the discourse. Finally, use of the minimally informative, yet marked form, the subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’), brings an entity previously referred to, the protagonist, María Jesús, back into the foreground, while simultaneously expressing a clear M-implicature of non-coreference with the last relevant/salient NP in the discourse. What we see, therefore, is a tension between two neo-Gricean principles: the I-principle of Minimization con¶icts with the M-principle, which instructs speakers to use a marked expression when needed. Before beginning a third anecdote, C sums up her story about María Jesús and the Galician broth in the following excerpt (turn 16 in the sequence beginning in (117)). Here, similarly, the neo-Gricean principles are upheld, since reference to María Jesús is made initially by ªrst name, followed by the use of the most minimal expressions possible to refer to her anaphorically. These minimal forms include the repetition of a third-person singular verb with a null subject, as in hasta que Øi había metido, que Øi había metido la mano (‘(shei)’ d gone so far as to stick, (shei) had stuck heri hand in’), as well as the use of four clitic object pronouns, among these three instances of the indirect object pronoun lei (‘heri’) and one instance of the direct object lai (‘heri’): (117) El caldo gallego (‘The Galician Broth’), cont. 16 C: … O sea que: todas esas peripecias nos pasó. Pero oírseilo contar a María Jesúsi.9 Es que yo me di un ataque. To- nos estaban allí rodeando los hijos y maridos y ¿qué pasaba? no podíamos decir nada ((laughs)) hasta que Øi había metido, que Øi había metido la mano pensando que Øj/k era el agua para lavarnos las manos y Øj/k era el caldo gallegok porque Ø se lei se lei pusieron muy pegajosas. Y los hombres no hacen — y se quedan y no sé si el hombre de la- del restaurant, o sea del café, del bar lei pondría otro p- otro: otro caldo gallego. Peripecias de esas nos han pasao y es que María Jesúsi es muy cómica y yo en cuanto lai veo me entra tal risa. ‘… In other words all those incidents happened to us. But to hear María Jesúsi tell it. The thing is that I died [laughing]. Alour husbands and sons were there around us and, what happened? (We) couldn’t say anything ((laughs)) (shei)’ d gone so far as to stick, (shei) had stuck heri hand in thinking that (itj/k) was water to wash our hands in and (itj/k) was the Galician brothk because heri heri (they) got very sticky. And the men don’t do —
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Implicatures in Discourse
and (they) stand [there] and (I) don’t know if the man from thefrom the restaurant, or rather from the café, from the bar gave heri another [bowl of] Galician broth. Incidents like those have happened to us and the thing is María Jesúsi is very funny and I as soon as (I) see heri (it) makes me start laughing so.’
Two minimal forms, both of which are null subjects, are also used to refer to either ‘the bowl’ (la tarrinaj) or ‘the Galician broth’ (el caldo gallegok) when C states, Øi había metido la mano pensando que Øj/k era el agua para lavarnos las manos y Øj/k era el caldo gallegok… ((‘shei) had stuck heri hand in thinking that (itj/k) was water to wash our hands in and (itj/k) was the Galician brothk’). The antecedents of these null subjects could be either la tarrinaj (‘the bowlj’), used in turn 5 of (116) or el caldo gallegok (‘the Galician brothk’), used in turn 7 of (116). Obviously, either one of these antecedents is valid for the null subjects in question, because C identiªes the intended referent explicitly by using the NP el caldo gallegok in the predicate after the verb era (‘was’) in (117). Furthermore, no ambiguity of reference arises from the use of the null subjects in (117) because of the participants’ state of mutual knowledge of the story and their general world knowledge. That is, both the speaker and the addressee mutually know that María Jesús stuck her hands in a bowl ªlled with soup, which renders this information ‘old’, or ‘given knowledge’. Furthermore, world knowledge makes it impossible for the NP la mano (‘the [i.e. her] hand’), which is the most recent and salient potential antecedent at this point in the conversation (with the exception of María Jesús), to be interpreted as the antecedent of the null subjects in the utterances Øj/k era el agua…j/k Øj/k era el caldo gallegok (‘(itj/k) was water…j/k (itj/k) was the Galician brothk’). This is because, logically, one’s hand cannot be ‘water’ or ‘broth’. Thus, the situation is ripe for the application of the I-principle of Minimization, as it is realized through the use of minimal expressions. In other words, although Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora appears to be breached, what we have is both adherence to the Iprinciple of Minimization and the intervention of the consistency constraint relative to the participants’ world knowledge and mutual knowledge; together, they easily disambiguate the minimal forms used. The interaction of the I- and M-principles and the intervention of the consistency constraints on coreference are evidenced in a third story from the same conversation as the one in which ‘The Trip to Santiago’ and ‘The Galician Broth’ were told. In the following segment, C begins to tell about another funny incident involving María Jesús, which took place one day when C and María Jesús went to ‘a swearing-in ceremony’ (una jura de bandera). María
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
Jesús is the main character and the only other person referred to in the story besides the speaker. As a result, the speaker refers to her anaphorically, primarily through the use of minimal forms, throughout this excerpt. I have named this story El gorro (‘The Hat’) for reasons that will become apparent to the reader. In order to follow the analysis more easily, this conversational story has been broken into four segments, although the turns are numbered consecutively. Coreference with the antecedent María Jesús is indicated by ‘i’ in subscript; coreferential expressions that refer to the antecedent el gorro (‘the hat’) are indicated by ‘j’; and expressions referring anaphorically to una cosa… (‘a thing…’) or ‘the thingamajig’ (el pirulo) on the hat are indicated by ‘k’. (118) El gorro (‘The Hat’) 1 C: Pues otra vez también nos pasó (.) que fuimos a: (.) a la jura de bandera ¿sabes lo que es la // jura de bandera ? 2 I: Sí. Sí. 3 C: De José- de José Luis. (.) Fuimos y Benitoh no quiso ir porque Øh dice yo — bastante Øh ha pasado de mili que Øh no se encontraría bien a lo mejor ya, no sé. Pero me fui yo con ellos, con María Jesús y Patricio. Y María Jesúsi, pues y y no sé quién lei lei dio lei dejó un: gorro d’estos, como de ganchilloj, no sé, para ponérseloj así porque Øj era pa:’ el invierno y hacía mucho frío. Pero ellai se loj se loj puso así:= 4 I: =Como de punto. 5 C: =De ganchillo. (.) O sea Øi iba tan encopetada y Øarb se lei veía arriba una cosa así como un — como un purok. D’eso una cosa así redon-k, ¿ves esto ? Así por fuera. Una cosa que — k Øarb ni seØarb no se sabía si Øk era adorno o qué. //Porque ((laughs)) 6 I: ((laughs)) 7 C: Ay ese día, dije yo ya no me puedo reír porque pensé que Ø me daba un ataque, después que Ø pasó:, en — contándolo María Jesúsi en sui casa, en una, en un cumpleaños. Me entró una cosa que pensé que yo me moría. Porque es que, bueno, eso pasó. 1 C: ‘Well once again (it) also happened to us (.) when (we) went to: (.) to the swearing-in ceremony. Do (you) know what a swearing-in ceremony is?’ 2 I: ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ 3 C: ‘For José- for José Luis. (.) (We) went and Benitoh refused to go because (heh) says I — (heh)’ d been through enough military service or maybe (heh) was already not feeling well, (I) don’t know. But I went with them, with María Jesús and Patricio. And
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Implicatures in Discourse
María Jesúsi, well and and (I) don’t know who gave heri heri lent heri one of those, sort of crocheted hatsj, (I) don’t know, to put itj on like this because (itj) was for winter and (it) was very cold. But shei put itj itj on like thi:s=’ 4 I: ‘=Sort of knitted.’ 5 C: ‘=Crocheted. (.) In other words (shei) was so dressed up and (youarb) could see a thing sort of like a like a cigark on top of heri. Like that a thing like that roun-k, (you) see this? Like that on the outside. A thing that-k (youarb) didn’t (youarb) didn’t know if (itk) was a decoration or what.// Because ((laughs))’ 6 I: ((laughs)) 7 C: ‘Oh that day, I said (I) can’t laugh anymore because (I) thought that (it) would make me crack up [i.e. die laughing] after (it) happe:ned, in- (when) María Jesúsi (was) telling about it at heri house, at a, at a birthday party. It got me [laughing so much] that (I) thought that I was going to die. Because it’s [just] that, well, that happened.’
In her introduction to the story, C conforms to the I-principle of Minimization by using a series of null subjects with both ªrst-, second-, and third-person verbs. These include the ªrst-person, plural verb fuimos (‘ (we) went’) in both the ªrst and third turns, the second-person, singular verb sabes ((you) know’) in the ªrst turn, and a series of three null subjects to express coreference with the antecedent Benitoh in turn 3. C then provides I with information about María Jesús, the protagonist in the story, which facilitates comprehension of the subsequent anaphoric references to her. This information is provided in the third turn of story, when C states, Y María Jesúsi, pues y y no sé quién lei lei dio lei dejó un: gorro d’estos, como de ganchilloj (‘And María Jesúsi, well and and (I) don’t know who gave heri heri lent heri one of those, sort of crocheted hatsj’). After this initial reference to María Jesús in the third turn, anaphoric reference to her is achieved through the use of the most minimal expressions possible, including null subjects and clitic object pronouns, until turn 7, with only one exception. This exception occurs at the end of turn 3, where C uses the overt subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’). This overt pronoun is not needed to avoid ambiguity, since a null subject would have been just as comprehensible, given the participants’ mutual knowledge of the story (e.g., that María Jesús had borrowed a hat to wear, etc.). However, at the moment in the discourse when the overt pronoun is used, the intended referent, María Jesús, is not the most salient one in the current discourse. Instead, the most recent anaphoric
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
pronouns are a direct object pronoun and a null subject, both of which refer anaphorically to the hat, the entity currently in focus: para ponérseloj así porque Øj era pa:’ el invierno (‘to put itj on like this because (itj) was for winter’). Thus, C’s reversion to the marked overt pronoun ellai (‘shei’) at the end of turn 3 serves to switch the focus of the story from the hat back to the protagonist, María Jesus, much like a movie camera might change its focal point. In neoGricean terms, the marked (overt) subject pronoun ellai M-implicates noncoreference with the last, most salient referent in the discourse, the hat. Simultaneously, the overt pronoun is su¹cient to bring the protagonist back into the foreground. This is supported by the fact that the very next reference to María Jesús is a null subject used by C in turn 5 when she says, O sea Øi iba tan encopetada (‘In other words (shei) was so dressed up’). That is, the pronoun ellai in turn 3 is su¹cient to make María Jesús the most salient referent in the discourse, and thus who the ongoing discourse is ‘about’. In this segment, we see how antecedent saliency makes the speaker choose a marked, yet minimally informative overt pronoun to implicate coreference with a less salient antecedent, while she at the same time is also marking a contrast in reference. Furthermore, the speaker’s choice and pattern of referring expressions reveal that the M-principle maxim, ‘do not use a prolix, obscure, or marked expression without reason’, and the I-principle of Minimization are both upheld. In the continuation of the story, presented in (119) below, only anaphoric pronouns and zeros are used to refer to María Jesús, with one exception in the last turn of the segment (turn 15), where C says, in a false start, Me dice Mari-i (‘Mari-i says to me-’). The overwhelming use of minimal expressions in this sequence is due to the fact that María Jesús is the only main ‘actor’ in the story, and therefore she is the entity ‘in focus’ during most of the narrative. In fact, she is the only third person referred to non-arbitrarily in the story until turn 25. This use of minimal forms to refer to an entity in focus is in keeping with the cognitive model proposed by Gundel et al. (1993). In this model (as noted in Chapter 3), the cognitive status of ‘in focus’ speciªes that the intended referent must be both in short-term memory and at the current center of attention. Furthermore, this status is required for the appropriate use of zero and unstressed pronominal expressions (1993: 279). In (119), we also ªnd cases where the marked, overt subject pronoun ella (‘she’) refers to the main character, María Jesús, at points in the conversation where the referent, María Jesús, is temporarily not the center of attention:
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(119) El gorro (‘The Hat’), cont. 8 I: ¿Qué pasó con la gorraj?10 9 C: Nada más normal, ellai lok llevaba así el pirulok ¿ves como esto? Por aquí fuera. Øarb ni se sabía si Øk era por fuera o por dentro. Ellai con su:si d’eso, bueno. Pasamos, que al poner unas unas verjas, unas, ((laughs)) bueno unos alambres espinos que hay allí ((laughing)) que es que Øi/*i fue- yo cuando Øi me dijo el signiªcado después al- pensé que Ø me dio- me tuve que sujetar. // Y ellai ((unintelligible)) aquel día. 10 I: ((laughs)) 11 C: Øarb ponen no sé, alambres espinos para (.) que la gente no pase. 12 I: Sí sí sí sí. 13 C: Pero nos metimos por debajo. ((laughing)) // Oyes, se lei engancha el gorroj. 14 I: ((laughing)) 8 I: ‘What happened with the hatj?’ 9 C: ‘Acting as if nothing was the matter, shei was wearing the thingamajigk like this, (you) see like this? Around here on the outside. (Youarb) didn’t know whether (itk) was [supposed to be] on the outside or the inside. Shei with he:ri with all that, anyway. (We) went through, since some some fences had been put up, some, ((laughs)) well some barbed wire that is there ((laughing)) and the thing is that (shei/it) was- I when (shei) explained it to me afterward at- (I) thought that (it) gave me- (I) had to hold myself. // And shei ((unintelligible)) that day.’ 10 I: ((laughs)) 11 C: ‘(Theyarb) put (I) don’t know, barbed wire so (.) that people don’t go through.’ 12 I: ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah.’ 13 C: ‘But (we) crawled under. ((laughing)) // You know what, heri hatj gets caught.’ 14 I: ((laughing))
The overt pronoun ellai (‘shei’) is used instead of null subject three times in turn 9 of (119) at points where an entity, other than María Jesús, is currently salient. In each instance, the overt subject pronoun ellai switches the focus of attention back to the protagonist, María Jesús, so as to again make her most salient entity in the discourse. For instance, in turn 9, C uses the overt subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’) immediately after I’s reference to ‘the hatj’ (la gorraj)
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
in turn 8. Then, after C mentions ‘the thingamajigk’ (el pirulok) and refers anaphorically to it through the use of zero in turn 9, she reverts to the marked subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’) to stress its non-coreference with the previous zero. Simultaneously, the overt subject pronoun implicates coreference with the antecedent María Jesúsi, both because the intended referent is in shortterm memory and because the participants have su¹cient mutual knowledge of the story from the previous discourse to interpret this coreferential pronoun successfully. Actually, a null subject with its corresponding third-person, singular verb would have been su¹cient at each point where the pronoun ellai occurs in turn 9, given the interlocutors’ knowledge of the story from previous discourse. We can therefore conclude that the relative saliency of the antecedents interacts with the I-principle of linguistic and informational minimization and the M-principle to account for C’s use of relatively minimal, yet marked overt subject pronouns in turn 9. In the continuation of El gorro (‘The Hat’) in (120), we observe the interaction of the I- and M-principles with antecedent saliency, mutual knowledge, and agreement. At the beginning of this segment, which begins with turn 15, the hat is the most salient entity in the discourse on account of C’s reference to it in subject position via the full NP el gorroj (‘the hatj’) in her previous utterance, in turn 13 of (119). The salience of the hat appears to account for C’s false start in turn 15, where the name Marí-i implicates a switch in reference and brie¶y changes the focus from the hat back to the protagonist, María Jesús. Immediately afterwards, however, we encounter another switch in reference to the speaker, C, herself, through the use of the marked, overt subject pronoun, yo (‘I’). This overt yo is not needed to disambiguate person reference, since the verb form accompanying it, pasé (‘passed-1sg’), is marked for person and number. Nevertheless, this marked pronoun momentarily turns the focus of the narrative to the actions of the speaker herself, so that she can add a minor detail to her story (yo pasé primero, ‘I went through ªrst’). Then, right after this reference to herself, C refers anaphorically to María Jesús with a null subject (Øi dice, ‘(shei) says’), framing what María Jesús said as what Tannen (1989: 110) calls ‘constructed dialogue’: (120) El gorro (‘The Hat’), cont. 15 C: Me dice Mari-i yo pasé primero, Øi dice ¡AY! Øj SE ME HA ENGANCHAO! ((laughing)) Con el gorroj enganchao al:- yo ((laughing, unintelligible)) 16 I: ((laughing)) Y ¿Øj tenía, Øj tenía pinzas? 17 C: ((laughing)) Claro.
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18 19 20 21
I: C: I: C:
22 I: 23 C:
15 C:
16 17 18 19 20
I: C: I: C: I:
21 C:
22 I: 23 C:
((laughing)) No sé que que horquillas o algo. ¡Que no::! ¿No ves que Ø son unos alambres de pincho? Ya ya sí lo sé. De de — para los las vacas y eso. Pues Øj se enganchó allí, el gorroj ((laughing)). ¡AY! Øj SE ME HA ENGANCHAO ALLÍ, AY! Yo que lai veo, bien chica. ((laughing)) ¿Y es que se lei quedó el gorroj atrás o: ((unintelligible overlap, laughing)) ¡AY M’ HE ENGANCHA-! ((laughing)) Jo jo jo jo me reía de aquel tema, jo jo jo jo. Luego llegamos a casa, luego llegamos, y a lo:s (.) a los días que fueran (.) pue:s, ellai le devolvió el gorroj a quien fuera, y Øarb ya no se loj ha visto más. // ((laughs)) Porque, y luego contando en el bar, en casa de ((laughing)) María Pilar… ‘Mari-i says to me- I went through ªrst, (shei) says, OH (ITj)’ S GOTTEN CAUGHT! ((laughing)) With the hatj caught in the:- I ((laughing, unintelligible))’ ‘ ((laughing)) And did (itj) have, did (itj) have bobby pins?’ ‘ ((laughing)) Of course.’ ‘ ((laughing)) (I) don’t know or or hairpins or something.’ ‘Oh no::! Don’t you see that (it) was barbed wire?’ ‘Yeah, I already know that. Of of — for cows and that [kind of thing].’ ‘Well (itj) got caught there, the hatj, ((laughing)) OH! (ITj)’ S GOTTEN CAUGHT THERE! OH! When I see heri, honestly girl. ((laughing))’ ‘So did heri hatj get left behind? O:r ((unintelligible overlap, laughing))’ ‘OH (I)’ VE GOTTEN CAU-! ((laughing)) Ha ha ha (I) was laughing about that incident, ha ha ha ha. Later (we) arrived at home, later (we) arrived, and about (.) about two days later (.), well, shei returned the hatj to whoever (it) was, and (itj) hasn’t been seen since. // ((laughs)) Because, and later telling [the story] in the bar, at the home of ((laughing)) María Pilar…’
At the end of turn 15, the hat is brought to the foreground once more by C’s use of the full NP, el gorroj (‘the hatj’). The speaker’s choice of a full NP in this context is also in¶uenced by the fact that el gorroj occurs in a prepositional phrase, a syntactic position where reference to inanimate entities through the use of a more minimal pronoun is unacceptable, or at least highly improbable.11
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
Following the full NP el gorroj, the interlocutor (I) uses null subjects to Iimplicate coreference with this antecedent. Subsequently, full NPs are used in turns 19–23 to M-implicate non-coreference with the last minimal expressions. For instance, in turn 19, C uses the indeªnite NP, unos alambres de pincho (‘barbed wire’), and then the deªnite NP el gorroj (‘the hatj’) in turn 21, to implicate a switch in reference. C then imitates what María Jesús supposedly said about the hat through the use of constructed dialogue: ¡AY! Øj SE ME HA ENGANCHAO ALLÍ, AY (‘OH! (ITj)’ S GOTTEN CAUGHT THERE! OH!’). This use of constructed dialogue, combined with the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the story, is su¹cient to license the next two anaphoric references to María Jesús via minimal forms: the direct object pronoun lai (‘heri’) in turn 21 and the indirect object pronoun lei ‘(‘heri’) in turn 22. The focus of attention on the protagonist through the use of these minimal, anaphoric pronouns also accounts for the reversion to the full NP, el gorroj (‘the hatj’) in turn 22 to Mimplicate non-coreference and to switch reference and the focus of attention once more. Then, in the ªnal turn of this segment, after three ªrst-person references, expressed by null subjects with ªrst-person verb forms (me reía…llegamos…llegamos, ‘(I) was laughing… (we) arrived at home… (we) arrived’), C reverts to the marked, overt pronoun ellai (‘shei’), again Mimplicating a contrast in reference. At the same time C’s choice of an overt subject pronoun in this context re¶ects the working of the I-principle of Minimization with regard to both linguistic form and informativity: the intended contrast in reference is achieved through a minimal amount of information. Subsequently in turn 23, C uses the full NP el gorroj (‘the hatj’) in a context where the hat is not the focus of attention. Here, although mutual knowledge is su¹cient to disambiguate a more minimal clitic pronoun (i.e. lo, ‘it’), antecedent saliency appears to be the factor in¶uencing C’s choice of the full NP, since it occurs at a point where the referent and antecedent are not currently salient. In turn 23 of (121) below (ªrst part repeated from (120)), the speakers’ mutual knowledge of the story, as well as the use of the subject pronoun ellai (‘shei’) in the ªrst part of turn 23 (in (120)), enable both speakers to refer to the protagonist, María Jesús, through the use of a series of minimal anaphoric expressions. These include three instances of the direct object pronoun lai (‘heri’) in turns 24 and 26; two instances of the possessive pronoun sui (‘heri’); and ªnally, four null subjects and indirect object pronoun lei (‘heri’) in turn 27: (121) El gorro (‘The Hat’), cont. 23 C: ¡AY M’ HE ENGANCHA-! ((laughing)) Jo jo jo jo me reía de aquel tema, jo jo jo jo. Luego llegamos a casa, luego llegamos, y a
119
120 Implicatures in Discourse
24 I: 25 C: 26 I: 27 C:
23 C:
24 I: 25 C: 26 I: 27 C:
lo:s (.) a los días que fueran (.) pue:s, ellai le devolvió el gorroj a quien fuera, y Øarb ya no se loj ha visto más. // ((laughs)) Porque, y luego contando en el bar, en casa de ((laughing)) María Pilar, ¿qué te pasa? No, si es que todavía Ø no es, Ø no ha terminado ¿eh? ((laughing)) La cosa es que lo veía venir. Lai veía con la ca-// con el gorroj y todo Hombre. Hombre:. Y sui abrigo de piel y todo, ¿sabes? Sui abrigo de piel // y todo. Sí sí. ((laughs)) Que lai veo. Es, que lai veo allí con eso. =Con esas cosas pues sí, bueno. Llegamos allí y y Øi se puso a contar la peripecia esa en casa de María Pilar, que estábamos bastante gente:, allí se reúne la gente veinte- veintidós como nada, todas mesas, estábamos toda la familia y lo pasamos bien. Y Øi se pone a contar el cuento ese y Øi me dice, calla calla, que Øi se lo12 había preguntado a la que lei dio el- d- esoj. Y esok era para dentro, no para fuera. ((laughing)) El pirulín esek era para darlej así: // cuerpo. Cuerpo. ‘OH (I)’ VE GOTTEN CAU-! ((laughing)) Ha ha ha (I) was laughing about that incident, ha ha ha ha. Later (we) arrived at home, later (we) arrived, and about (.) a few days later (.), well, shei returned the hatj to whoever (it) was, and (itj) hasn’t been seen since. // ((laughs)) Because, and later telling [the story] in the bar, at the home of ((laughing)) María Pilar, what’s the matter? No, it’s [just] that (it) still isn’t, (it)’ s not over yet, mm?’ ‘ ((laughing)) The thing is that (I) could see it coming. (I) could see heri with heri hea- // with the hatj and all.’ ‘You’re telling me. You’re telling me. And heri fur coat and all, you know? Heri fur coat // and all.’ ‘Oh yeah. ((laughs)) And (I) [can just] see heri. The thing is, that (I) [can just] see heri there with that.’ ‘=With those things well yeah, anyway. (We) got there and and (shei) started telling about that incident at María Pilar’s house, and there were quite a few of us, people get together there, some twenty- twenty-two at least, [with] tables everywhere, the whole family was there and (we) had a good time. And (shei) starts telling that story and (shei) says to me, hold on hold on, that (shei) had asked the one [i.e. the gal] who gave her the- o- thatj about it. And thatk [thing] was [supposed to be worn] on the
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
inside not on the outside. That little thingamajigk was [supposed] to give itj like // body. Body.’
Because the interlocutors mutually know that María Jesús is the main character to whom ‘the incident’ (la peripecia) happened, minimal anaphoric references are su¹ciently informative in this ªnal segment of the story. We thus have an instantiation of the I-principle, viz. the Speaker’s Maxim of Minimization. Furthermore, the interlocutors mutually know from previous discourse that María Jesús was wearing a borrowed hat, which, as C describes earlier in her story, had ‘a thingamajig’ (un pirulo) on it. As a result, the hat is ‘activated’, or “represented in [the interlocutors’] short-term memory”, as Gundel et al. call it (1993: 278). The state of activation of this referent, based on the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the story, enables C to refer to both ‘the hatj’ and ‘the thingamajigk’ in turn 27 with the demonstrative pronoun esoj (‘thatj’), in the utterance que Øi se lo había preguntado a la que lei dio el- d- esoj (‘that (shei) had asked the one [i.e. the gal] who gave her the- o- thatj about it’). The demonstrative pronoun is su¹ciently informative for successful reference, even more so, when we take into consideration the participants’ state of mutual knowledge and the degree of saliency of the antecedents. Therefore, what we have here is another instantiation of minimization of informativeness and linguistic form. The notion that the participants’ state of mutual knowledge in¶uences the speaker’s choice of anaphoric expressions is also supported by C’s second use of the demonstrative pronoun esok (‘thatk’) immediately after the ªrst one in turn 27. This demonstrative pronoun, which may be considered marked when compared with a null subject, is used to M-implicate a contrast in reference with the previous demonstrative pronoun used to refer to the hat. Speciªcally, when C states, Y esok era para dentro no para fuera (‘And thatk [thing] was [supposed to be worn] on the inside not on the outside’), the demonstrative pronoun implicates coreference with a less salient antecedent, el pirulok (‘the thingamajigk’), which was used by C in turn 9 of (119). Finally, in order to clarify her use of the demonstrative esok (‘thatk’) and bring out the main point of the story (that María Jesús was wearing the hat inside out), C upgrades her reference to a more informative, full NP. Here, we have an example of the interaction of the neo-Gricean Q- and I-principles. That is, the speaker ªrst uses a more minimal anaphoric expression (esok, ‘thatk’), in keeping with the I-principle of Minimization; but just to be sure that the recipient will be able to recognize the referent, she then turns to an
121
122 Implicatures in Discourse
informationally stronger, full demonstrative NP, El pirulín esek (‘That little thingamajigk’). In neo-Gricean terms, C shifts to the application of the Qprinciple, which instructs speakers to make the informationally strongest statement consistent with what they know, in order to ensure understanding. As noted in Chapter 3, antecedent saliency helps to account for the speaker’s choice of anaphoric expressions as well as for the fact that anaphoric expressions do not always refer to most recently mentioned potential antecedent. Also, as we observed in Chapter 2, Huang’s (1991, 1994, 2000b) alternative neo-Gricean proposal includes an aboutness condition, or ‘information salience constraint’, primarily to limit the excessive power of the M-principle. As part of this constraint, Huang proposes a ‘saliency hierarchy’, which states that “implicatures to coreference may be preferred according to the saliency of antecedent in line with the following hierarchy: topic > subject > object, etc.” (1991: 330). The in¶uence of the relative degree of salience of the potential antecedents in the discourse context can be observed in the following exchange (from another conversation): (122)
1 2 3 4 5
T: C: T: C: T:
1 T: 2 3 4 5
C: T: C: T:
Así que mañana mismo he dicho, mañana me lavo los vestidos, Sí sí sí sí. bajo la maleta, ¡Ole ay! y empiezo a meter cosasi a la maleta, cosasi a la maleta para que Øi no me olviden. ‘So precisely tomorrow (I) said, tomorrow (I)’ m washing my dresses,’ ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah.’ ‘ (I)’ m taking down the [i.e. my] suitcase,’ ‘Alright!’ ‘and (I)’m starting to put thingsi into the suitcase, thingsi into the suitcase so that I don’t forget themi.’ [literally: ‘so that (theyi) aren’t forgotten by me’]
In this segment, T’s switch from reference to the suitcase, with the full, direct object NP la maleta (‘the suitcase’) in turn 3, to things, with the direct object NP cosasi (‘thingsi’) in turn 5, results in a subsequent anaphoric reference to the things through the use of a null subject. We can rule out as antecedent the most recent NP before the null subject, la maleta (‘the suitcase’), for at least two reasons. First, la maleta occurs in a prepositional phrase, which is a
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 123
hierarchically less salient grammatical position. This helps to promote the subsequent I-implicature of coreference between the zero subject and the grammatically more salient, direct object NP, cosasi (‘thingsi’), at the end of turn 5. Also, when T states, y empiezo a meter cosasi a la maleta, cosasi a la maleta para que Øi no me olviden (‘and (I)’m starting to put thingsi into the suitcase, thingsi into the suitcase so that I don’t forget themi’), agreement between the antecedent cosasi (‘thingsi’) and the third-person plural verb accompanying the zero subject also intervenes to disambiguate anaphoric reference. However, if we simply substitute a singular NP, such as ropa (‘clothing’) for cosasi (‘thingsi’), the preferred antecedent is still the more salient, direct object NP, ropa (‘clothing’) (although theoretically, it could be maleta (‘suitcase’); constructed example): (123) y empiezo a meter ropai a la maletaj, ropai a la maletaj para que Øi/?j no me olvide… ‘and (I)’ m starting to put clothingi into the suitcasej, clothingi into the suitcasej so that I don’t forget (iti/?j).’
This example demonstrates that, when there are two full NPs, which could serve as potential antecedents, the recipient must rely on their relative saliency, as well as on other constraints on implicatures, such as agreement, background and world knowledge, and general semantic constraints, to infer an I-implicature of coreference. Furthermore, while syntactic agreement conªrms the Iimplicature of coreference between cosasi (‘thingsi’) and the subsequent null subject with a third-person plural verb in (122), in (123), the recipient must rely on antecedent saliency and inferences based on background assumptions in order to disambiguate reference. The absence of an appropriate antecedent in the discourse context can lead the listener to infer a non-anaphoric interpretation for zero NPs. The following segment, in which M tells about her experience doing a radio show, helps to illustrate this point (the subscript ‘i’ is used to mark ªrst, second, and thirdperson deictic references to the speaker, M (including both re¶exive and nonre¶exive references), in order to help the reader follow the conversation): (124) M: Yoi tenía mm, a raíz de hacer mii libro de recetas, (.) pues Øarb mei propusieron en Radio Moncayo, que es de aquí en Borja Øarb, mei propusieron ser- hacer un programaj de cocina: semanal que se titulaba La buena mesa. Y Øj empezaba con música de Vivaldi, de Las cuatro estaciones ((Speakers J and I laugh)). Y: y: durante tres años
124 Implicatures in Discourse
A: M: M:
A: M:
seguidos todos los miércoles, menos julio y agosto y septiembre, Øi mei daba vacacionesk, Como Øi no // cobraba Øi sei lask daba. sin sin recibir ni una peseta, naturalmente. ((laughter)) ‘Ii had uuh, as a result of doing [i.e publishing] myi recipe book, (.) well (theyarb) proposed to mei at Radio Moncayo, which is from here in Borja, (theyarb) proposed myi being- doing a weekly cooking programj that was entitled The Good Table. And (itj) began with music by Vivaldi, from The Four Seasons ((Speakers J and I laugh)). A:nd a:nd for three years in a row every Wednesday, except in July and August and September, (Ii) gave myselfi vacationsk,’ ‘Since (shei) didn’t // get paid (shei) gave themk to herselfi.’ ‘without without receiving so much as a peseta, naturally. ((laughter))’
The ªrst use of a null subject with a third-person plural verb, Øarb mei propusieron (‘theyarb proposed to mei’) receives a non-speciªc, human, thirdperson plural reading. This reading, which signals arbitrariness of reference, is supported by the absence of an appropriate antecedent NP in the discourse context. Later, in the same turn, when M says, Y: y: durante tres años seguidos todos los miércoles, menos julio y agosto y septiembre, Øi mei daba vacacionesk (‘A:nd a:nd for three years in a row every Wednesday, except in July and August and September, (Ii) gave myselfi vacationsk’), the null subject of the verb daba (‘gave’) could be interpreted grammatically as either a ªrst or thirdperson, singular verb form. Therefore, from a strictly grammatical standpoint, this null subject could be interpreted as referring to the speaker herself, or to a singular, masculine or feminine, third person, or even to a singular, formal, second person, i.e. usted (‘you’) (e.g., ‘(Ii/he/she/you-non-fam) gave {myselfi/ me} vacationsk’). However, the last three possibilities are pragmatically implausible. On the one hand, all of the participants in the conversation are family members, and therefore, an interpretation of the null subject as a singular, formal, second-person address form (i.e. usted) is both pragmatically improbable and socially inappropriate. On the other hand, there is no relevant, third-person, singular antecedent from which an anaphoric interpretation for the null subject might be inferred, since the last-mentioned, relevant, thirdperson expression is the zero, in Y Øj empezaba con música de Vivaldi (‘And (itj) began with music of Vivaldi’), which expresses coreference with the antecedent un programaj de cocina: semanal que… (‘a weekly cooking showj that…’). Because it is less plausible that a weekly cooking program would give
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 125
the speaker a vacation, a logical inference would be one of non-coreference with this potential antecedent. The absence of an appropriate, third-person, singular antecedent in this context leads the ‘non-knowers’ in the conversation (i.e. those who have no prior knowledge of what is being talked about) to infer that the null subject in Ø me daba vacaciones (‘Ø gave-1/3sg vacations’) implicates ªrst-person reference to the speaker herself, and is thus translated as ‘(Ii) gave myselfi vacationsk’. This interpretation is supported by A’s subsequent utterance, Como Øi no // cobraba Øi sei lask daba (‘Since (shei) didn’t get paid, (shei) gave themk to herselfi’), where the two null subjects and the re¶exive pronoun sei (‘self-3’; in this case, ‘herselfi’) refer deictically to M. In this section, we have seen how (relative) antecedent saliency, as well as background/mutual knowledge, and at times, agreement, interact with the pragmatic I- and M-principles to account for the observed patterns of anaphora and of reference in general. In addition, I have shown how the salience of a referent, both in the local discourse, in the conversation as a whole, and at the syntactic level, can constrain I-implicatures of coreference potentially arising from the use of minimal unmarked forms. At the same time, the relative salience of the potential antecedents in the discourse context can in¶uence the speaker’s choice between, for instance, a null subject to maintain reference, versus a pronoun to express anaphoric reference, while signaling a contrast in reference with the last relevant and most salient NP expression. Thus, the data reveal the basic pattern of anaphora predicted by Levinson, whereby the speaker’s use of unmarked minimal forms (e.g. zero or a pronoun) I-implicate coreference, and subsequent reversion to a marked lexicalized NP tends to M-implicate noncoreference. The patterns observed in the excerpts analyzed so far re¶ect the operation of the speaker maxims and hearer corollaries outlined in the neoGricean I- and M-principles, as well as the eŸects of consistency and grammatical constraints on anaphora.
4.4 Mutual knowledge, choice of linguistic form, and conversational implicatures In his approach to anaphora, Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) points out that implicatures of coreference must be consistent with background knowledge. Clark and Marshall’s (1981) overarching notion of mutual knowledge subsumes Huang’s background knowledge; therefore, in Chapter 3, we adopted ‘mutual knowledge’ in order to incorporate the various sources of knowledge
126 Implicatures in Discourse
available to the interlocutors in a conversational exchange. The referring expressions used by a speaker may reveal his/her assumptions about the addressee’s knowledge of particular referents and events obtained previously in the same conversation. They may also re¶ect assumptions about socially or culturally prescribed situations, activities, and roles. Furthermore, assumptions of mutual knowledge may involve the conversationalists’ personal understanding of each other’s attitudes, individual interests, family relations, and preoccupations. This section deals with how diŸerent facets of mutual knowledge can aŸect a speaker’s choice of referring expressions, particularly anaphoric expressions, and their felicitous interpretation in Spanish conversation. Through close analysis of Spanish conversational data, we shall see how mutual knowledge constrains anaphora interpretations by canceling potential readings of coreference that are inconsistent with this knowledge, and by simultaneously promoting alternative interpretations. In the following examples, minimization of linguistic form re¶ects the operation of the I-principle, while reversion to marked expressions in order to implicate non-coreference illustrates the operation of the M-principle. In addition, the choice of certain NP expressions may reveal the speaker’s awareness of information that has previously been communicated about certain referents in the discourse itself. In the following excerpt, from the conversational story entitled El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’), the speaker’s choice of referring expressions re¶ects the basic pattern of anaphora: (125) El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’) 1 C: …Y me acuerdo de una vez estábamos allí cenando, porque de día comíamos donde se nos presentaba. Estábamos allí cenando, y: se presentó esta, una- Carmen Prendesi, no sé si te acordabas tú, una artista. Había un grupo de teatroj, que es que — losj que estaban actuando en e- en // allí en Santiago, 2 I: Un teatro allí, // en un teatro. 3 C: en las ªestas de Santiago. Y allí Øj venían a comer. Que por ci- Øj estaban, todos conocidos, que losj conocíamos de la televi//sión. 4 I: Claro. 5 C: Y que por esa Carmen Prendesi, me acuerdo que Øi estaba que ahora ya Øi está de pelo bla:nco, Øi sale en la televisión blanca de pelo bla:nco, muy vieja ya, muy mayor. 6 I: ¿Øi es cantante o actriz o las dos co//sas? 7 C: Cómi- cómi- ni cómi- actriz. Actriz.
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 127
1 C: ‘… And (I) remember once (we) were there having dinner, because during the day (we) ate wherever we happened to be. (We) were there having dinner, a:nd this, a - Carmen Prendesi turned up, (I) don’t know if you would remember, a performer. There was a theater groupj, which is well — the onesj who were performing in th- in // there in Santiago,’ 2 I: ‘A theater there, // in a theater.’ 3 C: ‘in the festivals of Santiago. And (theyj) would come there to eat. And by the wa- (theyj) were [there], all [were] well known, and (we) recognized themj from the televi//sion.’ 4 I: ‘Of course.’ 5 C: ‘And because of that Carmen Prendesi, (I) remember that (shei) was there and now (shei)’ s already got white hair, (shei) appears on television white with white hair, [and is] very old now, very elderly.’ 6 I: ‘Is (shei) a singer or an actress or bo//th?’ 7 C: ‘A comedi- comedi- neither comedi- actress. An actress.’
In the ªrst turn, C refers to an actress for the ªrst time by her name and surname, Carmen Prendesi, but immediately she switches reference, introducing another referent via the NP un grupo de teatroj (‘a theater groupj’). This full NP is followed by a coreferential deªnite description, characterized by a masculine, plural, nominalized deªnite article with a relative clause, losj que estaban actuando en e- en // allí en Santiago,… en las ªestas de Santiago (‘the onesj who were performing in th- in // there in Santiago…in the festivals of Santiago’). In turn 3, C uses minimal forms to implicate coreference with this NP, namely, two null subjects and an object pronoun: Y allí Øj venían a comer. Que por ci- Øj estaban, todos conocidos que losj conocíamos de la televi//sión (‘And (theyj) would come there to eat. And by the wa- (theyj) were [there], all [were] well known, and (we) recognized themj from the televi//sion’). However, when C reverts to the marked, demonstrative NP esa Carmen Prendesi (‘that Carmen Prendesi’) in turn 5, her use of the demonstrative with both a ªrst and last name re¶ects both the operation of the M-principle and the in¶uence of mutual background knowledge on her choice of linguistic form. On the one hand, the use of the marked NP esa Carmen Prendesi leads the interlocutor to infer an Mimplicature of non-coreference with the previous relevant NPs, including the two anaphoric null subjects and the anaphoric direct object pronoun losj (‘themj’) in turn 3. This inference is in keeping with the predictions of Levinson’s M-principle, which instructs the speaker to use a prolix or marked
128 Implicatures in Discourse
expression only when s/he has a reason to do so (e.g. to switch reference). On the other hand, C’s use of the demonstrative, esa (‘that’), with a proper name, re¶ects her awareness that her interlocutor already has a representation of the intended referent in memory. According to Gundel et al. (1993), the cognitive status ‘familiar’ accounts for the use of NPs with demonstrative determiners (e.g. that N), since “the use of the demonstrative determiner that signals ‘you are familiar with this, and therefore you can identify it’” (1993: 276). Thus, by using the demonstrative determiner esa (‘that’) along with the ªrst and last name (Carmen Prendes) in turn 5, C implicates that that both she and her addressee are familiar with (i.e. have mutual knowledge of) the intended referent. In addition, the demonstrative plus ªrst and last name also implicates coreference with the previous NP (Carmen Prendesi) in the ªrst turn, although this antecedent is no longer salient when the marked demonstrative NP is used. Therefore, the mutual knowledge obtained from the previous discourse cancels an implicature of non-coreference, while simultaneously promoting the coreferential interpretation of this marked NP.13 This supports our revised prediction regarding the application of the M-principle (see Chapter 2, (45)): reversion to a marked ‘demonstrative + ªrst and last name’ implicates coreference with an alternative, less salient, potential antecedent, diŸerent from the one implicated by the use of a pronoun or zero. This analysis is further supported by ªndings presented in the next chapter, where it is shown that a demonstrative + NP can implicate coreference with an antecedent that is not the focus of attention at the point at which the expression is used; here, mutual knowledge of the referent is su¹cient to promote an implicature of coreference. In the following two segments, belonging to the same conversation ((127) follows (126)), the basic pattern of anaphora occurs, involving both the use of marked lexical NPs to M-implicate non-coreference with a prior relevant NP and the use of unmarked minimal NPs to express subsequent coreference. We also encounter the use of a full NP with a demonstrative determiner to implicate the interlocutors’ familiarity with, or ‘mutual knowledge of’, the intended referent, and simultaneously, coreference with an antecedent not currently in focus. In the ªrst turn, M refers to some friends, using the lexical NP with a relative clause: los amigos francesesi que se han ido (‘the French friendsi who have left’). She then uses two null subjects to express coreference with this NP: Øi se han ido esta mañana, y y bueno, Øi están encantaos (‘(theyi) left this morning, and and well, (theyi) are delighted’). This utterance is immediately followed by an overt, ªrst-person subject pronoun, yo (‘I’), where an unmarked null subject could have occurred. However, the marked yo serves a contrastive
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 129
function in that it changes the focus of attention from the French friends to the speaker herself, and to her own point of view. From this point in turn 1 through turn 10, the topic of the conversation centers on the participants themselves, as revealed by the deictic references through the use of ªrst and second-person verbs with null subjects. This conversational anecdote has been named La Torre EiŸel (‘The EiŸel Tower’), for reasons that should become obvious: (126) La Torre EiŸel (‘The EiŸel Tower’) 1 M: Ayer en Tudela paramos y hacía como fresco. Y: entramos con los amigos francesesi que se han ido, como sabéis, Øi se han ido esta mañana, y y bueno, Øi están encantaos. Yo digo, marido, esto es un chollo. Cada vez tenemos más casas por el mundo. ((laughter)) El problema es que — = 2 J: =Hacer tiempo para viajar. 3 M: Es verdad. 4 I: Es importante, tenéis que venir. // Tenéis que venir. 5 M: Sí. 6 A: No sé nadar. // No sé nadar yo. 7 M: Es que cruzar el charco, Øarb no se puede, como Ø no sea un vuelo charter d’ esos, un vuelo charter d’esos= 8 J: =Ah- ahora no es muy caro, // ¿eh? 9 M: de esos que: — 10 I: Pero — 1 M: ‘Yesterday in Tudela (we) stopped and (it) [i.e. the weather] was sort of cool. A:nd (we) went in with the French friendsi who have left, as (you) know, (theyi) left this morning, and and well, (theyi) are delighted. I say, husband, this is a [real] deal. Each time (we) have more [and more] houses throughout the world. ((laughter)) The problem is that — =’ 2 J: ‘=having time to travel.’ 3 M: ‘ (It)’ s true.’ 4 I: ‘ (It)’ s important, (you) have to come [i.e. come and visit]. // (You) have to come.’ 5 M: ‘Yes.’ 6 A: ‘ (I) don’t know how to swim, // (I) don’t know how to swim.’ 7 M: ‘It’s just that to cross the pond [i.e. Atlantic Ocean], (youarb) [i.e. we] can’t, unless (it) is one of those chartered ¶ights, one of those chartered ¶ights=’
130 Implicatures in Discourse
8 J: ‘=N- now (it) isn’t very expensive, // huh?’ 9 M ‘of those tha:t —’ 10 I: ‘But —’
In order to interpret the anaphoric references in the next segment of the conversation (in (127) below), the addressees must make numerous and, at times, seemingly complex inferences. First, in turn 11, M refers again to the French friends, whom she had mentioned in the ªrst turn. However, this time she uses an NP with a demonstrative determiner, estos amigosi (‘these friendsi’), which turns the focus of attention back to the initial topic of the conversation, the French friends who had been visiting, and whom the speakers, M and A, had visited. At the same time, this full demonstrative NP signals to the interlocutors that they are already familiar with ‘these friends’. In other words, the speaker’s choice of a demonstrative determiner re¶ects her assumption that the interlocutors have mutual knowledge of the intended referent from the previous discourse. Furthermore, M provides additional information in turn 11, in the juxtaposed deªnite NP losi que estuvieron ayer (‘the onesi who were here yesterday’), so as to make sure that the interlocutors understand that the intended referent of estos amigosi (‘these friendsi’) is, in fact, assumed to be familiar. Subsequently, coreference with these NPs is I-implicated through the use of minimal forms, including a null subject (Øi vinieron, ‘(theyi) came’) and the possessive pronoun sui (‘theiri’) in the NP sui casa (‘theiri house’). The anaphoric possessive pronoun sui in the NP sui casa (‘theiri house’), in turn 11, is followed by a full NP, los franceses (‘the French’), which implicates noncoreference and refers generically to ‘French people’. Subsequently, M introduces a new referent via an indeªnite subject NP unos vecinosj de enfrente (‘some neighborsj from across the street’), thus implicating non-coreference with los franceses, the last most salient NP in the discourse, and changing the focus of attention once more. This is followed by a relatively marked demonstrative pronoun, éstosi (‘thesei’ [i.e. ‘these friends’]), which is both masculine and plural. This demonstrative pronoun appears to serve two purposes. On the one hand, it is a relatively minimal expression which I-implicates coreference with a previously mentioned NP (i.e., estos amigosi…losi que estuvieron ayer (‘these friendsi…the onesi who were [here] yesterdayi’), which is not the most salient antecedent at the moment when the demonstrative is used. The demonstrative pronoun éstosi promotes an implicature of coreference with a less salient antecedent because the speaker can safely assume that the interlocutors have su¹cient knowledge of the intended referent from the previous discourse. On
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
the one hand, they mutually know that the speaker has some French friends who live in Paris, since this information has been provided recently in the conversation. The interlocutors are therefore able to infer the meaning of the demonstrative because they have pre-existing and recently activated knowledge of the intended referent.14 On the other hand, the demonstrative is used where a more minimal, unmarked expression (e.g. an overt subject pronoun or a null subject) would have I-implicated coreference with the most recent and salient subject NP, unos vecinosj de enfrente (‘some neighborsj from across the street’), which is also masculine and plural. However, the relatively more marked demonstrative form M-implicates non-coreference with this indeªnite NP. This implicature is conªrmed by M’s subsequent utterance, in which she uses another full NP, los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores (‘the neighborsj from across the street who are also teachers’), to M-implicate noncoreference with the demonstrative éstosi (‘thesei’, i.e. ‘these friends’) and change the focus of attention back to their French friends’ neighbors: (127) La Torre EiŸel (‘The EiŸel Tower’), cont. 11 M: Como no sea verano aprovechando como tenemos vacaciones ((overlap unintelligible)). Precisamente en casa de estos amigosi, de — losi que estuvieron ayer, en París, estuvimos ahora, cuando hemos estao, y Øi vinieron. (.) Es que lo hago por asociación de ideas, y: estando allí tomando el aperitivo en sui casa, al que ya sabéis que los franceses son tan aªcionaos, pasaron unos vecinosj de enfrente, de un chalecito porque éstosi viven en las afueras de París en un chalet muy majo. Y los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores pasaron a por las llaves o no sé qué. E hicimos allí una tertulia muy maja. Y: ellosj tienen unos amigos americanos y cuando yo lesj decía que a mí siempre que voy a París, no he estao más que tres veces, no es que vaya todos los meses, que la Torre EiŸell me sigue impresionando como el primer día. A [speaker A] dice, y es verdad, para mí, lo de la Torre EiŸell es algo (.) Øl me da una vuelta al cuerpo cada vez que lal veo. // Pero si estoy en París y lal veo siete veces, las siete veces Øl me da la vuelta al cuerpo. 12 I: Me pone la carne de gallina.= 13 A: =Yo lesj dije en un francés correcto, porque intenté que Øj me entendiesen perfectamente, digo (.) algún día mi mujer me cambiará por la Torre EiŸell ((laughter)) // y lo debí de decir tan bien que Øj se descojonaron.
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14 I: Es que Øl es impresionante.= 15 M: =Y él, y ellak decía, la amigak de — (.) la vecinak de estos amigosi, Øj me dijeron, Øk dice, yo (.) no hay más que otra cosa en el mundo que me ha impresionao por su grandiosidad tanto como la Torre EiŸel. El Gran Cañón del Colorado. 11 M: ‘Unless (it)’ s summer taking the opportunity since (we) have a vacation ((overlap unintelligible)). Precisely at the home of these friendsi, from — the onesi who were [here] yesterday, in Paris, (we) were [there] recently, when (we) were [there], and (theyi) came [here] (.) It’s just that (I) do it [i.e. say this] by thought association, a:nd being there having an apéritif in theiri house, which as you already know the French are so fond of, some neighborsj from across the street came by, from a little house because thesei [i.e. friends] live on the outskirts of Paris in a very nice house. And the neighborsj from across the street who are also teachers came by for the keys or (I) don’t know what. And (we) had a very nice get-together there. A:nd theyj have some American friends and when (I) told themj that for me every time that (I) go to Paris, (I) haven’t been more than three times, (it)’ s not like I go [there] every month, that the EiŸel Towerl continues to impress me just like the ªrst day. A [speaker A] says, and (it)’ s true, for me, the thing about the EiŸel Towerl is something (.). (Itl) takes my breath away each time that (I) see itl. // But even if (I) am in Paris and (I) see itl seven times, [each of] the seven times (itl) takes my breath away.’ 12 I: ‘ (It) gives me goose bumps.=’ 13 A: ‘=I told themj in correct French, because (I) tried to get themj to understand me perfectly, (I) go (.) some day my wife will exchange me for the EiŸel Towerl ((laughter)) // and (I) must have said it so well that (theyj) peed in their pants.’ 14 I: ‘(It)’s just that (itl) is amazing.=’ 15 M: ‘=And he, and shek said, the friendk of — (.) the neighbork of these friendsi, (theyj) told me, (shek) says, I (.) there’s only one other thing in the world that has impressed me because of its grandeur as much as the EiŸel Tower. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado.’
Subsequently in turn 11, M refers to all of the participants who were at the gathering she is describing through the use of a null subject with the ªrstperson plural verb, hicimos (‘(we) had’; literally, ‘(we) made’), in the utterance
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
E hicimos allí una tertulia muy maja (‘And (we) had a very nice get-together there’). This all-inclusive, ªrst-person plural interpretation is an instance of an inference guided by stereotypical assumptions (Levinson 2000), or an ‘inference to stereotype’ (Atlas and Levinson 1981), as well as by the interlocutors’ knowledge of the situation obtained from previous discourse. M uses a null subject with the ªrst-person plural verb hicimos to express an inclusive ‘we’, which makes deictic reference to the speaker herself, and stereotypically implicates reference to all of the third-person referents mutually known to be present in the situational context. M then uses the overt subject pronoun ellosj (‘theyj’) in the utterance Y: ellosj tienen unos amigos americanos (‘A:nd theyj have some American friends’) to implicate both coreference as well as a contrast in reference, or non-coreference. That is, on the one hand, the overt subject pronoun ellosj picks out the last relevant/salient potential antecedent NP, los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores (‘the neighborsj from across the street who are also teachers’), thus implicating coreference. This anaphoric pronoun, which brings its corresponding referent back into focus, is then followed by a minimal coreferential object pronoun, lesj (‘themj’). On the other hand, the overt pronoun ellosj (‘theyj’) is marked (the unmarked alternate being zero), and thus it is also used contrastively, since it implicates noncoreference with the other third-person referents, mutually known to be present in the situation being described, and referred to in the utterance E hicimos allí una tertulia muy maja (‘And (we) had a very nice get-together there’). In this case, the antecedents to which the null subject of the verb hicimos refers may be considered ‘split antecedents’ (Cameron 1997), whereby “set members of the plural subject are scattered in two diŸerent grammatical slots in the preceding discourse” (1997: 41). This is eŸectively the case here, since the ªrst-person plural verb hicimos (‘ (we) had’) makes reference to both the speaker (M) and her husband, as well as to the other third persons referred to earlier who, based on the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the preceding discourse, are present at ‘the get-together’ (la tertulia). Both Ariel (1991) and Cameron (1997), analyzing referring expressions in cases of split antecedents, provide a possible explanation for the use of the marked lexical pronoun ellosj (‘theyj’) in the utterance Y: ellosj tienen unos amigos americanos americanos (‘A:nd theyj have some American friends’) in turn 11. Cameron (1997: 37), citing Ariel’s (1991) predictions based on Accessibility Theory, forms the following hypothesis with regard to choice of linguistic form in cases of split antecedents in Spanish:
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One prediction which we may derive from Ariel’s work (1991: 455) is the following. Across a range of contexts where a speaker has the option of choosing one referring expression or another, the speaker will statistically favor the referring expression which indicates a lower degree of accessibility if the antecedent in these contexts is an inferior one. One example of an inferior antecedent is that of a split antecedent because, as Ariel writes (1991: 457), ‘It is not as salient as a single antecedent.’ This speciªc assertion emerges from an intriguing account of certain sentences in Hebrew in which a null plural subject is unacceptable when preceded by a split antecedent. Therefore, if this is true in Hebrew, in Spanish we should ªnd a similar pattern expressed statistically. In other words, the frequency of pronominal subject expression should be signiªcantly higher in those contexts wherein a plural personal subject takes as an antecedent, a split-antecedent pair, than in those contexts wherein a plural subject takes a not-split, single antecedent. I say this because pronominal subjects, relative to null subjects, indicate a lower degree of accessibility. And, this lower degree of accessibility results from the informational inferiority of the preceding split antecedent.15
Cameron’s prediction that overt subject pronouns will occur more frequently when antecedents are ‘split’ provides a plausible explanation of M’s use of the overt pronoun ellosj (‘theyj’) in turn 11. Speciªcally, this pronoun implicates non-coreference with the sum total of all of the relevant third-person referents inferred stereotypically from the use of the null-subject with the ªrst-person plural verb form hicimos in E hicimos allí una tertulia muy maja (‘And (we) had a very nice get-together there’). At the same time, the pronoun picks out the most recent and salient, third-person plural antecedent in the discourse context, namely, los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores (‘the neighborsj from across the street who are also teachers’). Next, in the same turn (turn (11) in (127)), M changes the focus of the conversation to the EiŸel Tower. However, when Speaker A intervenes in the conversation in turn 13, he uses minimal forms, including the pronoun lesj (‘themj’) and two null subjects, to express coreference with the last relevant antecedent NP, again, los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores. These minimal anaphoric expressions occur in the utterance Yo lesj dije en un francés correcto, porque intenté que Øj me entendiesen perfectamente…y lo debí de decir tan bien que Øj se descojonaron (‘ I told themj in correct French, because (I) tried to get themj to understand me perfectly… and (I) must have said it so well that (theyj) peed in their pants’). However, in this utterance there could be ambiguity with regard to the intended meaning of A’s anaphoric forms as a result of mutual background knowledge of the situation provided in the conversation itself. That is, it is the common knowledge of the interlocutors that both the French friends and their neighbors were present in the situation being described. Therefore, one
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
could infer that both the friends and the neighbors are present when A recalls what he said at the ‘get-together’ (tertulia), so that it is plausible that A is referring anaphorically to both of the third-person referents previously introduced into the discourse context. However, understanding the intended meaning of the anaphoric expressions used by A appears to be irrelevant to the achievement of the general communicational goals. Therefore, the use of minimal forms to implicate coreference, albeit perhaps ambiguously, re¶ects the application of the pragmatic I-principle of Minimization. The ambiguity in reference arising from A’s use of minimal forms in turn 13 is re¶ected in turn 15, in which M refers to one of these neighbors in a false start, Y él, y ellak (‘And he, and shek’). These pronouns are immediately followed by three diŸerent lexical NPs: la amigak de — (.) la vecinak de estos amigosi (‘the friendk of — (.) the neighbork of these friendsi’). In this turn, M appears to be aware that the use of a single anaphoric pronoun, ellak (‘shek’), is potentially ambiguous. So, she immediately upgrades the informativeness of the referring expression twice, ªrst with an unªnished lexical NP, la amigak de — (‘the friendk of — ’), followed by a pause, and then a full NP, la vecinak de estos amigosi (‘the neighbork of these friendsi’). Through these informational upgrades, it becomes clear that the referent of the pronoun ellak (‘shek’) is one of ‘the neighborsj from across the street who are also teachers’ (los vecinosj de enfrente que son también profesores). These ‘neighbors’ were originally introduced into the discourse in turn 11. M’s progressive upgrades in informativeness and markedness of linguistic form demonstrates a clash between the I-principle of linguistic and informational minimization on the one hand, and the Q- and M-principles on the other. Speciªcally, the Q-principle captures the speaker’s tendency to provide the “informationally strongest paradigmatic alternate that is consistent with the facts” (Levinson 2000: 76), while the Mprinciple instructs speakers to use a marked form only when there is a reason to do so, e.g. to avoid ambiguity. In the end, M’s awareness of the amount of information provided in the conversation up to this point results in her opting for a more informative reference in order to avoid ambiguity. Also, the immediate upgrade in informativeness and markedness of the referring expressions in the presence of interlocutors who are unfamiliar with the situation being described re¶ects the speaker’s preference for what Sacks and SchegloŸ (1979) call ‘recipient design and recognition’. We shall now return to the conversational story, referred to earlier in this chapter as ‘The Trip to Santiago’ (El viaje a Santiago). The analysis of this portion of the story provides evidence that speakers keep running track of the
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information already provided to interlocutors over the course of a conversation, which in turn results in the minimization of linguistic form. This minimization re¶ects the tendency on the part of speakers to avoid telling people what they are assumed to already know, and thus to say as little as necessary to achieve successful communication. This tendency has also been observed in conversation. For instance, in pre-announcement sequences (Terasaki 1976), speakers ªrst try to determine whether or not hearers have or have not heard some news, so as to avoid repeating what they already know. In the following segment, C begins to describe what they were served for dinner at a restaurant and bar in Santiago de Compostela. This portion of the conversation is analyzed chronologically in four parts because of its length: (128) El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’) 1 C: …Conque estábamos allí y ya Øarb nos pusieron a nosotros — , allí es mucha costumbre el el pimiento: pequeñíni, el de: — , 2 I: ¿El rojo? 3 C: uno- pequeñinesi (.) de Padrón. Unos pimienticosi así. Friticos todos, como poco más que las aceitunas. Øi tienen muchas, tiene esoi mucha aceptación, esos pimientosi así, que en Ma- aquí en El Corte Inglés Øarb losi deben // vender ((unintelligible)) enteros. 4 I: Yo me acuerdo del pulpoj. 5 C: Huy Øj es muy rico también. Pero bueno unos pimienticosi así no son más, y Øarb losi fríen todos entericos entre los huevos que Øi saben — esoi con un huevo frito= 6 I: =¿Y Øi son picantes? 7 C: No. 8 I: Øi no son pic//antes. 9 C: Hay — losi hay pero no. No me acuerdo, ((unintelligible)) pero no no. Y losi hay y: y Ø te loi ponen esoi con un huevo frito o o cualquier cosa, Øi te saben a gloria. Los artistas comían. Aún Øarb nos pusieron a nosotros la cuenta de los artistas en lugar que la nuestra. Y nos decíamos pero si tal cosa no hemos comido. Y es que Øarb se habían confundido de — pero bueno. 10 I: =La la cuenta. 1 C: ‘… So (we) were there and (theyarb) already served us — , up there [i.e. in Santiago] the the tiny pepperi, the one fro:m — ,’ 2 I: ‘The red [kind]?’ 3 C: ‘one- small onesi (.) from Padrón. Some little peppersi like this. All fried up, like a little bigger than olives. (Theyi) have many, thati is very popular, those peppersi like that, and in Ma- here in El
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Corte Inglés [department store] (theyarb) must // sell themi ((unintelligible)) whole.’ 4 I: ‘I remember the octopusj.’ 5 C: ‘Oo (itj)’ s very delicious too. But anyway some little peppersi like this, (theyi) aren’t any bigger, and (theyarb) fry themi all up whole with eggs and (theyi) taste — thati with a fried egg=’ 6 I: =‘And are (theyi) spicy?’ 7 C: ‘No.’ 8 I: ‘ (Theyi) aren’t spi//cy.’ 9 C: ‘There are — there are somei [that are] but no [they’re not]. (I) don’t remember ((unintelligible)) but no no [they’re not]. And there are somei a:nd and (theyarb) serve thati to you with a fried egg or anything, (theyi) taste divine to you. The actors were eating. Still (theyarb) gave us the actors’ check instead of our own. And (we) said to each other but (we) haven’t eaten this sort of thing. And the thing is (theyarb) had made a mistake with — but anyway.’ 10 I: ‘=The the check.’
The main focus of this exchange is on the peppers that C and her family had for dinner one night in Santiago. C’s choice of referential expressions to refer to the peppers re¶ects her assumptions regarding the interlocutor’s knowledge of the intended referent. For instance, ªrst C uses a deªnite NP el pimiento: pequeñíni (‘the tiny pepperi’), but then proceeds to describe the referent in greater detail: el de: — , uno- pequeñinesi (.) de Padrón. Unos pimienticosi así. Friticos todos, como poco más que las aceitunas (‘one- small onesi (.) from Padrón. Some little peppersi like this. All fried up, like a little bigger than olives’). C use’s several contiguous descriptive phrases, in turns 1 and 3, as she realizes that the interlocutor has little or no previous knowledge of the intended referent. Once C has provided this description, she uses a null subject, a demonstrative pronoun, esoi (‘thati’), and an NP with a demonstrative determiner, esos pimientosi así (‘those peppersi like that’) to express coreference with her previous indeªnite description. As noted earlier in this section, Gundel et al. (1993) argue that the use of a demonstrative determiner signals that the addressee is familiar with the intended referent, since it is represented in longterm memory, if it has not been recently mentioned or perceived, or in shortterm memory, if it has. In turn 3 of excerpt (128), C’s use of the demonstrative determiner + NP supports this view, since it appears only when the addressee has acquired su¹cient knowledge and is able to conjure up a representation of the peppers.
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The remainder of the exchange re¶ects the basic pattern of anaphora, involving the use of minimal forms to I-implicate coreference with the most salient NPs in the discourse, and the reversion to marked lexical NPs in order to M-implicate non-coreference and simultaneously change the focus of attention to a diŸerent referent. However, the eŸects of mutual background knowledge, as a consistency constraint on I-implicatures of coreference, are clearly evidenced here. In C’s last turn of the excerpt (turn 9), background knowledge of stereotypical roles cancels an I-implicature of coreference between the NP los artistas (‘the actors’) in the ªrst sentence, Los artistas comían (‘The actors were eating’), and the subsequent null subject with the third-person plural verb, pusieron (‘gave’; literally ‘put’), in the utterance, Aún Øarb nos pusieron a nosotros la cuenta de los artistas en lugar que la nuestra (‘Still (theyarb) gave us the actors’ check instead of our own’). This cancellation arises because it is highly implausible that people eating in a restaurant would give their bill to some strangers (C and her family). Hence, the listener is forced to infer an alternative interpretation that is in keeping with stereotypical assumptions. The absence of an explicit and appropriate antecedent and the use of a null subject with a third-person plural verb in this context suggests that ‘arbitrariness of reference’ is intended by the speaker, as, in Suñer’s words, “it is immaterial for what is being stated to identify the referents” (1983: 189). Alternatively, depending on one’s familiarity with the restaurant script, one could assume that the waiter had brought the check and made a mistake. Using Prince’s (1981) terms, the intended discourse entity may be considered ‘inferrable’ “via logical — or, more commonly, plausible — reasoning from discourse entities already Evoked or from other Inferrables” (1981: 236). Regardless of the preferred explanation, the main point here is that there is su¹cient mutual (background) knowledge in the way of stereotypical assumptions about the situation being described to cancel an implausible coreferential interpretation with the last salient NP in favor of an alternative, plausible one. The following excerpt begins with turn 11 of the conversation presented in (128) (turns 1–10). After mentioning the mistake with the check, C begins to describe the types of seafood or ‘shellfish’ (mariscos) and drinks they would typically have in the bars in Santiago. This then serves as the introduction to another story, El caldo gallego (‘The Galician Broth’), parts of which have already been examined. In turn 11, C’s use of null pronouns for arbitrary reference, as well as for anaphoric and deictic references, reveals the overwhelming tendency toward minimization for both anaphoric and non-anaphoric reference:
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 139
(129) El caldo gallego (‘The Galician Broth’), Introduction 11 C: =Estábamos allí cerca. El vermut lo tomábamos — tomábamos vermut en: (.) en un bar allí en la misma casa un poco a la vuelta tomábamos vermutj. Y estábamos allí, los hombres — porque a Benitoi Øj lei gustaba mucho:. Mira no — (.) cuando Øarb no se podía gastar Øarb no se gastaba. Pero siempre que Øi ha podido pues, un vermucico lei ha gustao. Mariscos. Øarb se comía un plato de (.) gambas a la plancha, m- pulpo que dices tú, y hasta una vez unas almejas, un día unas almejas. Y y eso por lo general, Øarb ponen, pues Øarb se tomaba un chato de vino. Nosotros algok comeríamos, no me acuerdo. Un chato de vino y Øarb ponen, para que te limpies de los mariscos, Øarb ponen un un barreñito pequeño, o sea u:n // un lavafrutas con agua. 12 I: Claro. Eso es lo que he hecho yo hoy ((laughs)). 13 C: Sí. 14 I: Con perdón. 15 C: Pues por eso — es algo que te: — por por eso me ha venido esto el el rollo. 16 I: Por eso. Que no lo hago normalmente. 17 C: No bien. Es que no pasa nada. Estás en tu casa. Oyes, y el caldo gallego también es muy importante. El caldo gallego. 18 I: Sí sí sí //sí. 19 C: Muy bien. Nosotras estábamos aquí, y los hombres nuestros estaban allí, pero entremedio había unos señores, dos señores que habían pedido caldo gallego. Pero nosotras estábamos, María Jesús y yo, allí comiendo esok, y Øarb pusieron allí una tarrina de esas con ag- con agua //((laughs)) 11 C: ‘=(We) were there nearby. Vermouth (we) would drink it — (we) would drink vermouth in: (.) in a bar there in the same building a little bit around the corner (we) would drink vermouthj. And (we) were there, the men — because Benitoi liked (itj) a lo:t. Look no — (.) when (youarb) couldn’t spend [money] (youarb) didn’t spend [it]. But whenever (hei) could well, hei liked a little vermouth. Shellªsh. (Youarb) would have a plate of (.) grilled shrimp, m- octopus as you say, and even once some clams. And and that in general, (theyarb) serve — , well (youarb) would have a glass of wine. We were probably eating somethingk, (I) don’t remember [what]. A glass of wine and (theyarb) put out, so that (youarb) [can] clean up from the
140 Implicatures in Discourse
12 13 14 15
I: C: I: C:
16 I: 17 C:
18 I: 19 C:
shellªsh, (theyarb) put out a a little washbowl, or rather a: // a washbowl for fruit with water [in it].’ ‘Of course. That’s what (I) did today.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘ [I hope you’ll] excuse me.’ ‘Well that’s why — (it)’s something that to you: — that that’s why this the the story came [i.e. occurred] to me.’ ‘That’s why. (I) don’t do it normally.’ ‘No (it)’s okay. (It)’s that nothing’s the matter [with that]. Consider yourself at home [i.e. ‘you’re family’]. Listen, and Galician broth also is very important. Galician broth.’ ‘Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh // uh huh.’ ‘So anyway. We were here, and our men [i.e. husbands] were there, but in between [us] there were some gentlemen, two gentlemen who had ordered Galician broth. But we were there, María Jesús and I, eating thatk, and (theyarb) put one of those bowls there with wa- with water // ((laughs))’
In turn 11, null pronouns in impersonal or unspeciªed (‘arbitrary’) constructions intervene between the name, Benitoi, and subsequent anaphoric reference to this antecedent. I-implicatures of coreference with this antecedent are promoted from the use of minimal forms, including a null subject and indirect object pronoun, in the utterance Pero siempre que Øi ha podido pues, un vermucico lei ha gustao. (‘But whenever (hei) could well, hei liked a little vermouth’). These inferences are possible because Benitoi is the most recent and salient potential antecedent, and the inferences are in keeping with knowledge obtained from the previous discourse (i.e. that Benito liked vermouth). Furthermore, although it is unnecessary to identify the referents of the null pronouns in the impersonal constructions, the discourse context enables the addressee to infer these intended referents. Speciªcally, when C states, in turn 11, Mira no (.) Cuando Øarb no se podía gastar Øarb no se gastaba (‘Look no — (.) when (youarb) couldn’t spend [money] (youarb) didn’t spend [it]’), the arbitrary constructions with null pronouns implicate potential reference to the speaker herself and her husband, Benito, as well as to any other relevant immediate family members. This inference is possible both because of the discourse context in which C is describing the types of seafood she and her family typically had when eating out in Santiago, and because of the addressee’s familiarity with, or personal knowledge of the speaker and her family.
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
Subsequently, toward the end of turn 11, C mentions that she doesn’t remember exactly what they were eating, when she states, Nosotros algok comeríamos, no me acuerdo (‘We were probably eating somethingk, (I) don’t remember [what]’). Because of the immediate discourse context, C leads the addressee to infer that they were eating some sort of shellªsh, possibly one of the various kinds she had just described. This information is important, because in the ensuing exchange, it cancels an implicature of coreference, in favor of an interpretation consistent with the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the previous discourse. I’s comments on having used ‘a ªngerbowl’ (un lavafrutas con agua) lead to a short conversational exchange on that topic, before C, in turn 19, picks up her story again and describes where she and her cousin were sitting in the restaurant in relation to their husbands: Nosotros estábamos aquí, y los hombres nuestros estaban allí (We were here, and our men [i.e. husbands] were there’). Then, she uses two juxtaposed full NPs, which bring to the foreground the ‘two gentlemen’ and what they had ordered: pero entremedio había unos señores, dos señores que habían pedido caldo gallego (‘but in between [us] there were some gentlemen, two gentlemen who had ordered Galician broth’). Here, a direct object, caldo gallego (‘Galician broth’), is introduced into the discourse, and antecedent saliency predicts that a subsequent anaphoric reference, particularly if it is also a grammatical object, will express coreference with this antecedent NP. However, C’s choice of the demonstrative pronoun esok (‘thatk’), in the subsequent utterance, Pero nosotras estábamos María Jesús y yo allí comiendo esok (‘But we were there, María Jesús and I, eating thatk’), cancels an I-implicature of coreference with the NP caldo gallego for two reasons. First, the demonstrative pronoun esok is not the most minimal NP expression possible in object position, since a more minimal, unstressed, clitic pronoun (lo, ‘it’) could have been used to implicate coreference with the most salient, potential antecedent, caldo Gallego. Thus, C has breached the I-principle of Minimization and opted for a relatively marked, stressed pronominal form. Also, C has already implied, at an earlier point in the conversation, that they had ordered ‘shellªsh’ (mariscos) for dinner that night (see turn 11, (129)). This mutual background knowledge gained from previous discourse also intervenes to cancel a coreferential relation between the NP, caldo gallego (‘Galician broth’) and the demonstrative esok (‘thatk’), even though this coreferential relation is grammatically and semantically possible. Finally, C’s use of the conjunction pero (‘but’) in turn 19 also appears to in¶uence this cancellation of an I-implicature of coreference with the most salient, potential antecedent, caldo gallego, in that pero serves to indicate a
141
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contrast. Speciªcally, it signals a contrast between the men having caldo gallego (‘Galician broth’) and the speaker and her cousin having what she had already explained to the interlocutor in the previous discourse. Here, we see how the demonstrative pronoun esok (‘thatk’) I-implicates coreference with the previously mentioned relevant antecedents. These antecedents, though ‘evoked’ or ‘activated’, are no longer the most salient entities in the discourse context; however, the interlocutor is able to identify C’s intentional meaning: her background knowledge, gained from the previous discourse, permits her to do so. Thus, the use of the demonstrative pronoun esok (‘thatk’) instead of a full lexical NP, such as los mariscos (‘the shellªsh’), in turn 19 of (129), is both an instantiation of the I-principle of Minimization, and of a general social ‘economy of information’. Levinson (1987a) points out that the notion of an economy of information presupposes an interactional distinction between the roles of knowers and non-knowers. With regard to this social and pragmatic constraint on informativeness, Levinson (1987a: 82) notes, citing Sacks (1971), that being able to distinguish between knowers and non-knowers of a piece of information is a precondition to being able to obey the maxim (Sacks’s term) “Don’t tell people what they already know”, a special subcase of which is the rule “Don’t tell people what you’ve already told them” (Sacks 1971, Oct.19: 9).16
C’s use of the anaphoric demonstrative pronoun esok (‘thatk’) in turn 19 of excerpt (129) shows that she has kept track of what she has already told the addressee earlier in the conversation, i.e. what they were eating in the restaurant in Santiago. Thus, her choice of this expression is constrained by her assumptions of mutual knowledge, and in turn provides further evidence of the Principle of Informativeness as well as a more general ‘social economy of information’ (see Chapter 3, Section 3.1).
4.5 Culturally and socially-based mutual knowledge In the Spanish conversations analyzed, talk about cultural events that are typically Spanish, or about events that take place within the Spanish speakers’ community, often results in alterations in the basic pattern of anaphora. These alterations appear to re¶ect the interlocutors’ assumptions regarding knowledge that is culturally prescribed, and thus taken for granted. In other words, the speakers assume that such knowledge is ‘mutually known’ by the participants in a conversation.
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The following excerpt involves talk about bullªghts, one of Spain’s national pastimes. As noted in Blackwell (1998), some of the patterns of anaphora used in this segment re¶ect the speaker’s assumptions that her interlocutor is familiar with the stereotypical roles and events associated with bullªghts. More speciªcally, the participants’ mutual knowledge of bullªghts and assumed familiarity with contemporary Spanish bullªghters, as well as their understanding of the central role of the matador, account for numerous instances of minimization in this conversation, entitled Las corridas (‘The Bullªghts’). In particular, minimal anaphoric expressions are used on two occasions in the absence of a coreferential NP antecedent. However, the intended antecedents are inferrable based on the context of the conversation and the cultural information that is taken for granted in Spanish society. (The ªrst part of this excerpt is identical to (115) above.) (130) La corridas (‘The Bullªghts’) 1 C: Mañana hay corrida en la tele. 2 T: Mañana hay corridai en la tele una bue-= 3 C: =Mañana. 4 I: ¿Y de dónde? ¿de Madrid? 5 C: La corridai ¿de dónde es Øi? 6 T: No sé dónde es Øi. Me lo ha dicho un: — = 7 C: =El otro día Øi fue de Benidorm. 8 T: El otro día Øi fue de Benidorm y el día antes Øi fue también de otro sitio por ahí. 9 C: Sí. 10 T: ¿No ves que ahora empiezan en en Huesca las corridas de San Lorenzo? 11 C: San // Lorenzo. 12 T: Y Øarb dicen que va a torear Palomo Linares con el hijo del Cordobés. 13 C: Ah sí sí que sí sí. 14 T: Allí en San Lorenzo. 15 C: Sí sí sí sí. 16 T: También Øarb la televisarán, pues la novillada que hubo el sábado, preciosa. 17 C: Sí vi algo. 18 T: Y fue unoj de ellos, era sobrinoj — , hijoj de una hermana, hijoj de una hermana del padre de Paquirri. 19 C: Sí sí sí que Øarb lej dieron una oreja o me parece =
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20 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
T: C: C: T: C: I: C: T: C: T:
9 C: 10 T: 11 C: 12 T: 13 14 15 16
C: T: C: T:
17 C: 18 T: 19 C: 20 T: 21 C:
=Dos. que Øarb lej dieron dos. ‘Tomorrow there’s a bullªght on TV’ ‘Tomorrow there’s a bullªghti on TV a good one-=’ ‘=Tomorrow.’ ‘And where [is it] from? From Madrid?’ ‘The bullªghti where’s (iti) from?’ ‘ (I) don’t know where (iti) is. A:- [e.g. friend] told me.=’ ‘=The other day (iti) was from Benidorm.’ ‘The other day (iti) was from Benidorm and the day before (iti) was also from another place around there.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Don’t you see [i.e. know] that the bullªghts of San Lorenzo are starting now in in Huesca?’ ‘San // Lorenzo.’ ‘And (theyarb) say that Palomo Linares is going to ªght [the bulls] with el Cordobés’ son.’ ‘Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.’ ‘There in San Lorenzo.’ ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah.’ ‘ (Theyarb) will televise it too, since the novillada [i.e. ‘ªght with young bulls’] that there was on Saturday, beautiful.’ ‘Yes (I) saw some [of it].’ ‘And onej of them was, was [the] nephewj — , sonj of a sister, sonj of a sister of Paquirri’s father.’ ‘Yeah yeah yeah (theyarb) gave himj an ear or I think = ‘=Two.’ ‘that (theyarb) gave himj two.’
At the beginning of this exchange, bullªghts is established as the topic of the conversation through the use of an indeªnite NP corridai (‘(a) bullªghti’) in both turns 1 and 2, and then a deªnite NP la corridai (‘the bullªghti’) in turn 5. The saliency of the subject NP la corridai licenses the use of anaphoric null subjects in turns 5 through 8. However, the null subjects in turns 7 and 8 are not ‘coreferential’, since they refer to diŸerent bullªghts, i.e. bullªghts other than the one referred to by the antecedent NP, la corridai (‘the bullªghti’) in turn 5. Therefore they may be interpreted as if they were variables bound by the expression la corridai, in turn 5 (cf. Montalbetti 1984: 79–80). Subsequently, in turn 10, T mentions a series of bullªghts to be held during the festival celebrating San Lorenzo (‘Saint Laurence’), las corridas de
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 145
San Lorenzo (‘the bullªghts of San Lorenzo’). And, in turn 12, she identiªes two particular bullªghters who are going to ªght there, when she states, Y Øarb dicen que va a torear Palomo Linares con el hijo del Cordobés (‘And (theyarb) say that Palomo Linares is going to ªght [the bulls] with el Cordobés’ son’). This statement implicitly introduces and makes salient a particular bullªght. Therefore, in turn 16, when T says, También Øarb la televisarán, (‘(Theyarb) will televise it too’), the use of the singular, feminine, direct object pronoun la (‘it’), I-implicates coreference with a speciªc bullªght, which is implied but never explicitly referred to in the previous discourse. The absence of an explicit antecedent in this context provides further evidence of the speakers’ adherence to Levinson’s I-principle, and speciªcally, to the speaker’s Maxim of Minimization.17 However, this instance of minimization of linguistic form is only possible because of the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the topic of conversation, and speciªcally, because of their cultural knowledge that there are usually three matadors who perform in an afternoon at a bullªght. That is, by stating in turn 12 that two famous bullªghters are going to perform together, T implicitly brings into the foreground one particular bullªght; this is inferrable on account of culturally-based, shared background knowledge. A similar explanation can be given of the use and felicitous interpretation of the ‘antecedentless’ (Cornish 1996) anaphoric object pronoun la (‘it’) in the utterance También Øarb la televisarán (‘(Theyarb) will televise it too’). Furthermore, agreement in both number and gender between the third-person, singular, feminine pronoun la and the implicit antecedent la corrida (‘the bullªght’) helps conªrm the expression’s implicit intended meaning. As the conversation continues, background knowledge of a Spanish custom known as el encierro (‘the running of the bulls’; literally, ‘the locking/ penning up’) is needed to infer the meanings of a series of null subjects (see also Blackwell 1998: 615). (131) La corridas (‘The Bullªghts’), cont. 22 C: Pues o sea que allí hay mucha aªción. ¿Son vacas o toros lo que hay allí? 23 T: No, un toro es un toro. 24 C: Corrida de toros. 25 T: Es, es, es novillada. 26 C: Novilladas. 27 T: Novillada picada. 28 C: Ala.
146 Implicatures in Discourse
29 T: Y el Día de San Roque, mira Ø me costó dos mil pesetas el año pasado. 30 C: La entrada. 31 T: La entraa. 32 C: ¡Maño! 33 T: Y y luego el toro de noche. El toro de noche que va embolao, por las — por las calles, y luego el otro toro y luego Øarb lo encierran, los encierros como en Pamplona y todo el mundo corriendo. 34 C: ¿Allí les gustan mucho los toros? ¿Allí en en la — en esa parte de de Salamanca?¿Salamanca, no? La parte de Salamanca, Zamora. 35 T: Mi pueblo está entre la parte de Zamora, Valladolid, y Salamanca. 36 C: Sí sí sí. 37 T: Allí si no el Día de la Virgen, mira la gentei que acudirá. A los encierros por la mañana. ¡Que Øarb no se ven los toros! 38 C: De gentei. 39 T: De gentei (.). Øi Van por la calle y mira Øi van corriendo por la carretera cuando Øj viene y Øarb no se ven los toros nada más que a unos y entran ganas de decir que ¡que Øj viene por aquí! 22 C: ‘Well in other words there there’s a lot of interest. Are (they) cows or bulls that are there?’ 23 T: ‘No, a bull is a bull.’ 24 C: ‘A bullªght.’ 25 T: ‘(It)’s, (it)’s, (it)’s a novillada [i.e. ‘a bullªght using young bulls’].’ 26 C: ‘Novilladas [i.e. ‘bullªghts using young bulls’].’ 27 T: ‘Novillada with picadors.’ 28 C: ‘Wow.’ 29 T: ‘And on the Day of Saint Roch, look (it) cost me two thousand pesetas last year.’ 30 C: ‘The ticket.’ 31 T: ‘The ticket.’ 32 C: ‘Man!’ 33 T: ‘And and later the night bull. The night bull that goes [i.e. runs] with balls on his horns through the — through the streets, and later the other bull and later (theyarb) pen it up, the running of the bulls like in Pamplona and everybody running.’ 34 C: ‘Do they like bullªghting a lot there? There in in the — in that part of Salamanca? Salamanca, isn’t it? The part of Salamanca, Zamora.’
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 147
35 T: ‘My town is between the part of Zamora, Valladolid and Salamanca.’ 36 C: ‘Right right right.’ 37 T: ‘There if not on the Day of the Virgin, look [you can’t imagine] the [number of] peoplei that will come. To the running of the bulls in the morning. (Youarb) don’t [even] see the bulls!’ 38 C: ‘Because of [so many] peoplei. 39 T: ‘Because of [so many] peoplei (.). (Theyi) go through the street and look (theyi) go running down the road when (itj) comes and (youarb) don’t see the bulls only some and you feel like saying that that (itj)’s coming this way!’
Until turn 33, the conversation continues to deal with bullªghts, and speciªcally the bullªghts that take place in T’s hometown. However, in turn 33, T begins talking about the encierros (‘running of the bulls’) in her town on a particular holiday, el Día de San Roque (‘the Day of Saint Roch’). Subsequently, in turn 37, she describes what happens in her town on another holiday, el Día de la Virgen (‘the Day of the Virgin’) in the utterance mira la gentei que acudirá. A los encierros por la mañana ¡que Øarb no se ven los toros! (‘look [you can’t imagine] the [number of] peoplei that will come. To the running of the bulls in the morning. (Youarb) don’t [even] see the bulls!’). In turn 38, when C interjects the utterance De gentei (‘Because of [so many] peoplei’), there are two salient entities, referred to by the NPs, gentei (‘peoplei’), in turn 38, and los toros (‘the bulls’), in turn 37. Therefore, both of these NPs could serve as possible antecedents of the subsequent anaphoric expressions. However, familiarity with the cultural event being described, including the roles of the participants in the event, disambiguates the sequence of null subjects used by T in the last turn of the segment. For instance, knowing that a typical encierro (‘running of the bulls’) involves people running through an enclosed street, in which at least one bull has been let loose, helps disambiguate the ªrst two zero NPs with plural verb forms in turn 39. Speciªcally, when T says, De gentei (.). Øi Van por la calle y mira Øi van corriendo por la carretera (‘Because of [so many] peoplei (.). (Theyi) go down the street and look (theyi) go along the road’), even though the last, grammatically plural, potential antecedent is the NP los toros (‘the bulls’) in turn 37, the null subjects with the third-person plural verbs van (‘go-3pl’) and van corriendo (‘go-3pl running’) promote an implicature of coreference with the most recent potential antecedent, gentei (‘peoplei’). This implicature arises even though the NP gentei is grammatically singular and thus does not agree in number with the plural verbs corresponding to the
148 Implicatures in Discourse
anaphoric null subjects in question. However, the interlocutor can infer a coreferential interpretation because of her familiarity with the stereotypical cultural event being described. For instance, in a typical encierro, several people go running through the streets when at least one bull (and sometimes only one bull) comes along. This knowledge also enables the interlocutor to interpret the two subsequent null subjects with third-person singular verbs in turn 39. Speciªcally, in turn 39 when T says, cuando Øj viene y Øarb no se ven los toros nada más que a unos y entran ganas de decir que ¡que Øj viene por aquí! (‘when (itj) comes and (youarb) don’t see the bulls only some and you feel like saying (itj)’s coming this way!’), the two null subjects that occur with the singular verb viene (‘comes/is coming’) give rise to an implicature of coreference with an implicitly understood, but linguistically unexpressed, singular antecedent, el toro (‘the bull’). Thus, the minimal forms in turn 39 do not simply implicate coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP antecedent on the basis of constraints such as antecedent saliency, semantics, and grammatical agreement. Instead, in order to disambiguate the sequence of null pronouns, one must be familiar with, and be able to visualize, the cultural situation being depicted. The following three examples are chronologically ordered excerpts from a conversation in which C describes an event that customarily takes place during her town’s annual festival, la Fiesta de Santa Bárbara (‘the Festival of Saint Barbara’). It is known as el baile del roscón (literally, ‘the dance of the ring-shaped cake’). During this event, the townspeople dance in long lines through the streets of the town singing a traditional song while they pass a large decorated ring of cake from person to person. While describing this custom, C also tells an anecdote about the year her cousin and her cousin’s husband were the mayordomos (‘host and hostess’; literally, ‘butlers’) of the festival. It is important to understand the role of the mayordomos in the cultural event being described in order to interpret some of the minimal expressions used in the conversation. For instance, every year at least two married couples from the town are chosen in a ra§e to be the mayordomos. They are in charge of organizing the festival, and of providing food and refreshments for the townspeople and visitors at cultural events during the week of the festivities. In the following excerpts, this background knowledge helps the interlocutor infer who C is referring to, when using minimal, third-person referring expressions, and particularly, null subjects. For instance, familiarity with the event being described promotes implicatures of coreference with implicitly understood antecedents: it also suggests arbitrary (i.e. impersonal or unspeciªed) interpretations for person references, where zero
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 149
is used with third-person plural verb forms. At the beginning of this conversation, which we shall call La ªesta de Santa Bárbara (‘The Festival of Saint Barbara’), C explains that her cousin, Maribel, and, implicitly, Maribel’s husband, were in charge the festivities one year: (132) La ªesta de Santa Bárbara (‘The Festival of Saint Barbara’) 1 C: Que cuando Maribeli hizo la ªesta de Santa Bárbara, la patronaj, que ahora laj vas a ver cuando vi- vayamos allí. 2 I: Sí sé de ellaj. 3 C: Es mucho: — Øarb hacen unos roscones el día que — , el miércoles Øarb los hacen. Unos roscones casi no d- no digo tan grandes como esta mesa, pero poco menos que esa sí, un poco menos. Un // roscón grandek. 4 Child: ¡Yaya! ((unintelligible)) 5 C: ¿Qué bonita? ((speaking to child)). Y Øarb lek ponen unas ¶ores. 6 I: Ah. 7 C: Y se — y Øarb lok bailan por las calles que es bonito. ((Child interrupts)) Sí duérmela, duérmela ((speaking to child about her doll)). Y luego pues Øarb van bailando el roscónk, y Øarb van a la casa del mayordomo, aquel año Øh fueron, porque Maribeli es como los de demás. Que Øi no es de éstas ((unintelligible)) sino al revés. 1 C: ‘Well when Maribeli did the festival of Saint Barbara, the patron saintj, and (you) are going to see herj when (we) trav- go there.’ 2 I: ‘Yeah (I) know about herj.’ 3 C: ‘ (It)’s a lo:t — (theyarb) make some ring-shaped cakes the day that — , on Wednesday (theyarb) make them. Some ring-shaped cakes almost (I)’m not sa- not saying as big as this table, but a little less than that one yes, a little less. A // big ring-shaped cakek.’ 4 Child: ‘Grandma!’ ((unintelligible)) 5 C: ‘What precious? ((speaking to child)). And (theyarb) put some ¶owers on itk’ 6 I: ‘Oh.’ 7 C: ‘And one and (theyarb) dance [with] itk through the streets which is beautiful. ((child interrupts)) Yes, put her to sleep, put her to sleep ((speaking to child about her doll)). And later well (theyarb) go dancing [with] the ring-shaped cakek, and (theyarb) go to the home of the mayordomo [i.e. host], that year (theyh) were because Maribeli is like everyone else. (Shei) is not [one] of these [types of people] ((unintelligible)) but [quite] the opposite.’
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In the ªrst turn, C refers to Maribel in subject position with a preterit (perfective past tense) verb form stating, Que cuando Maribeli hizo la ªesta de Santa Bárbara, la patronaj (‘Well when Maribeli did the festival of Saint Barbara, the patron saintj’). This utterance is followed by anaphoric references to Santa Barbara, la patronaj via minimal coreferential pronouns in turns 1 and 2, respectively. The implicatures of coreference from the use of these pronouns are supported by both the saliency of the NP antecedent, by agreement, and by the shared background knowledge that there is a statue of the saint in the church in C’s town that one can see. C then switches to the present tense in turn 3, where she uses two third-person verbs with null subjects that receive an arbitrary (unspeciªed) reading, since what is important is an understanding of the events being described, and thus it is immaterial for C to specify the identity of the intended referents. Following these null subjects, we encounter four additional ones also implicating arbitrary human reference: one in turn 5 and three in turn 7. The interpretation of these minimal forms as arbitrary is also suggested by C’s use of the present tense in order to describe what usually happens, i.e. what the people traditionally do during the festival. The noncoreferential readings of these latter null subjects, which occur with plural, present tense verbs, appear to contrast with the null subject occurring with a preterit (past tense) verb, which could mean either ‘were’ or ‘went’, in the last turn of the segment: aquel año Øh fueron, porque Maribeli es como los de demás (‘that year (theyh) were, because Maribel is like everyone else’). At ªrst blush, the null subject in Øh fueron (‘(theyh) were’), seems implicate an arbitrary reading, since there are no recent plural NPs which could serve as potential antecedents. However, mutual knowledge of the situation, along with the speaker’s choice of verb tense, suggest that a non-arbitrary, anaphoric interpretation is intended. That is, a speciªc, inference of coreference between the null subject in the utterance aquel año Øh fueron (‘that year (theyh) were’) and an inferrable plural antecedent, namely, Maribeli in turn 1, and implicitly, Maribel’s husband, is promoted on account of the shared knowledge that married couples are chosen to be the mayordomos of the festival each year, and the fact, made explicit in turn 1, that Maribel (and implicitly her husband) had this honor one year. After a momentary interruption, C resumes her anecdote and describes the garage where Maribel and her family served the refreshments the year she and her husband were the mayordomos. Mutual background knowledge promotes several implicatures of coreference with Maribel and her husband, as
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
well as (implicitly understood) immediate family members, from the use of minimal null subjects. (These null pronouns are indexed here as ‘i+’18.) (133) La ªesta de Santa Bárbara (‘The Festival of Saint Barbara’), cont. 1 C: Oyes pues mira. Teníamos que — allí co- ya sabes Maribeli no sé si te acordarás que este año está allí la peña que ya iréis vosotros. 2 I: Mm mm. 3 C: Øi tiene un salón abajo donde: el garaje, los tractores, y todo Øi+ lo tienen allí metido. Eso Øi+ lo limpian. 4 I: Sí sí donde // Øi+ hicieron la paella. 5 C: Y Øi+ ponen allí una mesa. Sí.= 6 I: =Donde Øi+ hicieron la paella.= 7 C: ¡No! Donde está la casa. Más grande todavía. Allí es donde Øi+ guisan. La paella es donde Øi+ guisan. Ya verás cuando: — ya verás qué jaleo hay por allí. Al tan- tendréis que guisar porque os apuntaréis a la peña esa para que disfrutéis, Mari Carmen y María Pilar y tal, 8 I: Sí. 1 C: ‘Hey well look. (We) had to — there co- (you) already know [that] Maribeli (I) don’t know if (you)’ ll remember that this year the circle [i.e. ‘group/club of friends’] is [getting together] there and soon you [two] will go.’ 2 I: ‘Uh huh.’ 3 C: ‘ (Shei) has a large room downstairs whe:re the garage [is], the tractors [are], and (theyi+) have it all in there. (Theyi+) clean that.’ 4 I: ‘Yeah yeah where // (theyi+) made the paella.’ 5 C: ‘And (theyi+) put a table there. Yes=’ 6 I: ‘=Where (theyi+) made the paella.=’ 7 C: ‘No! Where the house is. Even bigger. That’s where (theyi+) cook. The paella is where (theyi+) cook. Soon (you)’ ll see whe:n — soon (you)’ll see what a commotion there is over there. To so — (you)’ll have to cook because (you)’ll sign up (to join) that circle so that (you) enjoy (yourselves), Mari Carmen and María Pilar and so on,’ 8 I: ‘Yeah.’
Here, C’s use of the antecedent NP Maribeli, in the ªrst turn, followed by a coreferential null subject at the beginning of the third turn, Øi Tiene un salón abajo… (‘(Shei) has a large room downstairs…’), serves to delimit the referents
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to which the subsequent null subjects refer. For instance, when C says, y todo Øi+ lo tienen allí metido. Eso Øi+ lo limpian (‘and (theyi+) have it all in there. (Theyi+) clean that’), stereotypical presumptions lead to the inference that Maribel and her immediate family store everything in their garage and clean it. However, specifying the intended referents through the use of overt subject NPs is either unnecessary for the purposes of getting the message across, or else the speaker assumes that the minimal references are implicitly understood. Subsequently, in turn 4, when Speaker I says, Sí sí donde // Øi+ hicieron la paella (‘Yeah yeah where // (theyi+) made the paella’), the null subject implicates anaphoric reference to Maribel and her immediate family. This interpretation is conªrmed by the fact that both interlocutors have ªrst hand knowledge of the event, la paella (‘the paella’), a meal at Maribel’s house for which she and her immediate family made paella. Thus, the context and interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the situation render the minimal, zero subjects in turns 5 through 7 both speciªc and unambiguous. This excerpt illustrates how speakers abide by the pragmatic I-principle of Minimization by producing the minimal linguistic information necessary to achieve their communicational goals. And, more generally speaking, C’s repeated use of minimal referring expressions re¶ects the conversational tendency toward not telling people what they (are assumed to) already know. An alternative explanation for the use of null subjects with third-person, plural verbs in (133) is that these null subjects are merely instances of arbitrary (impersonal) reference. However, the referents brought to mind by the context in (133) clearly contrast with those brought to mind in excerpt (132), where C describes the people of her village dancing through the streets during el baile del roscón (‘the dance of the ring-shaped cake’). In other words, the null subjects in (133) clearly refer to a much more speciªc, mutually known and limited set of referents. Nevertheless, irrespective of the interpretations associated with the third-person plural constructions in (132) and (133), the neo-Gricean I-principle, and speciªcally, its speaker’s Maxim of Minimization, are clearly adhered to in these segments with respect to choice of referring expressions. In the continuation of the same conversation, La ªesta de Santa Bárbara, the linguistic context, along with familiarity with the festival and background information conveyed in the previous discourse, promote inferences of nonarbitrary reference in the absence of overt antecedents, as well as an implicature of non-coreference between two consecutive NPs with third-person plural verbs (again coreference with Maribeli and a set of implied family members is indicated again by ‘i+’ in subscript indices):
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
(134) La ªesta de Santa Bárbara (‘The Festival of Saint Barbara’), cont. 9 C: Si es que son los días de las ªestas. Cuatro cinco o seis días. Pues cuando Øj van bailando el roscón ese, que Øarb se dice, luego Øj van a la casa, Øj van bailando y como hace tanta calor en el mes de agosto, y Øk lesj ponen, mira, Øi+ tenían unos cubos así de: de naranjada, de limonada, de Coca-cola, (.) de sangría, (.) de agua con cubitos pero pero le- (.) No sé si hicimos ciento y pico litros de de zu- de: de Cas y cosas de esas. Eso se comp- Øarb se compran unos (.) una cantidad de dos litros concentraos. 10 I: M mm. 9 C: ‘But (it)’ s that (they)’ re the days of the festivals. Four ªve or six days. Well when (theyj) go dancing [with] that ring-shaped cake, as (theyarb) say, later (theyj) go to the house, (theyj) go dancing and since (it) is so hot in the month of August, and (theyk) serve themj, look, (theyi+) had some buckets like this o:f of orange drink, of lemonade, of Coca-cola, (.) of sangria, (.) of water with ice cubes but but the- (.) (I) don’t know if (we) made a hundred or so liters of ju- o:f of Cas and things like that. That is bough(youarb) buy some (.) an amount of two concentrated liters.’ 10 I: ‘Uh huh.’
In turn 9, when C says, Pues cuando Øj van bailando el roscón ese, que Øarb se dice, luego Øj van a la casa, Øj van bailando (‘Well when (theyj) go dancing [with] that ring-shaped cake, as (theyarb) say, later (theyj) go to the house, (theyj) go dancing’), the null subjects with third-person, plural verbs, can, in principle, be considered arbitrary in reference, because it is immaterial for C to specify the referents linguistically. Nevertheless, one can also infer from the discourse context and from background knowledge of the event that these null subjects refer to the townspeople who participate in el baile del roscón (‘the dance of the ring-shaped cake’) each year. In other words, while the intended referent of these zero pronouns is unspeciªed in the conversation, C has a delimited group of people, and therefore not an ‘impersonal’ or ‘arbitrary’ referent, in mind; therefore, they are coindexed here as ‘j’. The idea that these null subjects are used to refer to a certain, non-arbitrary referent is supported by the contrast in reference arising from C’s use of the ‘impersonal se construction’ in the utterance que Øarb se dice (‘as (theyarb) say’). As Suñer explains, “this [i.e. the use of se] is the other alternative that Spanish can resort to for indicating arbitrariness of reference in tensed clauses” (1983: 190). However, Suñer also adds that the pro (i.e. null) subject in these impersonal se construc-
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tions must be totally unspeciªed in its reference, “so that the sentence can be interpreted as a general statement which draws attention away from the subject entity. The subject referent is irrelevant; what really counts is the predication being made” (1983: 190). In turn 9, the contrast in reference arising from the use of the null subjects with third-person, plural verbs (e.g. Øj van bailando, ‘(theyj) go dancing’), which refer to unspeciªed, yet inferrable referents, and then the use of the impersonal se construction in the utterance que Øarb se dice (‘as (theyarb) say’), supports the notion that C has an intended referent in mind when using the former null subjects. This interpretation is supported by C’s use of an indirect object pronoun in the utterance y Øk lesj ponen (‘and (theyk) serve themj’). Familiarity with the custom being described is needed once more to infer that the null subject in the utterance y Øk lesj ponen (‘and (theyk) serve themj’) refers implicitly to los mayordomos (‘the host and hostess [of the festival]’) in any given year, and that the indirect object pronoun lesj (‘themj’) refers once more to the people in the town who participate in the traditional dance known as el baile del roscón. In other words, the third-person, plural, null subject and the object pronoun in the utterance y Øk lesj ponen (‘and (theyk) serve themj’) refer to non-arbitrary actors with diŸerent, culturallyprescribed roles in the community, and these referential interpretations are inferrable from both the discourse context and from background knowledge. In turn 9 of excerpt (134), when C utilizes a verb in the imperfect (past) tense, in the utterance mira, Øi+ tenían unos cubos así de: de naranjada (look, (theyi+) had some buckets like that o:f of orange drink’), her choice of verb tense signals another contrast in reference, even though there is no reversion to a full NP to mark this contrast. Along with this change in tense and reference, C switches from her description of customary practices, back to her anecdotal story, told in the past tense, which she has been interweaving in the conversation. The mutual background knowledge that C’s cousin, Maribel, and her husband were the mayordomos (‘host and hostess’) of the festival one year, which C mentions in turn 1 of (132), and the general cultural knowledge that the mayordomos typically provide the refreshments, leads to the inference that the null subject in Øi+ tenían unos cubos así (‘ (they Øi+) had some buckets like this’) makes reference to the antecedent Maribeli and, implicitly, her husband, as well as other immediate and relevant family members, who helped serve the refreshments. I-implicatures of coreference must be compatible with stereotypical assumptions about what is socially and culturally appropriate. An example of
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
this type occurs at the end of the following excerpt from the conversation in which C tells about her trip to Santiago de Compostela: (135) El viaje a Santiago (‘The Trip to Santiago’) C: Pues mira, era un domingo, era, sería un domingo seguramente y era Santiago. Y dice Patricioi, ¿a irnos a Santiago de Compos- a irnos a Santiago? Y nosotros nos quedamos así. (.) ((Shrugs shoulders)) María Jesús habrían comentado ya con Patricioi porque si no — y los chicos eran pequeños. Juan- José Luis era pequeño. (.) Ø tendrían unos catorce años cada uno o algo así, José Ramón igual. (.) Conque allí pues, ¿a irnos a Santiago? (.) ¿A irnos mañana a Santiago? Ay nos quedamos así un poco — (.) en el coche de Patricioi, que d’ eso Øi dice. Y entonces lo primero que dijo Benitoj, nosotros pagamos la gasolina. Øi dice, ni hablar! A mitad. La mitad cada uno. ‘Well look, (it) was a Sunday, (it) was, (it) was probably a Sunday and (it) was Santiago [i.e. Saint James’ Day]. And Patricioi goes, how ‘bout going to Santiago de Compos- how ‘bout going to Santiago? And we just sat there like this. (.) ((Shrugs shoulders)) María Jesús must have discussed (it) already with Patricioi because otherwise — and the boys were little. Juan- José Luis was little. (.) (They) were probably each about fourteen or something like that, José Ramón as well. (.) And so there [we were] well, how ‘bout going to Santiago? (.) How ‘bout going to Santiago tomorrow? Oh (we) just sat there like that a little — (.) in Patricioi’s car, that’s what (hei) says. And so the ªrst thing that Benito said [was], we’ll pay for the gas. (Hei) goes, don’t even think of (it) [i.e. no way]! Fifty-ªfty. Each of us [will pay] half.’
At the beginning of this segment, C uses reported speech to tell what Patricio suggested they do: ¿a irnos a Santiago de Compos- a irnos a Santiago? (‘how ‘bout going to Santiago de Compos- how ‘bout going to Santiago?’). The background knowledge that it was Patricio who suggested the trip, enables C to repeat the suggestion again later in the excerpt without repeating the name of the person who said it: Conque allí pues, ¿a irnos a Santiago? (.) ¿A irnos mañana a Santiago? (‘And so there (we were) well, how ‘bout going to Santiago? (.) How ‘bout going to Santiago tomorrow?’). The subsequent null subject with the verb dice (‘says’), in the utterance en el coche de Patricioi, que d’ eso Øi dice (‘in Patricioi’s car, that’s what (hei) says’), I-implicates coreference with Patricioi, since it is the last relevant NP. Here, although Patricioi is gram-
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matically non-salient, since it is an NP in a prepositional phrase, en el coche de Patricioi (‘in Patricioi’s car’), an implicature of coreference with this antecedent is compatible with the mutual knowledge obtained from previous discourse. Speaker C’s subsequent use of the full NP Benitoj, at the end of the excerpt, generates an implicature of non-coreference as well as a change in focus. C then reconstructs what Benito said: Y entonces lo primero que dijo Benitoj, nosotros pagamos la gasolina (‘And so the ªrst thing that Benito said [was], we’ll pay for the gas’). However, the very next null subject, which occurs with a third-person, singular verb in the utterance Øi dice, ni hablar! (‘(Hei) goes, don’t even think of (it) [i.e. no way]!’), does not I-implicate coreference with the last relevant NP, Benitoj, as Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora would predict: on the one hand, the speaker’s drop in intonation indicates that she is imitating a diŸerent referent’s speech, and, on the other, coreference with Benitoj is incompatible with the stereotypical expectation that an oŸer (e.g. to pay for the gas) is usually followed by either an acceptance of the oŸer, or a refusal by the other party. In this case, the refusal of the oŸer, ni hablar!, is su¹cient for the interlocutor (I) to infer that the intended antecedent of the null subject of the verb dice (‘says’) is Patricioi, and not Benitoj. This example shows that the speaker’s change in intonation, combined with one’s expectations based on what is considered a socially and culturally appropriate response in an adjacency pair, such as the oŸer-refusal reported by C in the form of a constructed dialogue, can override a simple I-implicature of coreference, and force an alternative interpretation in keeping with these expectations.
4.6 Mutual knowledge and the recognition of speaker intention Up to this point, our analysis has focused on how the speaker’s choice of referring expressions in conversation and their felicitous interpretation can be explained in terms of the pragmatic I- and M-principles, which are based on the notions of minimization, informativeness, contrast, and markedness of linguistic form. Furthermore, we have seen how consistency constraints, such as antecedent saliency and mutual knowledge, can restrict the pattern of implicatures that Levinson proposes in his neo-Gricean theory of anaphora. We have observed how minimization of linguistic form and the determination of speaker meaning are the result of, and can be explained by, the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge obtained either from the conversation itself, from stereotypical assumptions, or from shared social and cultural knowledge. The data
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
analyzed in the previous section reveal that, in order to infer the meanings of several of the minimal expressions in the Spanish conversations, the interlocutors must keep track of what has already been said. However, oftentimes they must also have an understanding of stereotypical roles as well as cultural norms in the local community, and in Spanish society as a whole, in order to infer the meanings of minimal expressions. In addition, as the present section will show, we need to examine the ways in which patterns of anaphoric reference and the speaker’s tendency toward linguistic minimization are both in¶uenced by, and reveal, the interlocutors’ mutual background knowledge of personal experiences, concerns, and interpersonal relations. This knowledge is one of the products of the social relations between the speaker and addressee, and is based on their shared experiences. Unsurprisingly, such mutual knowledge is often necessary for the recognition of a speaker’s intentional meaning (Grice’s meaning-nn) in contexts where this meaning is implicitly communicated. The following conversation shows how the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge allows the use of minimal referring expressions in a context in which the intended referent is understood in the absence of an explicit NP antecedent. Here, an implicit antecedent is inferred from the context in which the pronominal expressions are used, as well as from the participants’ existent knowledge of the matter being discussed. One of the consequences of the absence of overt NP antecedents is a breaching of the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000), in which the speaker’s reversion to a marked (e.g. full) NP is supposed to implicate non-coreference, and subsequently, coreference with that full NP should, in principle, be implicated by the speaker’s use of a minimal form (e.g. a pronoun or zero). In the ªrst turn, F introduces the topic of the conversation with a simple question, ¿Qué tal tus ojos? (‘How are your eyes?’), which brings the implicit antecedent, las cataratas (‘the cataracts’, the title of the conversation), into focus for the other interlocutors. Due to overlaps and technical interference, a few seconds of this conversation were unintelligible and therefore could not be transcribed, but even so, references to third persons are interpretable through pragmatic inferences, as we shall see.19 (136) Las cataratas (‘The Cataracts’) 1 F: ¿Qué tal tus ojos? 2 T: Bien. ((unintelligible, approximately 5 seconds of technical interference)) 3 C: ((unintelligible)) ¿No has ido?
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4 T: He ido a: coger número para el año que viene. Y me Øarb lo han dado, el número: Øarb me han dado para el quince de:: del mismo mes de junio para el año que viene. Pero apuntarme sólo. Para operarme no. Hasta que no: — Øi me vea para otro año no — // ((unintelligible overlap)) 5 C: Eso es una consulta pero ya estás apuntada para el año que viene// 6 T: ((unintelligible overlap)) — que Øj me tenían que operar y Øj no veían ningún inconveniente. ((unintelligible)) Digo cuando llegara el momento, que Øk tardaban dos años, y dos años y medio. Y para entonces que lask tendría ya: para: — = 7 C: =Para operarlask.= 8 T: =Que ahora Øarb no se espera (.) a tener la cataratal hecha para operarlal. Que es mejor cuando Øl se demuestra — empieza a demostrarse la cataratal que Øl derrita, y quitarlal. (.) 9 C: Y además que es un médico buenoi esei. 10 F: Sí Øi debe ser. 11 C: // Øi es de los mejores médicos (.) 12 F: Sí Øi debe ser bueno sí.= 13 C: =que hay en el hospital. 14 T: El hospital militar // ((unintelligible overlap)) 15 C: // en el hospital militar. 16 T: // Los dos oculistasj que hay, Øarb dicen que Øj son muy buenos. 1 F: ‘How are your eyes?’ 2 T: ‘Fine.’ ((unintelligible, 5 seconds of technical interference)) 3 C: ((unintelligible)) ‘Haven’t you been?’ 4 T: ‘ (I)’ ve been [there] to: get a number for next year. And (theyarb) have given it to me, (theyarb) have given me the number for the ªfteenth o:f of the very same month of June for next year. But [it’s] only to sign myself up. Not to [have them] operate on me. Until (he/she) doe:sn’t — (he/shei) sees me in another year no — //’ ((unintelligible overlap)) 5 C: ‘That’s a consultation but (you)’ re already signed up for next year //’ 6 T: ‘ ((unintelligible overlap)) — that (theyj) had to operate on me and (theyj) didn’t see any disadvantages [in it]. ((unintelligible)) (I) mean when the moment came, and (theyk) would take two years, and [even] two and a half years. And by then (I) would then have themk ready to: — =’
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 159
7 C: ‘=To have themk operated on.=’ 8 T: ‘=And now (peoplearb) don’t wait (.) to have the cataractl formed in order to operate on itl. And (it)’ s better when (itl) shows — the cataractl begins to show that (itl) is spreading, and [then] take itl oŸ. (.)’ 9 C: ‘And besides thati’s a good doctori.’ 10 F: ‘Yes (hei) must be.’ 11 C: ‘// (Hei)’ s [one] of the best doctors (.)’ 12 F: ‘Yeah (hei) must be good uh huh.=’ 13 C: ‘=that there are in the hospital.’ 14 T: ‘The military hospital //’ ((unintelligible overlap)) 15 C: ‘// In the military hospital.’ 16 T: ‘//The two ophthalmologistsj that are there, (theyarb) say that (theyj) are very good.’
The two questions at the beginning of the excerpt, one by F, ¿Qué tal tus ojos? (‘How are your eyes?’), in the ªrst turn, and another by C in the third turn, ¿No has ido? (‘Haven’t (you) been?), reveal that both speakers have previous knowledge of the topic of the conversation, T’s cataracts. C’s question in turn 3 is truncated in the sense that she leaves out the speciªcation of place with a locative PP. For instance, she might have asked, ¿No has ido al médico? (‘Haven’t you been to the doctor?’), but instead she minimizes her inquiry, assuming that her interlocutor will understand the question. The absence of a speciªcation of place suggests that C has considered what has already been communicated in previous conversations with T, and in this respect her utterance lends support to the notion that informativeness in conversation is recipient-designed. Furthermore, C’s question is correctly understood by T, as evident from her response in turn 4, He ido a: coger número para el año que viene (‘(I)’ve been [there] to get a number for next year’), which alludes to her having signed up for medical treatment for her eyes for the next year. Then, at the end of the same turn, T uses a null subject to refer to a particular doctor, without an overt antecedent, in the utterance Hasta que no: Øi me vea para otro año no — (‘Until (he/she) doe:sn’t- (he/shei) sees me in another year no —’). The intended referent of this null form is interpretable on account of the linguistic context, along with so-called ‘bridging’ assumptions, i.e., those background assumptions needed to infer the intended referent (see Matsui 1998, 2000; see also Clark and Haviland 1977). For instance, in the case of T’s utterance in turn 4, we must assume that before T is scheduled for an operation, her doctor, to whom she refers with a null subject, will have to see her
160 Implicatures in Discourse
again. Furthermore, although T has not speciªed who will see her in a year, C demonstrates her full understanding of T’s utterance in turn 5 by responding, Eso es una consulta pero ya estás apuntada para el año que viene (‘That’s a consultation but (you)’re already signed up for next year’). T then explains the need for an operation in turn 6, when she says, — que Øj me tenían que operar y Øj no veían ningún inconveniente (‘ — that (theyj) had to operate on me and (theyj) didn’t see any disadvantages [in it]’). From the semantics of the utterance, as well as the background ‘bridging’ assumptions based on world knowledge, one can infer that the two minimal null subjects with third-person, plural verbs make reference to the doctors who would eventually operate on T’s cataracts. In this context, the intended referent is unspeciªed, yet non-arbitrary in the sense that there are only a limited number of possible human referents capable of operating on T’s cataracts. In other words, it would be impossible to interpret the intended human referent in this context as an arbitrary reference to ‘people’. However, for successful communication, it is unnecessary for T to use a full lexical NP to refer to her doctor, since the intended referent can be inferred from the linguistic context, combined with the background assumption that ‘doctors perform operations’. Thus, once more we ªnd evidence that the pragmatic I-principle of Minimization has been followed. Subsequently, in turn 6, the basic pattern of anaphora posited by Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000), which predicts that a disjoint (non-coreferent) reading will be implicated by reversion to a full lexical NP, is breached. Speciªcally, after referring implicitly to her doctors through the use of null subjects in the utterance — que Øj me tenían que operar y Øj no veían ningún inconveniente (‘ — that (theyj) had to operate on me and (theyj) didn’t see any disadvantages [in it]’), T chooses the most minimal linguistic forms possible, including a null subject, and then a third-person, plural, feminine object pronoun, lask (‘themk’), to refer her cataracts. In other words, she never reverts to a full NP to mark this contrast in reference. However, both of the minimal expressions agree with an implicit antecedent, las cataratas (‘the cataracts-fem’), which is evoked by the discourse context, in which there has been no previous explicit mention of this entity. C demonstrates that she understands fully what T is referring by her use of the minimal, antecedentless NPs, when she completes T’s utterance, saying, Para operarlask (‘To have themk operated on’). Explicit reference to cataracts is ªnally made in turn 8, where T uses the full NP, la cataratal (‘the cataractl’) on two occasions. Each instance of this NP is followed by two minimal anaphoric references. T’s overt reference to ‘the cataract’ in turn 8 serves to conªrm the hypothesis that there is an implicit antecedent, las
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
cataratas, associated with the minimal expressions coindexed as ‘k’ in turns 6– 7. This antecedent is brought into focus implicitly as a result of strong semantic links with the other entities introduced into the discourse (e.g. eyes, doctors, etc.), as well as of the interlocutors’ mutual understanding of T’s medical condition. In turn 9 of (136), C uses an indeªnite NP un médico buenoi (‘a good doctori’) followed by a right-dislocated demonstrative pronoun, esei (‘thati’), when she states, es un médico buenoi ései (‘thati’s a good doctori; literally, ‘is a good doctori thati’).20 From a cognitive standpoint, following Gundel et al. (1993), the use of the demonstrative ései (‘thati’) indicates that the referent has already been ‘activated’, i.e. it has the cognitive status of activated, meaning that it is “represented in current short-term memory” (1993: 278). Both the indeªnite NP and the demonstrative make reference to a particular doctor, whom T has already referred to via a null subject in turn 4 of (136), in the utterance Hasta que no: — Øi me vea para otro año no — (‘Until (he/she) doe:sn’t — (he/shei) sees me in another year no —’). T’s use of this minimal null subject in turn 4, in the absence of an explicit NP antecedent, is unambiguous for her interlocutors, as illustrated by C’s overt reference to that doctor in turn 9 (es un médico buenoi ései), followed by F’s anaphoric reference to the same doctor through the use of a null subject in turn 10: Sí Øi debe ser (‘Yes (hei) must be’). Furthermore, C’s reference to the doctor via the full indeªnite NP and the demonstrative pronoun in turn 9 serve to conªrm the inferred referent of the null subject in turn 4. In turns 9–16, the basic pattern of anaphora posited by Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000) is adhered to. After the indeªnite NP, un médico buenoi (‘a good doctori’) and the right-dislocated demonstrative ései (‘thati’) in turn 9, we encounter a sequence of three null subjects in turns 10–12, which promote simple I-implicatures of coreference. Subsequently, T’s use of the plural deªnite NP los dos oculistasj que hay (‘the two ophthalmologistsj that are there’), in turn 16, serves two purposes. First, this non-minimal, marked NP promotes an M-implicature of non-coreference with the previous null subjects in turns 10– 12. Secondly, we could also hypothesize that the full NP, los dos oculistasj que hay, refers to the same doctors as the two null subjects with third-person, plural verbs in turn 6, where T states, que Øj me tenían que operar y Øj no veían ningún inconveniente (‘that (theyj) had to operate on me and (theyj) didn’t see any disadvantages [in it]’). This hypothesized coreferential reading is indicated by ‘j’ in the transcript; however, it cannot be fully proven, since portions of the conversation are unintelligible due to overlapping turns.
161
162 Implicatures in Discourse
In the continuation of the same conversation, we encounter a series of anaphoric devices, whose interpretations are derived from the antecedent los dos oculistasj que hay (‘the two ophthalmologistsj that are there’) in terms of its ‘sense’ rather than its ‘speciªcation’ (Webber 1979; Carter 1987). In this segment, turn 16 is repeated from (136) for convenience: (137) Las cataratas (‘The Cataracts’), cont. 16 T: // Los dos oculistasj que hay, Øarb dicen que Øj son muy buenos. 17 F: =Sí. 18 T: =Tiene uno la consulta en la Gran Vía y el otro en Alonso Gomier. A mí me han visto los dosj. Me vio el rubio: 19 F: El moreno. 20 T: Y el morenoi. 21 F: Anda. ((laughter)) 22 C: Que lei has dicho:= 23 T: =El año pasado me vio el rubio, y este año me ha visto el morenoi. 24 F: Ahora pues ¿ves? Lo que Øj deben de ser- lo que Øj deben de ser es buenos, ¿sabes? Pero Øarb dicen que Øj son muy buenos. Y los ojos, fíjate si es una cosa muy // delicada. 25 C: Muy delicada. 26 T: Y no creas que a: veces me: me acobardo y otras veces me animo y: y luego Øk dice:, ¿tú te apuntas?= 27 C: =Claro. 28 T: Y cuando llega el número entonces dices que tal, porque a Carmenk — (.) Øk dice que Øk tenía una ya para operar. (.) Y dice Carmenk que: Øk lo iba a mirar en la seguridad social. Y Øk leh dijo lo que Øk había tenido en la cara. Y lek dio élh una pomada, lek recetó élh una pomada para darsek en la cara, Øh dice si con esto Øarb se le quita a usted, vaya usted a — ((unintelligible)) 16 T: ‘// The two ophthalmologistsj that are there, (theyarb) say that (theyj) are very good.’ 17 F: ‘=Yes.’ 18 T: ‘=One has his o¹ce on the Gran Vía and the other [has his] on Alonso Gomier. The twoj [of them] have seen me. The blond one saw me:’ 19 F: ‘The dark-haired onei.’ 20 T: ‘And the dark-haired onei.’ 21 F: ‘Go on.’ ((laughter))
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 163
22 C: ‘So (you) have told hi:mi=’ 23 T: ‘=Last year the blond one saw me, and this year the dark-haired onei has seen me.’ 24 F: ‘Now then, you see? What (theyj) must be- what (theyj) must be is good, you know? But (theyarb) say that (theyj) are very good. And the eyes, hey look (it) is a very delicate thing.’ 25 C: ‘Very delicate.’ 26 T: ‘And believe it or not a:t times (I) lose my nerve and other times (I) get my courage up a:nd and afterwards (shek) says, are you signing up?=’ 27 C: ‘=Of course.’ 28 T: ‘And when your number comes around then (you) say such and such, because to Carmenk — (.) (shek) says that (shek) had one ready to be operated on. (.) and Carmenk says tha:t (shek) was going to look into it in social security [i.e. the social security clinic]. And (shek) told himh what (shek) had had on herk face. And heh gave herk an ointment, heh prescribed an ointment to rub on herk face, (heh) says with this you’ll get rid of (it), you go to — ((unintelligible))’
Although our analysis up to this point has dealt with deªnite NP and pronominal anaphora, in turn 18, we ªnd several instances of what Webber (1979) calls ‘identity of sense’ anaphora, or ‘one(s)’ anaphora.21 T’s use of uno (‘one’) (in italics in turn 18) “substitutes for a whole noun phrase” (here: uno de los oculistas (‘one of the ophthalmologists’)), and “serves to pick out one member of a set” (Carter 1987: 39). In this case, the ‘set’ is introduced into the discourse by the deªnite NP los dos oculistasj que hay (‘the two ophthalmologistsj that are there’). Similarly, the NP el otro (‘the other’) (also in italics in turn 18) picks out the other member of the set of ‘two ophthalmologists’. Both referring expressions involve ‘nominal substitution,’ since these expressions serve as substitutes for full NPs containing the head noun oculista(s) (‘ophthalmologist(s)’). In other words, instead of repeating oculista(s) in NPs such as uno de los oculistas (‘one of the ophthalmologists’), or el otro oculista (‘the other ophthalmologist’), T uses the more minimized, elliptical expressions, uno (‘one’) and el otro (‘the other’). In this sense, the grammatical feature of nominal substitution, or deletion of the head noun and ‘nominalization’ of the rest of the NP in Spanish (Whitley 1986), instantiates the I-principle of Minimization. Both T and F use nominal substitution in subsequent turns to refer to each of the two ophthalmologists individually, including el morenoi (‘the dark-haired onei’), in italics in turns 19, 20, and
164 Implicatures in Discourse
23, and el rubio (‘the blond one’, or ‘the blond’), also in italics in turn 23. Then, in turn 24, null subjects with third-person plural verbs are used by F to refer anaphorically to both ophthalmologists; that is, the null subjects express coreference with the antecedent Los dos oculistasj que hay (‘the two ophthalmologistsj that are there’) as well as the two most recent and salient NPs, el morenoi (‘the dark-haired onei’) and el rubio (‘the blond one’) in turn 23. Further minimization in third-person reference occurs in turn 26, where T uses another null subject with a third-person singular verb in the absence of an antecedent, stating, y: y luego Øk dice:, ¿tú te apuntas? (‘a:nd and afterwards (shek) sa:ys, are you signing up?’). This null subject becomes interpretable, particularly for the ‘non-knower’, or ‘outsider’, once the rest of the conversation unfolds. Speciªcally, in turn 28, T explains to F that ‘Carmen’ (speaker C) also had ‘one’ (i.e. ‘a cataract’) that needed to be operated on, saying porque a Carmenk — (.) Øk dice que Øk tenía una ya para operar (‘because to Carmenk — (.) (shek) says that (shek) had one ready to be operated on’). This utterance disambiguates the previous null subject (i.e. the zero in Øk dice:, ¿tú te apuntas?) through a series of inferences based on mutual background knowledge about the interlocutors themselves. The background knowledge includes the fact that both T and C (‘Carmen’) have been putting oŸ getting their cataracts operated on, and there is a background (bridging) assumption that, if one of them ‘signs up’ for the operation, the other one might get up her nerve and do so as well. In turn 28, the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson, whereby a “reduced pronominal form tends to pick up reference from the last relevant NP (preferably a subject)” (1987b: 283), is broken once more in favor of minimization of linguistic form. For instance, although T, in keeping with the basic pattern of anaphora, uses null subjects to I-implicate coreference with the last relevant subject NP, Carmenk, in the same utterance she uses the clitic pronoun, leh (‘himh’), to introduce a discourse entity (i.e. a particular doctor) in the absence of an explicit antecedent NP. The interpretation of this minimal pronoun in the utterance Y Øk leh dijo lo que Øk había tenido en la cara (‘And (shek) told himh what (shek) had had on herk face’) is ‘inferrable’ (Prince 1981) given the discourse context. More speciªcally, although the intended referent is never explicitly mentioned, the pronoun leh (‘himh’, or ‘her’) is interpretable on account of “what has gone on before, together with background (bridging) assumptions” (Matsui 1998: 49), i.e. assumptions needed to access the intended referent.22 For example, when T mentions C’s going to ‘social security’ (la seguridad social), which is Spain’s nationalized healthcare service, the sce-
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 165
nario brought to mind brings a particular doctor into ‘implicit focus’ (Garrod and Sanford 1982), thus making it possible to infer the intended, albeit unexpressed antecedent. This is conªrmed by the subsequent utterance, Y lek dio élh una pomada, lek recetó élh una pomada para darsek en la cara (‘And heh gave herk an ointment, heh prescribed an ointment to rub on herk face’), in which T uses an overt subject pronoun élh (‘heh’) to refer again to the same doctor. The absence of an explicit antecedent in turn 28 provides additional evidence of the I-principle’s Speaker’s Maxim of Minimization, ‘say as little as necessary’. It also re¶ects the operation of the Recipient’s Corollary, “amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance,” and, speciªcally, “assume stereotypical relations obtain between referents or events” (Levinson 1987a: 68; 1987b: 402). In addition, the use of the marked overt pronoun élh (‘heh’) instead of zero to refer to the evoked entity, the doctor, is justiªed by the fact that the zero subjects of the previous utterance express coreference with Carmenk, the most salient potential antecedent in the discourse at that point. In other words, the use of the marked subject pronoun, élh (‘heh’) in the subsequent utterance appears to M-implicate non-coreference with the last relevant subject NP, which is coreferential with Carmenk, while simultaneously, it forces an alternative interpretation, in keeping with shared stereotypical assumptions. Thus, the pronoun élh serves a double function in this context. First, as the marked alternate (the unmarked form being a null subject), the overt pronoun M-implicates non-coreference with the last null subject, which refers anaphorically to Carmenk. At the same time, it also implicates coreference with the less salient, object pronoun leh (‘himh’), which refers to the evoked doctor. In essence, we have an instance in which the parallelfunction strategy is operative. That is, the overt (i.e. stressed) pronoun élh (‘heh’) implicates coreference with the ‘unexpected’, non-subject pronoun, in this case, the object pronoun leh (‘himh’) in the previous utterance, Y Øk leh dijo… (‘And (shek) told himh…’). Simultaneously, this interpretation is consistent with our real-world knowledge of stereotypical roles (i.e., that doctors prescribe ointments, etc.), which serves to further promote this coreferential interpretation of élh (‘heh’), as well as the subsequent zero NP in Øh dice… (‘(heh) says…’) in the last utterance of turn 28. One recurring pattern observed in the Spanish conversations involves the use of an NP to refer to a single person, followed by the use of minimal forms to refer anaphorically to that person, as well as other people brought into implicit focus by the singular NP antecedent and the context. This pattern is observed
166 Implicatures in Discourse
primarily when speakers refer to family members, whose identities are never explicitly stated, but are assumed to be inferrable through their association with the person mentioned explicitly in the discourse context. In the following example, T’s mention of her sister-in-law via the NP mi cuñada (‘my sister-in-law’) in turn 5, provides su¹cient information for the interpretation of the subsequent ‘duplicated’ pronouns lesi…a ellosi (‘themi …for themi’).23 This full NP also helps to disambiguate the coreferential null subjects with third-person plural verbs later in the exchange:24 (138) Tengo un aplanamiento… (‘I feel sluggish…’) 1 T: Tengo un aplanamiento que no tengo ganas de- te digo la verdad= 2 C: =Quedarte.= 3 T: =pero después de comer y dormir un poco la siesta y dije ahora mismo voy a poner cuatro letras= 4 C: =Que sí. 5 T: a mi cuñada a ver cuándo lesi viene bien a ellosi, 6 C: Ir a buscarte. 7 T: a primeros de mes salirme a buscar a Valladolid. 8 C: Claro claro, Valladolid. 9 T: Øi me tienen que ir a buscar a Valladolid. 10 C: Que luego vas a: a: // ((unintelligible)) 11 T: Porque en ese mismo garaje que ustedes han venido, de allí salen los coches a Valladolid. (.) Y salgo yo a las diez de la mañana. 12 C: Sí, salían coches y venían coches de Valladolid. 13 T: Claro. 14 C: ¿No ves que estuve yo hasta tal hora? 15 T: A las die:z, a las diez y media o las once menos cuarto sale el coche para ir para Valladolid y Ø llega a las cuatro y media. 16 C: De la tarde. 17 T: A Valladolid. 18 C: Y Øi te tienen que: que ir a buscar. 19 I: ¿Y cuánto cuánto tiempo// 20 T: Y el día que — ¿no ves que Øi están ahora con lo- con la: — recogiendo= 21 C: =Recolección de la= 22 T: =la recolección de la cosecha? 23 C: De la de los cereales. 24 T: Pues Øi tienen que decirme el día que a ellosi lesi venga bien irme a buscar.
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 167
25 1 2 3
C: T: C: T:
4 5 6 7
C: T: C: T:
8 9 10 11
C: T: C: T:
12 C: 13 T: 14 C: 15 T: 16 17 18 19 20
C: T: C: I: T:
21 22 23 24
C: T: C: T:
25 C:
Claro. ‘ (I) feel sluggish and (I) don’t feel like- to tell you the truth= =‘Staying.=’ ‘=but after having lunch and taking a little nap and (I) said right now (I)’ m going to write a few lines=’ ‘=Yes [you should].’ ‘to my sister-in-law to see when it’s convenient for themi,’ ‘to come and get you.’ ‘around the ªrst of the month to come out and get me in Valladolid.’ ‘Of course of course, Valladolid.’ ‘ (Theyi) have to come and get me in Valladolid.’ ‘And later (you)’ re going to: to: // ((unintelligible))’ ‘Because in that very bus station that you [people] have come into, that’s where the buses leave for Valladolid. (.) And I leave at ten o’clock in the morning.’ ‘Yeah, buses were leaving for and buses were coming from Valladolid.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Don’t (you) see that I was there until that time?’ ‘At te:n o’clock, at ten thirty or quarter to eleven a bus leaves to go to Valladolid and (it) arrives at four thirty.’ ‘In the afternoon.’ ‘In Valladolid.’ ‘And (theyi) have to: to come and get you.’ ‘And how how long //’ ‘And the day that — don’t you see that (theyi) are [busy] now with th- with the: — gathering=’ ‘=Harvesting of the=’ ‘=the harvesting of the crops?’ ‘Of the of the grains.’ ‘Well (theyi) have to tell me the day that’s convenient for themi to come and get me.’ ‘Of course.’
The interpretation of the pronouns les…a ellosi (‘for themi’, but literally, ‘themi…to themi’) in italics in turn 5, requires an inference based on T’s reference to her sister-in-law via the NP mi cuñada (‘my sister-in-law’), the information provided in the conversation itself, and the interlocutor’s background knowledge of the speaker’s family. The felicitous interpretation of the
168 Implicatures in Discourse
subsequent coreferential null subjects (also in italics in turns 9, 18, 20, and 24) depends on these factors as well. However, the intended referents of the pronominal forms in italics may not necessarily be inclusive of the speaker’s sister-in-law, and therefore coreference between the coindexed null and overt pronominal expressions and the antecedent mi cuñada is not indicated in the subscript. Nevertheless, the discourse context suggests that T has speciªc family members in mind, i.e. a non-arbitrary referent, when she uses the duplicated pronouns lesi…a ellosi (‘for themi’) in turn 5, and a series of coreferential null and overt pronominal expressions in subsequent turns. This is apparent in turn 20, where T says, Y el día que — ¿no ves que Øi están ahora con lo- con la: — recogiendo= (‘And the day that — don’t you see that (theyi) are [busy] now with th- with the: — gathering=’). This hypothesis is further supported in turn 24, where T reiterates what she and C said earlier in the conversation in turns 5 and 6: Pues Øi tienen que decirme el día que a ellosi lesi venga bien irme a buscar (‘Well (theyi) have to tell me the day that’s convenient for themi to come and get me’). Although the non-knower or non-knowledgeable analyst cannot be sure how C interprets the coreferenced minimal NPs in the absence of explicit antecedents, the fact that interlocutors C and T are close friends enables us to suppose that C felicitously infers the intended interpretations of the minimal forms in this particular context. This view supports the pragmatic I-principle, which instructs the speaker to provide the minimal linguistic information necessary to achieve his/her communicational goals, while directing the addressee to amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance (Levinson 1987a, b, 1991, 2000). In addition, the pattern observed re¶ects the tendency observed in conversation to avoid telling people what they already know (Sacks 1971; Terasaki 1976; Levinson 1983, 1987a). A pattern of linguistic minimization similar to that observed in (138) occurs once more, later in the same conversation. In the ªrst turn of the following exchange, C’s reference to her eldest son, via the proper name Javieri, provides enough information to enable the addressee to identify the intended human referents of the subsequent zero NPs. The antecedent NP, indexed as ‘i’, is followed by two null subjects with third-person plural verbs. These zero NPs with third-person plural verbs are indexed as ‘i+’ to re¶ect a relation of coreference with both Javieri and the relevant family members. Their identities can be inferred from the antecedent, Javieri, and the interlocutors’ state of mutual background knowledge, in addition to the necessary bridging assumptions. This pattern illustrates the speaker’s adherence to the pragmatic Iprinciple, the in¶uence of the consistency constraint of mutual knowledge on
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 169
the speaker’s choice of referring expressions, and the more general conversational rule, ‘don’t tell hearers what they already know’: (139) Y Javier… (‘And Javier…’) 1 C: Y Javieri, se ve que Øi+ vienen el sábado a comer, pienso yo que Øi+ vengan. Porque José Ramónj viene el viernes por la tarde de: de Bruselas. 2 T: De Bruselas. 3 C: (.) Y a lo mejor Øj duerme allí y el sábado yo creo, porque a- mi hijoi aún quería venirse por la noche, el mayori. Øi dice que no, porque Øi+ salen de allí: a la- Øi+ salen de allí a las once o a las doce de la noche. Era mucha marcha. Que Øi+ vendrían e:- a lo mejor es fácil que Øi+ vengan el lunes ((door bell rings)) por la mañana. Ya tenemos aquí= 4 T: =Oye pues si nos vamos… 1 C: ‘And Javieri, (it) looks like (theyi+)’re coming on Saturday for lunch, I think (theyi+)’re coming. Because José Ramónj is coming on Friday afternoon fro:m from Brussels.’ 2 T: ‘From Brussels.’ 3 C: ‘ (.) And (hej)’ ll probably sleep there and on Saturday I think, because to- my soni even wanted to come at night, the oldesti. (Hei) says no [i.e. no they are not], because (theyi+) leave there at- (theyi+) leave there at eleven or twelve o’clock at night. (It) was a lot of rushing around. So (theyi+) were probably coming i:(it)’s likely that (theyi+) will come on Monday ((door bell rings)) morning. Now (we) have here=’ 4 T: ‘=Hey listen (we)’ re leaving…’
In the ªrst turn, C adheres to the I-principle of Minimization by using a singular antecedent to implicitly bring into focus a group of intended human referents, to whom she subsequently refers using zeros. C’s felicitous use of null subjects, even when their corresponding verbs do not agree with the antecedent, Javieri, is explained by the fact that C assumes that the interlocutors will recognize the intended referents via bridging assumptions based on what has been said, and on their background knowledge of the speaker’s family. Because C can safely assume that the interlocutors will recognize these intended referents, she uses null subjects without an explicit antecedent. In other words, she does not state what she assumes the interlocutors already know. When C, at the end of the ªrst turn, makes reference to her other son, via his proper name José Ramónj, she M-implicates non-coreference with the
170 Implicatures in Discourse
previous null subjects. The basic pattern of anaphora is evidenced in turn 3, when C refers anaphorically to José Ramónj, using a null subject with a thirdperson, singular verb in the utterance, Y a lo mejor Øj duerme allí (‘And (hej)’ ll probably sleep there’).25 The same pattern of anaphoric reference is observed again in the third turn, when C uses a marked NP, mi hijoi (‘my soni’), to implicate non-coreference with the last zero anaphor. However, C apparently realizes that the NP mi hijoi may be ambiguous, since it is semantically too general and perhaps not informative enough for the identiªcation of the intended referent; after all, C has two sons, Javier and José Ramón, both of whom have been mentioned in the discourse context. For this reason, she upgrades semantic informativeness by the addition of the NP el mayori (‘the oldesti’); in this way, she clariªes her reference and avoids ambiguity. However, in order to know that these semantically general NPs are also coreferential with the name Javieri (mentioned in turn 1), the interlocutor must have personal knowledge of C’s immediate family and then draw the appropriate inferences (e.g., she must know that C has only two sons, etc.). The use of the semantically more general and less informative NPs, mi hijoi (‘my soni’) and el mayori (‘the oldesti’) in turn 3, re¶ects the conversational tendency on the part of speakers toward ‘recipient design’ (cf. Sacks and SchegloŸ 1979): speakers tend to use reference forms which they can safely assume will be felicitously interpreted by the hearer. Having clariªed the intended meaning by adding the NP el mayori (‘the oldest’), C uses a coreferential null subject in the utterance (in turn 3), Øi dice… (‘(Hei) says…’). This singular anaphoric reference is followed by four consecutive zero NPs with plural verbs (Øi+ salen… Øi+ salen… Øi+ vendrían… que Øi+ vengan… (‘(theyi+) leave… (theyi+) leave… (theyi+) were probably coming… that (theyi+) will come…’). These null subjects implicate coreference with the last relevant NP, el mayori (‘the oldesti’) and all of the pertinent family members that are implicated by the third-person plural verbs, the previous discourse, and the interlocutors’ background bridging assumptions, based on their personal knowledge of C’s family. If an objective ‘non-knower’ were to listen to the conversational exchange in (139), s/he might be able to infer that the zero NPs with third-person plural verb forms implicate ‘Javier and someone closely related to Javier’. However, unless the addressee has personal knowledge of relevant members of C’s family, the non-knower cannot recognize the intended meanings of the reduced NPs cited. Therefore, it is precisely the interlocutors’ background knowledge of the family and the bridging assumptions they are able to make,
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation
given the discourse context, which explain both speaker minimization and hearer recognition of the intended referents, implicated by the use of the minimal null subjects. These observations lend additional support to the pragmatic I-principle, and to the more general social principle suggested by Levinson (1987a: 95), “if we are socially close we don’t need to be explicit.” The following excerpt provides further evidence of both the I-principle of Minimization and a more general social economy of information. Here, C is speaking with an elderly friend, L, whom she has known all her life. In this excerpt, L is talking about the possibility of installing a bathtub in her house, something her grown children are trying to convince her to do. Of particular interest is L’s use of the pronoun élj (‘HEj’), in the absence of an antecedent, in turn 6, when she says, Y élj me da por la espalda porque ((laughs)) no llego (‘And HEj washes my back for me because ((laughs)) (I) can’t reach’). For obvious reasons I have named this excerpt of the conversation La bañera (‘The Bathtub’): (140) La bañera (‘The Bathtub’) 1 C: Sí, que vienen los hijosi y Øi quieren ponernos como ((unintelligible overlap)) No, no por Dios! 2 L: No te digo que no, digo: — pero mujer, no tengo: — aunque no tenga: bañera::= 3 C: =¡Te lavas! Claro. Natural. Natural. Natural. 4 L: Pues cada::= 5 C: =¡Lo que haga falta! 6 L: =Pues cada quince días o veinte, yo me lavo una noche, ¿sabes? Toda. Y élj me da por la espalda porque ((laughs)) no llego. 7 C: Que sí, que no llegas, es // natural. 8 L: Las cosas // como son. 9 C: Que sí por Dios, en el matrimonio es //así. 10 L: Y:: y otra noche se lava élj, y yo lej doy también. Y así nos arreglamos. Tengo dos baldes grandes, de esos de poner en lejía de antes. 11 C: Ya verás qué bien con con con la bañera. Con la ducha, te metes allí, ponte es- // te compras de esas alfombricas de goma que son como unas ventosicas que Øarb se: aplastan para no resbalar. 1 C: ‘Yeah, our childreni come over and (theyi) want to get us like ((unintelligible overlap)) No, no for God’s sake!’ 2 L: ‘ (I)’ m not telling you (I) don’t, (I) mean — but of course, (I) don’t ha:ve — even though (I) don’t ha:ve a bathtu::b=’ 3 C: ‘=(You) wash up! Of course. Naturally. Naturally. Naturally.’
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4 L: ‘Well every::=’ 5 C: ‘=As often as needed!’ 6 L: ‘=Well every ªfteen days or twenty, Í wash myself one night, you know? All over. And HEj scrubs my back for me because ((laughs)) (I) can’t reach.’ 7 C: ‘Of course, (you) can’t reach, (it)’ s // normal.’ 8 L: ‘That’s the way // things are.’ 9 C: ‘Of course for God’s sake, in a marriage (it)’s // like that.’ 10 L: ‘A::nd and another night HEj washes himself, and Í scrub [his back for] himj too. And that’s how (we) manage. (I) have two big tubs, like the ones [we used to use] to put [things] in bleach before.’ 11 C: ‘ (You)’ ll see right away how great [it is] with with with the bathtub. With the shower, (you) get in there, put th- // (you) buy yourself one of those little rubber mats that are like little suction cups that (youarb) press down so that (you) don’t slip.’
In turn 6, the pronoun élj (‘HEj’), which corresponds to English stressed ‘HE’ (indicated by upper case), introduces new information (i.e. a new referent) in a context in which there is no explicit antecedent. In this particular context, an overt pronoun is the most minimal linguistic form available for introducing a new referent into the discourse context, since, as noted in Chapter 3, according to Brucart’s (1987) ‘Principle of Pronominal Lexicalization’, any pronominal that contributes new information must be realized (expressed) phonetically (1987: 219). In addition, the overt pronoun élj (‘HEj’), which is used in turns 6 and 10, serves a contrastive purpose, something which null pronouns are incapable of doing. In these utterances, the speaker, L, marks a contrast between what ‘she’ does and what ‘he’ does, using stressed ‘Í’ (overt yo) and stressed ‘HEj’ (overt élj). Although it may not be clear to someone who is unfamiliar with L’s personal habits, the overt subject pronoun élj (‘HEj’) is completely unambiguous for C. This becomes clear in turn 9, where C states, Que sí por Dios, en el matrimonio es // así (‘Of course for God’s sake, in a marriage (it)’s // like that’). Here, C’s reference to marriage (el matrimonio) conªrms that she recognizes the intended referent of the pronoun élj (‘HEj’) in turn 6, and also of the pronouns élj (‘HEj’) and lej (‘himj’), respectively, in turn 10, in L’s utterance, Y:: y otra noche se lava élj, y yo lej doy también (‘A::nd and another night HEj washes himself, and Í scrub [his back for] himj too’). These pronouns are classic instances of linguistic minimization, which lend additional support for the pragmatic I-principle of Minimization, “say as little as
NP Anaphora in Spanish conversation 173
necessary…to achieve your communicational ends” (Levinson 1987b: 402). Furthermore, they re¶ect the more general social principle of informativeness quoted above, “if we are socially close we don’t need to be explicit” (Levinson 1987a: 95).
4.7 Conclusions A close examination of segments from eight conversations has revealed that the use and interpretation of referring expressions in Spanish conversation (including full NPs, pronouns, and null subjects) may be accounted for, at least in part, in terms of the interaction of the neo-Gricean pragmatic I- and Mprinciples. The excerpts cited in this chapter present patterns of anaphora (and of third-person reference in general) that are representative of the patterns observed in the rest of the conversational data transcribed for this study. Understandably, not all of the data could be presented in this chapter. An overwhelming tendency toward minimization of linguistic form, where thirdperson reference is concerned, is evidenced in the speakers’ use of anaphors and antecedents in the conversations analyzed, which suggests that speakers do indeed adhere to a pragmatic rule of informativeness. In other words, the patterns of anaphora use encountered in the conversational exchanges re¶ect an attempt on the part of the speakers to be as informative as is required, to say as much as is required, but no more than that which is required, in adherence to the neo-Gricean Principle of Informativeness. In addition, the speakers’ choice of referring expressions in the conversations examined, frequently reveals assumptions which they have made regarding the background knowledge available to their interlocutors in the conversational discourse itself, in the social and cultural environment, and as a result of their mutual knowledge of personal and life experiences. For these reasons, patterns of anaphora in conversation seem to be designed by speakers so that they may be interpreted felicitously by their addressees.
Chapter 5
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse
5.
Introduction
In the previous chapter, we observed the operation of the neo-Gricean pragmatic I- and M-principles and the eŸects of the consistency constraints on anaphora in Spanish conversations. One recurrent theme associated with the conversationalists’ choice of referring expressions was minimization of linguistic form resulting from the participants’ assumptions of mutual knowledge. The present chapter seeks evidence to support the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles, albeit in a diŸerent genre of spoken discourse, involving the oral narration of a brief ªlm. In this genre of discourse, the mutual knowledge of the speaker and addressee is assumed to play a less in¶uential role in the speaker’s verbalizations. This hypothesis is based on the fact that all of the oral narratives analyzed in this chapter were elicited under the same experimental conditions. Therefore, the topic of the narratives was controlled, so that the narrators and the addressee (‘the listener’) had no mutual knowledge of the setting, events, or characters in the ªlm prior to the data collection. Using the revised neo-Gricean framework developed in Chapter 2, I shall attempt to account for anaphora in this particular genre of spoken Spanish. Through a close analysis of the narratives, we shall see how the consistency constraints, as well as the grammatical constraint of agreement, intervene to support or cancel implicatures of coreference/non-coreference predicted by Levinson’s (1987a, b, 2000) theory. The rest of this chapter is organized in the following manner. In Section 5.1, the data collection and transcription phases of the study are described. In Sections 5.2 through 5.5, I present a qualitative analysis of representative excerpts of the oral narratives in light of the revised neo-Gricean approach. More speciªcally, in Section 5.2 we shall examine the role of antecedent saliency as a consistency constraint on implicatures of coreference. Section 5.3 focuses on the eŸects of background knowledge and the mutual knowledge of
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the narrators and the addressee on anaphora production and interpretation. In Section 5.4 the role of agreement in implicatures of coreference and noncoreference is addressed. In Section 5.5 I seek evidence of Levinson’s predictions based on his neo-Gricean M-principle, which deal with the contrastive function of ‘marked’ NP expressions. In the penultimate section, I analyze the instances of backward anaphora found in the oral narratives, in light of the ccommand constraint on anaphora. The ªnal section highlights the main conclusions reached from my analysis of the narrative data.
5.1 The Spanish ‘pear ªlm narratives’ A ªlm with no speech, known as ‘the pear ªlm’ (Chafe 1980), was used to elicit a series of spoken narratives from native speakers of Spanish. The participants were from the region of northeastern Spain known as Aragón, and the narratives were both audio- and videotaped. The transcribed tapes were analyzed using a combination of two methodologies relevant to the analysis of discourse, namely, discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Geluykens (1994) advocates combining these two approaches in the analysis of anaphora in discourse since, on the one hand, conversation analysis emphasizes the interactional side of discourse, including turn-taking, conversational settings and relations between participants, overlapping, repair, and cooperation. On the other hand, the discourse analytic approach emphasizes ‘information ¶ow’ and seeks the rules or constraints that explain discourse structure and “the transmission of information from a speaker (writer) to a hearer (reader)” (Geluykens 1994: 5). The ªfteen narratives analyzed in this study were collected under the same experimental conditions. This meant that several variables were controlled, including the general length, complexity, and content of the story to be narrated. Furthermore, as I already pointed out, the amount of background information about the story depicted in the ªlm that was shared by the speaker (‘narrator’) and addressee (‘listener’) was also controlled, since none of the narrators in the study had any previous knowledge of the ªlm’s setting, events, or characters. The pear ªlm (Chafe 1980) was used to elicit the narratives because it is characterized by several memorable events, objects, and actors, and thus was likely to elicit numerous anaphoric references and possibly even some ambiguities in reference from the narrators, and also because, in addition to being brief, the ªlm has a soundtrack, but no speech. These features were desirable since the objective of the experiment was not to test memory, but
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 177
rather to elicit narratives that most closely resembled spontaneous narrative discourse under identical conditions. It was thought that if the story to be retold were di¹cult to remember, the narratives would be less spontaneous, and therefore not as natural. The absence of speech in the ªlm was another desirable feature, since the presence of speech might have either distracted the participants and/or in¶uenced their choice of linguistic expressions when retelling the ªlm. The pear ªlm was originally produced and used in a series of studies by a group of linguists at the University of California at Berkeley who were interested in how people talk about things they have experienced and later recall (Chafe 1980: xi). The following summary of the ªlm, as described by Chafe (1980: xiii-xiv), will provide the reader with a vivid description of the story, events, and characters in the ªlm, which may be helpful in interpreting the Spanish data. The ªlm begins with a man picking pears on a ladder in a tree. He descends the ladder, kneels, and dumps the pears from the pocket of an apron he is wearing into one of three baskets below the tree. He removes a bandana from around his neck and wipes oŸ one of the pears. Then he returns to the ladder and climbs back into the tree. Toward the end of this sequence we hear the sound of a goat, and when the picker is back in the tree a man approaches with a goat on a leash. As they pass by the baskets of pears, the goat strains toward them, but is pulled past by the man and the two of them disappear in the distance. We see another closeup of the picker at his work, and then we see a boy approaching on a bicycle. He coasts in toward the baskets, stops, gets of his bike, looks up at the picker, puts down his bike, walks toward the baskets, again looking at the picker, picks up a pear, puts it back down, looks once more at the picker, and lifts up a basket full of pears. He puts the basket down near his bike, lifts up the bike and straddles it, picks up the basket and places it on the rack in front of his handlebars, and rides oŸ. We again see the man continuing to pick pears. The boy is now riding down the road, and we see a pear fall from the basket on his bike. Then we see a girl on a bicycle approaching from the other direction. As they pass, the boy turns to look at the girl, his hat ¶ies oŸ, and the front wheel of his bike hits a rock. The bike falls over, the basket falls oŸ, and the pears spill out onto the ground. The boy extricates himself from under the bike, and brushes oŸ his leg. In the meantime we hear what turns out to be the sound of a paddleball, and then we see three boys standing there, looking at the bike boy on the ground. The three pick up the scattered pears and put them back in the basket. The bike boy sets his bike upright, and two of the other boys lift the basket of pears back onto it. The
178 Implicatures in Discourse
bike boy begins walking his bike in the direction he was going, while the three boys begin walking oŸ in the other direction. As they walk by the bike boy’s hat on the road, the boy with the paddleball sees it, picks it up, turns around, and we hear a loud whistle as he signals to the bike boy. The bike boy stops, takes three pears out of the basket, and holds them out as the other boy approaches with the hat. They exchange the pears and the hat, and the bike boy keeps going while the boy with the paddleball runs back to his two companions, to each of whom he hands a pear. They continue on, eating their pears. The scene now changes back to the tree, where we see the picker again descending the ladder. He looks at the two baskets, where earlier there were three, points at them, backs up against the ladder, shakes his head, and tips up his hat. The three boys are now seen approaching, eating their pears. The picker watches them pass by, and they walk oŸ into the distance.
The content of the pear ªlm is easily interpretable by people of diŸerent cultures and languages because of the universality of the theme and the absence of speech. As a result, the participants in the study were able to talk about the setting, characters, objects and events in the ªlm with a minimal amount of di¹culty. The Spanish pear ªlm narratives were collected in Maleján, a rural town of approximately 350 inhabitants about forty miles northwest of Zaragoza. All of the participants in the study were native speakers of a variety of Spanish known as Castilian.1 The ªlm was shown to a total of thirty people, in smaller groups of between three and ªve people at a time. Each group watched the ªlm twice in a row so that the details could be remembered more easily. A narrative of approximately three to ªve-minutes in length was then elicited from each of the participants individually within ªve to twenty minutes after viewing the ªlm for the second time. Before viewing the ªlm, each group of participants received the same set of instructions, in which I explained that I was studying spoken Spanish and was interested in how people talk about what they have experienced. I told them that they would ªrst view a short ªlm twice in a row, and afterwards, they would be asked to retell the story depicted in the ªlm to a person (‘the listener’) who had never seen it before. I emphasized that they could include anything they wanted when telling about the ªlm, could take all the time they wanted, and that there was no right or wrong way to talk about the ªlm. The participants then ªlled out a demographic questionnaire before watching the ªlm.
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The same instructions were given to each of the participants, or ‘narrators’ individually before recording each narrative. At this point, I explained to each narrator that I would be recording the conversation so as to better remember it later. Then the listener, a thirty-six-year-old native of Zaragoza, would ask the narrator to tell him about the ªlm, and frequently prompted him/her to begin talking by saying, Cuéntame la película (‘Tell me about the ªlm’). During the production and taping of each narrative, the narrator sat facing the listener and told the story straight through in a single session. The listener interacted with each speaker by occasionally making requests for clariªcation and asking questions about the characters in the ªlm that the speaker had mentioned. I was present for the video- and audiotaping of all of the narratives, and only occasionally spoke, when participants asked me questions or sought reassurance. Of a total of thirty narratives elicited, ªfteen were chosen randomly for this study and carefully transcribed, using standard Spanish orthography and following the transcription conventions used in Chapter 4. Most of the conventions are taken from Levinson (1983: 369–370); two additional conventions, one used to indicate a truncated phrase, and another indicating that a word is truncated, come from Du Bois et al. (1994) (see Appendix for transcription conventions). The fact that only ªfteen of the narratives elicited could be analyzed in this study was due to time limitations; even so, these ªfteen provided ample empirical data, with over 2100 instances of referring expressions for the qualitative analysis. In the transcriptions, I included hesitation phenomena such as pauses, pause ªllers (e.g. ‘eh’, ‘mm’), false starts, repetitions, stuttering, and lengthening. As in the case of the conversations discussed in Chapter 4, I did not attempt a detailed analysis of the intonational contours (i.e. variations in amplitude and pitch) in the narratives, because it was di¹cult to determine which distinctions were signiªcant. Therefore, the recording of intonation in the transcriptions was limited to the use of a period for sentence-ªnal falling pitch, and a comma for clause-ªnal level or slightly rising pitch, indicating a very brief pause and the speaker’s intention to continue speaking. Question marks were used to mark rising interrogative pitch in yes-no questions, as well as for the terminal falling pitch characterizing the end of Spanish information questions. As was done in Chapter 4, here too instances of coreference among thirdperson NPs, pronouns, and zeros, as well as null pronouns (‘empty categories’)
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receiving third-person ‘arbitrary’ (i.e. ‘impersonal’) interpretations are indicated by indices in subscript. Similarly, the referring expressions, including full NPs, pronouns, and null subjects considered to be relevant to the analysis and discussion, are marked in italics in each of the excerpts of narrative discourse presented. Furthermore, English pronouns that represent the translated equivalents of Spanish null subjects appear in parentheses. However, as in Chapter 4, re¶exive anaphors, which were identiªed in Chapter 1 as pertaining to the ‘grammatical domain of anaphora’, are neither indicated in italics nor coindexed by indices in subscript, as the interpretation of these anaphors does not depend upon pragmatic inference, but instead relies on grammatical binding (Chomsky 1981, 1982; Haegeman 1994; see also Chapter 1). The ªfteen speakers whose narratives are analyzed in this chapter were all from the region of Aragón. Two thirds were from the town of Maleján, while the other third was from either the city of Zaragoza, or from Borja, a small city next to Maleján. The speakers’ ages ranged from sixteen to seventy-ªve. Six of the speakers were between sixteen and twenty-one years old, three were between thirty-six and forty-ªve, two were between forty-six and ªfty-ªve years old, and four speakers were between sixty-ªve and seventy-ªve. With regard to the highest level of education attained, seven participants had attended elementary school, one had three years of high school, one had a degree from a vocational school, and the remaining six were high school or university students. Of those who were not students, six were blue-collar workers or homemakers, while three held white-collar jobs. In addition, four of the six students had at least one parent in a white-collar profession. Finally, thirteen of the ªfteen speakers whose narratives were used in the analysis were women.2 Each of the speakers was assigned a number by which s/he and his/her narrative could be identiªed in the analysis. For instance, ‘Speaker 1’ is referred to as ‘S1’, ‘Speaker 2’ is called ‘S2’, and so on.
5.2 Antecedent saliency, choice of referring expressions, and implicatures of coreference The ªfteen Spanish pear ªlm narratives analyzed in this chapter reveal that Iimplicatures of coreference from the use of a minimal form arise when the intended antecedent is the most salient or relevant entity at the point at which an anaphoric expression is used. Such implicatures of coreference are particularly straightforward when there is only one actor, usually a grammatical
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse
subject, in focus in the domain of discourse at a given moment. In fact, at points in the narratives where only one actor is involved, antecedent saliency is often a su¹cient condition for both the use and disambiguation of an anaphoric device.3 For example, at the beginning of her narrative, S9 describes the ªrst scene of the pear ªlm, in which a man in a tree is picking pears. When S9 introduces the man with an indeªnite NP, un hombrei que está: cogiendo perasj (‘A mani who i:s picking pearsj’), the focus of attention turns to this man, in the role of agent and subject, such that he is the focus of the ensuing discourse, even though several other (non-human) entities are subsequently introduced. The saliency of the pear picker, established by the subject NP un hombrei que está: cogiendo perasj (‘A mani who i:s picking pearsj’), enables S9 to use zero to implicate coreference with this antecedent NP as long as this actor remains in focus. Thus, in turn 3, simple I-implicatures of coreference with this NP arise from the speaker’s use of a series of six null subjects: (141) 1 2 3
1 2 3
S9: En el peral hay un hombrei que está: cogiendo perasj, L: M mm. S9: y: Øi cogía las perasj, Øi lasj metía en un delantal, Øi bajaba, y Øi rellenaba lo:s cestos. Entonces, después de ver — rellenar el segundo cesto Øi sube arriba, y: mientras Øi está: siguiendo recogiendo las perasj a- arriba en el árbol, pasa un hombrek con una cabral, y la cabral parece que Øl está, que Øl insiste un poco en ir hacia las perasj pero el hombrek se lal lleva. S9: ‘In the pear tree there’s a mani who i:s picking pearsj,’ L: ‘Uh huh.’ S9: ‘a:nd (hei) picked the pearsj, (hei) put themj in an apron, (hei) climbed down, and (hei) ªlled the baskets. Then, after seeing — ªlling the second basket (hei) goes up, a:nd while (hei)’ s continuing gathering the pears u- up in the tree, a mank with a goatl passes by, and the goatl looks like (itl) is, that (itl) insists a bit on going toward the pearsj but the mank takes itl away.’
The saliency of the pears, introduced by the indeªnite, direct object NP perasj (‘pearsj’), in turn 1, also makes this NP a prime candidate for an I-implicature of coreference through the use of a subsequent minimal anaphoric expression. But, instead of using an unmarked direct object pronoun, las (feminine ‘them’) at the beginning of turn 3, S9 expresses coreference, ªrst via the marked full deªnite NP las perasj (‘the pearsj’). Nevertheless, this marked NP does not Mimplicate non-coreference with the last relevant (object) NP, perasj (‘pearsj’) as
181
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Levinson’s M-principle predicts, since such an implicature is overridden by the semantics of the deªnite NP las perasj (‘the pearsj’). Speciªcally, we can evoke the consistency constraint of semantic entailment, resulting from the speaker’s ‘reiteration’ of the referent (Halliday and Hasan 1976; Carter 1987) to cancel the predicted M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of a marked expression. In other words, because the anaphoric NP las perasj (‘the pearsj’) contains no more information than its antecedent, perasj (‘pearsj’), and thus constitutes given information, we can say that the antecedent, perasj, semantically entails the anaphoric NP, las perasj. As soon as S9 introduces another actor in turn 3 through the use of the indeªnite NP un hombrek con una cabral (‘a mank with a goatl’), the focus of attention changes. At this point, the man with the goat becomes the most salient entity in the discourse, both syntactically, since the entity is introduced by a subject NP, and pragmatically, because one might expect a human to play a more important role in a ªlm than an animal. Therefore, if a null subject had been used after the NP un hombrek con una cabral, an I-implicature of coreference with this potential antecedent would have been generated on account of antecedent saliency. However, a full lexical NP, la cabral (‘the goatl’), is used instead to M-implicate non-coreference with the previous, and hierarchically most salient, subject NP. This marked NP changes the focus of attention to the goat, making it the most salient entity in the discourse, so that the next two null subjects I-implicate coreference with this lexical NP. Subsequently, the speaker’s reversal to a full subject NP, el hombrek (‘the mank’), M-implicates non-coreference with the previous, and last relevant referring expression, i.e. a null subject that refers anaphorically to la cabral (‘the goatl’). Thus, the feminine object pronoun lal (‘itl’) can be used felicitously to I-implicate coreference with la cabral (‘the goatl’), as this is the only other relatively salient entity in the immediate discourse context. This implicature is supported grammatically, since singular, feminine lal (‘itl’) agrees with the feminine antecedent, la cabral (‘the goatl’). It is also supported semantically, on account of the lexical meaning of the verb lleva (‘takes’), as well as pragmatically by our general knowledge of the world. The grammatical constraint of agreement, therefore, only serves to conªrm an inference based on antecedent saliency and both semantic and world knowledge. The pattern of implicatures observed in (141) shows that a full lexical NP is more likely to be the antecedent of subsequent anaphoric expressions when the referent in question constitutes the focus of attention at a particular point in the discourse. Also, it shows that the consistency constraint of antecedent
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 183
saliency accounts for the speaker’s use of a full lexical NP in order to Mimplicate non-coreference with a potential antecedent, where the use of zero or a pronoun might have I-implicated coreference with that antecedent at that point in the discourse. In the following excerpt, S6 describes a sequence of events in the ªlm. In the ªrst turn of this segment, the speaker’s use of the full NP este niñoi (‘this boyi’) serves to direct the listener’s (L’s) focus of attention to the ªlm’s protagonist, a boy who steals a basket of pears and rides oŸ with them on his bicycle. The basic pattern of anaphora, whereby the use of minimal forms I-implicates coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP, este niñoi (‘this boyi’) is evidenced in the ªrst turn by the speaker’s use of the possessive pronoun sui (in this context, ‘hisi’), followed by an anaphoric null subject. However, the speaker’s subsequent introduction of another actor, through the use of the NP otra chicaj que tiene una bicicleta (‘another girlj who has a bicycle’) sets up a situation in which there are two potential antecedents. Therefore, in the next utterance, S6 abides by the M-principle, by using a marked full NP to avoid any potential ambiguity, by stating se lei- se lei cae el sombrerok al niñoi (‘the hatk falls oŸ of the boyi’).4 Once the saliency of the boy on the bicycle is reestablished by the use of a full NP in the phrase al niñoi (‘oŸ of the boyi’), the I-principle of Minimization goes into eŸect again. S6 uses four minimal expressions, including three consecutive null subjects and an indirect object pronoun, to Iimplicate coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP, which refers to the boy. (142) 1
2 3 4 5
S6: …Y: este niñoi sigue sui camino y Øi se cruza con otra chicaj que tiene una bicicleta. Y: s- al roce del viento se lei- se lei cae el sombrerok al niñoi. Y Øi se gira para para ver el sombrerok y Øi se choca con una piedra. Después el cestol que Øi llevaba encima pues Øl se lei cae. Y al levantarse del suelo, éli se da cuenta de que hay otros tres niñosh mirándolei. Entonces estos tres niñosh lei ayudan a a poner las cestas en el- en la- o el- las peras en el cestol, y: pues L: ¿Øh sei lol ponen en la bici también? S6: Øh sei lol ponen en la bici y Øi se marcha. // Y los tres niñosh L: ¿Y la chicaj, la chicaj? S6: O no la chicaj pasa, Øj no: no ha hecho nada. Y los tres niñosh pues siguen andando, y Øh se dan cuenta de que el sombrerok Øi no lok ha cogido. Y Øh loi llaman para darlei el sombrerok.
184 Implicatures in Discourse
1
2 3 4 5
S6: ‘… And this boyi continues on hisi way and (hei) passes another girlj who has a bicycle. A:nd s- due to a small gust of wind the hatk falls oŸ of the boyi. And (hei) turns around to look at the hatk and (hei) hits a rock. Then the basketl that (hei) was carrying on top [i.e. of the bike] well hei drops (itl). And upon getting up oŸ the ground, hei realizes that there are another three boysh looking at himi. Then these three boysh help himi put the baskets in the- in the- or the- the pears in the basketl, a:nd so’ L: ‘Do (theyh) put itl on the bike for himi too?’ S6: ‘(Theyh) put itl on the bike for himi and (hei) leaves. // And the three boysh’ L: ‘And the girlj, the girlj?’ S6: ‘Oh no the girlj passes by, (shej) didn:’ t- didn’t do anything. And the three boysh well keep walking, and (theyh) realize that the hatk (hei) hasn’t picket itk up. And (theyh) call himi to give himi the hatk.’
In turn 1, S6 uses the subject NP el cestol (‘the basketl’) in the utterance, Después el cestol que Øi llevaba encima pues Øl se lei cae (‘Then the basketl that (hei) was carrying on top [i.e. of the bike] well hei drops (itl)’; literally, ‘(itl) falls from himi’). This NP turns L’s attention to the basket, while at the same time, coreference with the last most salient human antecedent (i.e. ‘the boy’) is Iimplicated by the use of the null subject and the object pronoun lei (‘himi’). This implicature is supported by both the saliency of the referent and antecedent, and by our background knowledge that the boy has taken a basket of pears. However, the relative saliency of the basket, referred to via the subject NP el cestol (‘the basketl’), appears to motivate S6’s subsequent use of a marked overt subject pronoun, éli (‘hei’), to refer again to the boy, in the utterance Y al levantarse del suelo, éli se da cuenta… (‘And upon getting up oŸ the ground, hei realizes…’). In this context, a null subject would not have been ambiguous, given the semantics of the verb phrase se da cuenta (‘realizes’). Thus, on the one hand, the speaker appears to have breached the I-principle of Minimization, since she could have used a more minimal null subject felicitously. On the other hand, she also appears to have ¶outed the M-principle, since the overt pronoun éli (‘hei’) seems to have been used for no particular reason. However, the fact that the most recent anaphoric reference to the boy, prior to overt éli (‘hei’), is the object pronoun, lei (‘himi’), may account for S6’s choice of the subject pronoun. In this instance, the overt subject pronoun ‘picks out’ as coreferential the less salient of the two most recent third-person references (a
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 185
non-subject), much the same way that stressed alternates, including overt subject pronouns, pick out ‘unexpected’ antecedents, thus re¶ecting the ‘parallel function strategy’ (see Solan 1983, 1984, and also Chapter 3, Section 3.6). However, because a null subject would also have also selected the same antecedent as the overt pronoun éli (‘hei’) in (142), we can simply attribute the appearance of the overt subject pronoun to the relatively lower saliency of the previous reference to the same entity via an object pronoun. The overt pronoun also serves to refocus our attention on the boy with the bicycle, after the basket has been momentarily in the foreground. In the continuation of turn 1 in (142), S6 uses the full object NP otros tres niñosh (‘another three boysh’) to introduce a new group of actors in the utterance éli se da cuenta de que hay otros tres niñosh mirándolei (‘hei realizes that there are another three boysh looking at himi’). However, at this point in the narrative, the boy with the bicycle is still the most salient referent, being referred to in subject position. The hierarchically lower degree of saliency of the NP otros tres niñosh (‘another three boysh’), as the subject of a subordinate clause, appears to account for S6’s subsequent use of a full and thus marked coreferential NP, estos tres niñosh (‘these three boysh’).5 Strictly speaking, a null subject with the third-person plural verb ayudan (‘(they) help’) could have implicated coreference here just as successfully, since there is only one thirdperson, plural candidate antecedent; however, the speaker opts for a marked NP, estos tres niñosh (‘these three boysh’) due to the relative saliency of its antecedent, otros tres niñosh (‘another three boysh’), which allows her to breach the Maxim of Minimization.6 From the end of the ªrst turn of (142), beginning with the NP estos tres niñosh (‘these three boysh’), to the end of the third turn, we encounter a series of I-implicatures of coreference arising from the use of minimal forms. These implicatures are supported by the consistency constraints on coreference, including antecedent saliency and agreement. In turn 3, the speaker responds to L’s inquiry and ªnishes her account of one particular scene in the ªlm, stating, Øh sei lol ponen en la bici y Øi se marcha (‘ (Theyh) put itl on the bike for himi and (hei) leaves’). There is, however, one further instance of a full marked NP, los tres niñosh (‘the three boysh’), at the end of turn 3. It occurs after two consecutive anaphoric null subjects, the ªrst of which refers to the three boys, and the second, to the bike boy. Both referents appear to be in focus at the point at which the speaker reverts to this full NP. However, because the last null subject prior to this full NP refers to the bike boy (y Øi se marcha (‘and (hei) leaves’), the bike boy is brought to the foreground, and is momentarily
186 Implicatures in Discourse
more salient than the group of boys. This relatively greater saliency or heightened focus on the bike boy, along with the fact that there is a ‘change in scene’ at this point in the discourse, seems to trigger S6’s reversion to the marked NP, los tres niñosh (‘the three boysh’). S6’s use of the full NP el sombrerok (‘the hatk’) in turn 5, when she states, y Øh se dan cuenta de que el sombrerok Øi no lok ha cogido (‘and (theyh) realize that the hatk (hei) hasn’t picked itk up’) brings the hat into focus, making it the most salient non-human entity in the discourse. The subsequent use of an anaphoric direct object pronoun, lok (‘itk’), is grammatically obligatory. This construction illustrates how the grammar of Spanish overlaps with the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency where coreference is concerned. That is, in Spanish when a grammatical object is topicalized, it is expressed via a full lexical NP in sentence or clause-initial position, and is followed by an obligatory coreferential object pronoun. With the hat in focus at this point in the discourse as a result of the topicalization of the NP el sombrerok (‘the hat k’), the I-principle predicts the subsequent use of reduced expressions, such as unstressed object pronouns or null subjects, to implicate coreference. However, in the utterance, Y Øh loi llaman para darlei el sombrerok (‘And (theyh) call himi to give himi the hatk’), S6 uses a full NP, el sombrerok (‘the hatk’) instead. Here, an anaphoric object pronoun, in this case lo (‘it’), could have been used in place of the full NP to successfully implicate coreference. However, S6’s breaching of the Maxim of Minimization (i.e. her use of a marked lexical NP, where a minimal, unmarked coreferential expression would have been felicitous), highlights the fact that the basic pattern of anaphora and the I-principle’s Maxim of Minimization, proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000), are only tendencies. Additionally, this instance of a marked coreferential NP serves as a reminder that the use of anaphoric expressions involves the speaker’s choice among various possible NP types, and that this choice may vary and be unpredictable. Focus of attention on two referents in a given scene, along with semantic constraints, may result in an implicature of coreference between minimal anaphoric expressions and all of the plausible antecedents collectively. Such an interpretation is implicated by the use of null subjects in turn 4 of the following segment in (143). In the ªrst turn, the speaker refers to the group of three boys, using the NP los chicosh (‘the boysh’), and then anaphorically to the boy with the bicycle via a null subject, and ªnally to the group of three, with an anaphoric object pronoun lesh (‘themh’), followed by a null subject in the utterance Que Øh lo han agradecido (And (theyh) appreciated it’). At this point in turn 1, the group of three boys are the center of attention and thus ‘in focus’. However,
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 187
the minimal null subject used by L in turn 4 generates an implicature of coreference with both potential antecedents (i.e. reference to all four boys collectively, indexed as ‘hi’). This interpretation is promoted both because all four boys have been in focus in the scene that has just been depicted, and because of the semantics of the third-person verb, se van (‘ (they) leave’), since all of the potential antecedents are capable of the action of ‘leaving’: (143)
1 S1: …Y los chicosh han retrocedido y Øi lesh ha dado una pera a cada uno.7 Eso ya es un rasgo ¿verdad? Que Øh lo han agradecido. 2 L: Sí. 3 1: Y: (.) no recuerdo cómo Ø ha continuao. (.) 4 L: ¿Al ªnal qué pasa? ¿Øhi se van, Øhi se van cada uno por su lado y no pasa= 5 1: =Sí sí. 6 L: ¿El hombrej que está en en el árbol no se da cuenta // de que Øhi lej quitan las perask? 7 S1: El árbol, el hombrej que está en el árbol baja, Øarb se lej ve muy meticuloso, que Øj lask mira, que Øj lask pone, Øj lask coge con un poco de brusquedad porque, las peras de agual, hay que cogerlasl con cabo, porque si no, si Øarb se tira, a lo mejor por el el oriªcio que hace el cabo Øl pueden pudrirse que Øarb se dice. Pero bueno, el hombrej se veía que Øj disfrutaba cogiendo suj frutok. 8 I: ¿Cuando Øj se bajó de la escalera? 9 L: ¿Y Øj no se ha dao cue- se ha dao cuenta de que Øhi lej han robado las perask o no? 10 1: Cuando Øj se ha bajao de la escalera, Øarb se- se- se seguían viendo peras allí. 11 L: O sea que Øj no sabe. Al ªnal Øhi lej han robado las perask y Øj no se ha dado cuenta. 1 S1: ‘And the boysh went back and (hei) gave themh each a pear. That now is a [nice] gesture. Isn’t it? And (theyh) appreciated it.’ 2 L: ‘Yes.’ 3 1: ‘A:nd (.) (I) don’t remember how (it) continued.’ (.) 4 L: ‘In the end what happens? Do (theyhi) leave, do (theyhi) leave, each one in his [own] direction and nothing happens=’ 5 1: ‘=Yeah yeah.’ 6 L: ‘Doesn’t the manj who is in the tree realize // that (theyhi) take the pearsk from himj?’
188 Implicatures in Discourse
7 S1: ‘The tree, the manj who is in the tree climbs down, (youarb) (can) see hej’s very meticulous, and (hej) looks at themk, and (hej) puts themk, (hej) picks themk a little bit abruptly because, dessert pearsl, (youarb) have to pick theml with the stem, because otherwise, if (youarb) pull, (theyl) can rot because of the hole that the stem makes so (theyarb) say. But well, the manj (youarb) could see that (hej) was enjoying picking hisj fruitk.’ 8 I: ‘When (hej) climbed down the ladder?’ 9 L: ‘And (hej) didn’t real- realize that (theyhi) had stolen the pearsk from himj or did (he)?’ 10 S1: ‘When (hej) climbed down the ladder, you you you (youarb) could still see pears there.’ 11 L: ‘In other words (hej) doesn’t know. At the end (theyhi) stole the pearsk from himj and (hej) didn’t realize (it).’
In turn 6, when L asks the question, ¿El hombrej que está en en el árbol no se da cuenta // de que Øhi lej quitan las perask? (‘Doesn’t the manj who is in the tree realize // that (theyhi) take the pearsk from himj?’), two possible interpretations are feasible for the null subject of the third-person verb quitan (‘ (they) take’). On the one hand, an interpretation of impersonal or arbitrary reference is viable, since, even though the interlocutors know who the ‘plausible’ referents are, it is immaterial to identify who they are. On the other hand, since the most recent, third-person plural reference is an anaphoric null subject in turn 4, which refers to all four boys and signals the saliency of this collective entity, a non-arbitrary I-implicature of coreference for the subsequent null subject in turn 6 is promoted. A speciªc, coreferential reading is also the ‘preferred’ interpretation, if we abide by Levinson’s I-principle, which instructs the recipient to “[a]mplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance by ªnding the most SPECIFIC interpretation, up to what [s/he judges] to be the speaker’s m-intended point” (1987b: 402). Finally, a speciªc, coreferential reading is also supported by the interlocutors’ state of mutual knowledge resulting from the previous discourse, which reveals that all four boys end up taking stolen pears, even though technically, the three boys didn’t necessarily know they were stolen. In sum, the mutual knowledge constraint, when combined with the saliency of the plausible referents in the discourse context, suggest that a speciªc I-implicature is intended; that is, anaphoric reference to all four boys is implicated. This ‘preferred interpretation’ is indicated via the coindexing notation ‘hi’ in subscript. Similar arguments apply to the potentially ambiguous null subjects with
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 189
third-person verbs in turns 9 and 11. In turn 9, when L asks, ¿Y Øj no se ha dao cue- se ha dao cuenta de que Øhi lej han robado las peras o no? (‘And (hej) didn’t real- realize that (theyhi) stole the pears from himj or did (he)?’), the focus of attention is on the man in the tree, since he is the only actor referred to in the previous two turns (7 and 8). Therefore, when L uses the null subject in Øhi lej han robado (‘ (theyhi) stole…from himj’) in turn 9, no plural human referent is currently ‘in focus’. The apparent absence of a salient, third-person plural antecedent when L produces the utterance in turn 9, may signal to the hearer that it is immaterial for the interpretation of the utterance to identify the intended referent of the null pronoun.8 However, an inference of arbitrary reference may be canceled by our knowledge, obtained from the previous discourse, that the pears were stolen by the boy on the bicycle and later shared with the other three boys. This knowledge, combined with the pragmatic Principle of Informativeness, which instructs us to seek the most speciªc interpretation possible, promotes a preferred reading of coreference for these null subjects. The relatively greater saliency of subject NPs makes them the most likely antecedents for subsequent minimal coreferential expressions, particularly if these expressions are also subjects. Furthermore, as was noted in Chapter 2, there is a general tendency on the part of recipients to choose topics and subjects as antecedents; speciªcally, as Huang has pointed out, “implicatures to coreference may be preferred according to the saliency of antecedent in line with the following hierarchy: topic > subject > object, etc.” (1994: 17). But, what happens when there are two potential antecedents in the discourse context, and one is expressed as the subject, while the other is an object? The narrative data reveal that under such circumstances, a speaker will tend to use a marked expression (e.g. a full NP or a stressed (overt) pronoun) to implicate coreference with the less salient of the two potential antecedents (the object NP), whereas an unmarked, minimal expression will I-implicate coreference with the most salient, subject antecedent. This pattern is evidenced in the following example, in which S2 uses the NP el chicoi (‘the boyi’), after having referred to the same boy previously with another full lexical NP, el chiquilloi (‘the kidi’): (144) S2: No he comprendido, ya te digo, si era el señorj quien tenía de peón al chiquilloi para llevarlej las peras, o el chicoi aprovechó de llevárseilej un cesto, (.) y — pero los chicosh, los otrosh desde luego losh he encontrao educados. Muy educaos.
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S2: ‘(I) couldn’t ªgure out, (I) tell you now, if (it) was the manj who had the kidi as a worker to carry the pears for himj, or the boyi took advantage and took a basket from himj for himselfi, (.) and — but the boysh, the othersh, (I) certainly found themh to be very polite. Very polite.’
If the speaker had used a null subject in place of el chicoi (‘the boyi’) in this context, coreference with el señorj (‘the manj’) would seem to be the preferred reading, although this would not be the most logical one, given the interlocutors’ knowledge gained from the previous discourse. Such a reading would, however, re¶ect the ‘parallel function strategy’, which was deªned in Chapter 2 as “the preference to match grammatical function in the interpretation of pronoun-antecedent pairs” (Luján 1986: 255). And, as noted in Chapter 2, whenever the parallel function strategy is operative, stressed alternates (e.g. Spanish overt subject pronouns) pick out ‘unexpected’ antecedents, which their unstressed alternates would not select (Solan 1983, 1984). S2’s use of the marked, yet coreferential NP, el chicoi (‘the boyi’), in this context illustrates the contrastive function of marked expressions, a function predicted by the Mprinciple. Speciªcally, the full subject NP, el chicoi, signals non-coreference with the more expected subject antecedent, el señorj (‘the manj’), while in fact el chicoi refers anaphorically to the less expected object NP, el chiquilloi (‘the kidi’). Also, the example re¶ects the preference, observed by Huang (1991, 1994), for zero anaphors to be interpreted as coreferential with matrix subjects, as opposed to objects. Stated in neo-Gricean terms, the marked NP el chicoi in the phrase o el chicoi aprovechó de llevárseilej un cesto… (‘or the boyi took advantage and took a basket from himj for himselfi’) serves to ‘M-implicate’ non-coreference with the antecedent el señorj (‘the manj’). These facts support our generalization that the use of a marked form promotes an alternative reading, i.e. selects a diŸerent antecedent than the usual, expected, or stereotypical interpretation associated with the more minimal, unmarked (e.g. unstressed) form. According to Levinson (1987a, b, 2000), this is precisely what the neo-Gricean M-principle predicts. In Chapter 2, we proposed that semantic entailment is needed to constrain the overoperation of the M-principle. In (144), the full NP, el chiquilloi (‘the kidi’, or ‘the little boy’), a diminutive of chico (‘boy’), is followed by an anaphoric reference to ‘the manj’ (el señorj), and the use of another full NP, el chicoi (‘the boyi’). Levinson’s original neo-Gricean proposal predicts a noncoreferential interpretation for non-minimal, ‘marked’ expressions when used
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse
in a context where a minimal pronoun or zero would implicate coreference. When the speaker uses el chiquilloi and then el chicoi in (144), her use of the full NP el chicoi should, by virtue of the M-principle, implicate non-coreference. However, the consistency constraint of semantic entailment cancels this predicted interpretation, since the meaning of the semantically stronger, more speciªc, and therefore, more informative NP, el chiquilloi, includes all of the meaning of el chicoi, plus the additional implicatures associated with the use of the diminutive form. Thus, el chiquilloi semantically entails el chicoi, and the two lexical NPs can be interpreted as referring to the same referent, i.e. the same boy in the ªlm. The pattern of reference observed in (144) demonstrates the interaction of antecedent saliency in implicatures of coreference. It reveals the in¶uence of a ‘relative saliency hierarchy’ on the speaker’s choice of anaphoric expressions, as well as the need for the consistency constraint of semantic entailments to curtail the operation of the M-principle. The following excerpt ((145)) provides yet another example of how antecedent saliency constrains coreference. Here, the consistency constraint overrides Levinson’s prediction of non-coreference from the use of a marked NP: (145) S3: …llega u:n u:n chavali con sui bicicletah, Øi se para allí, y entonces Øi ve las peras y: éli piensa pues ésta es la mía. Ahora cojo yo y: y Ø me llevo un cesto de peras. Øi deja la bicicleta en el suelo, Øi coge el cestoj, Øi loj pone cerca de la bicicleta, Øi sube la bicicleta arriba, Øi se pone el cestoj, y Øi se va con las peras. S3: ‘…a: a: boyi on hisi bicycleh arrives, (hei) stops there, and then Øi sees the pears a:nd hei thinks well this is my big chance. Now I’m just going on over and (I)’ m taking a basket of pearsj. (Hei) leaves the bicycleh on the ground, Øi picks up the basketj, Øi puts itj near the bicycle, Øi lifts the bicycleh up, Øi puts the basketj on, and Øi leaves with the pears.’
In this passage, the focus of attention is on the boy with the bicycle, the most salient entity in the discourse, as subject and agent. As the I-principle predicts, the speaker uses the most minimal forms possible, null subjects, to implicate coreference with the antecedent, un: chavali con sui bicicletah (‘a boyi on hisi bicycleh’); however, there is one exception to this pattern of minimization. This exception occurs when S3 states, éli piensa pues ésta es la mía (‘hei thinks well this is my big chance’). In this instance, the overt subject éli (‘hei’), where an unexpressed subject would have been su¹cient for successful anaphoric refer-
191
192 Implicatures in Discourse
ence, appears to have the eŸect of emphasizing and dramatizing the narrator’s reporting of the boy’s inner thoughts. Her subsequent use of what Tannen (1989) calls ‘constructed dialogue’ in the form of ‘inner speech’, contributes to this dramatization. Speciªcally, S3 reproduces what she imagines the boy was thinking, in the form of a dialogue expressed in the ªrst person and the present tense. The fact that this ‘inner speech’ is introduced by overt éli in the utterance éli piensa (‘hei thinks’) seems to justify the overt pronoun. That is, the overt pronoun marks a change or contrast in focus of attention, from a series of actions by the boy to his inner thoughts or ‘point of view’, much the same way a camera lens might switch its angle or focus. This explanation provides a ‘reason’ for the use of a marked expression (i.e. the overt pronoun) in a context where non-coreference is not implicated, and therefore it upholds the M-principle Speaker’s Maxim: “do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason” (Huang 1991: 306). Furthermore, a possible implicature of non-coreference arising from the use of the marked pronoun éli is overridden by the consistency constraint of antecedent saliency, since the only salient and appropriate antecedent in the discourse context refers to the boy with his bicycle. Reference to the non-human entities in (145) also reveals the operation of antecedent saliency as a consistency constraint on implicatures of coreference, as well as the interaction of the I- and M-principles. For instance, having made reference to the bicycle as the direct object in the utterance Øi deja la bicicletah en el suelo (‘(Hei) leaves the bicycleh on the ground’), S3 M-implicates noncoreference with this object NP by using a full and thus marked NP, el cestoj (‘the basketj’). Subsequently, coreference with the masculine antecedent, el cestoj, is I-implicated by the use of a minimal form, the masculine object pronoun, loj (‘itj’), in Øi coge el cestoj, Øi loj pone cerca de la bicicletah (‘Øi picks up the basketj, Øi puts itj near the bicycleh’). When the pronoun loj is used, the basket is in focus. Because the most salient object at this point is the basket, reference to the bicycle in the very next utterance, Øi sube la bicicletah arriba, (‘Øi lifts the bicycleh up’), is made with another full lexical NP, to once again M-implicate non-coreference with the last relevant object NP. This pattern of referring expressions illustrates how the use of a minimal form, an object pronoun, I-implicates coreference with the most salient object NP in the discourse context, even though it is not the most recently mentioned potential antecedent. In other words, it is antecedent saliency, rather than recency, which licenses the use of the minimal anaphoric expression and, in neoGricean terms, supports an I-implicature of coreference. In the following example, S5 begins her narrative by describing the ªrst
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scene of the pear ªlm, in which the pear picker is in a tree picking pears. Although the speaker refers to numerous entities in this excerpt, for the purposes of our analysis, only the third-person references to human referents are discussed (marked by subscript indices): (146) 1
2 3 4 5 1
2 3 4 5
S5: La película es muy breve. Entonces Ø empieza con que un señori está: cogiendo peras, y Øi tiene dos cubos llenos y uno vacío. Entonces Øi va llenándolos y se lei cae una: al suelo. Øi baja, Øi se quita el delantal ese que Øi tenía, y: y la otra pues Øi la limpia con un panuelo que Øi tenía al cuello y Øi la mete. Entonces pasa un señorj con una cabra, o algo así, y Øj se va. Luego viene un niñok con una bici, y Øk se lleva, Øk se va a llevar una: una pera. Pero Øk debe pensar que eso es poco y Øk se lleva un: un cesto enterol. L: ¿Øk sei lol roba? S5: Sí, Øk sei lol roba. ((S5 laughs)) L: ¿Y no se entera el otroi? S5: No, no Øi se entera, Øi está allí en el árbol cogiendo peras. Y: Øk va por el camino… S5: ‘The ªlm is very short. So (it) begins with well a mani i:s picking pears, and (hei) has two buckets ªlled and one empty. So (hei) keeps ªlling them and hei drops one on the ground. (Hei) climbs down, (hei) takes oŸ that apron (hei) had [on], a:nd and the other one well (hei) cleans it with a handkerchief that (hei) had around the [i.e. his] neck and Øi puts it in. Then a manj with a goat passes by, or something like that, and (hej) goes away. Later a boyk on a bike comes along, and (hek) takes, (hek)’ s going to take a: a pear. But (hek) must think that that’s [too] little and (hek) takes a: a whole basketl.’ L: ‘Does (hek) steal itl from himi?’ S5: ‘Yeah, (hek) steals itl from himi. ((S5 laughs))’ L: ‘And doesn’t the otheri [guy] notice?’ S5: ‘No, (hei) doesn’t notice, (hei)’ s up there in the tree picking pears. A:nd (hek) goes along the path…’
S5 introduces the ªrst actor to appear in the ªlm with the indeªnite subject NP un señori (‘a mani’). This reference to a human subject brings the pear picker into focus, making him the most salient referent in the discourse context, and ‘what the ensuing discourse is about’ (cf. Bosch 1983, and also the discussion of ‘aboutness’ in Chapter 2). As a result, anaphoric reference to the pear picker is
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achieved by a series of minimal coreferential expressions. These include eight null subjects as well as an unstressed indirect object pronoun, lei (‘himi’) in the utterance se lei cae una: al suelo (‘hei drops one on the ground’; but literally, ‘one falls from himi to the ground’). Here, the I-principle is followed through the use of the most minimal referring expressions possible to implicate coreference with the most salient NP in the discourse. Furthermore, the ªrst turn of the segment provides evidence of the general tendency for speakers to use minimal anaphoric expressions, typically in subject position, to refer to an antecedent that is also a grammatical subject. This pattern of minimization in the expression of coreference re¶ects the earlier deªned ‘parallel function strategy’. The pattern also supports Huang’s (1991, 1994, 2000b) earlier mentioned hierarchy of preference with regard to antecedent saliency. In turn 1 of (146), the focus of attention remains on the pear picker, until S6 reverts to a full indeªnite NP in subject position, un señorj con una cabra (‘a manj with a goat’), to introduce the second actor appearing in the ªlm. This full NP M-implicates non-coreference with the last relevant NP, a null subject referring to the pear picker. At the same time, the use of this marked NP signals a change in the focus of attention to the man with the goat. Thus, the next minimal null subject I-implicates coreference with this subject antecedent. Subsequently, the third actor to appear in the ªlm, the boy on his bicycle, is introduced by another indeªnite NP, un niñok con una bici (‘a boyk on a bike’). He becomes the most salient entity in the discourse, and each subsequent reference to the boy in the ensuing discourse is made with the most minimized form possible, zero, in subject position. This use of minimal expressions to implicate coreference provides yet another instantiation of the I-principle and the in¶uence of antecedent saliency on implicatures of coreference. The I-principle of Minimization continues to be upheld in turn 2, when L asks the question ¿Øk sei lol roba? (‘Does (hek) steal itl from himi?’). That is, the zero anaphor in subject position I-implicates coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP, which refers to the boy with the bike. In this utterance, the minimal clitic sei functions as a third-person, singular, indirect object pronoun (‘himi’) at a point in the discourse where the intended referent, the pear picker, is no longer in focus. This absence of focus on the pear picker is due to the fact that in the previous utterance, S5 refers to the boy as the subject and agent of the actions, and to the basket as the direct object: un cesto enterol (‘a whole basketl’). Therefore, in ¿Øk sei lol roba? (‘Does (hek) steal itl from himi?’), the felicitous interpretation of sei (‘himi’), which can have several potential interpretations, depending on the context, is possible on account of the interlocutors’ mutual
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 195
knowledge. Speciªcally, the two interlocutors who are listening to the narrative (L and I) know from the previous discourse that there is a man in the tree picking pears and putting them in baskets. As a result, an interpretation of coreference between pronominal sei and the antecedent un señori (‘a mani’), used earlier in the narrative, is consistent with their mutual knowledge of the story up until this point, disambiguating the meaning of se and conªrming a more informative, Iimplicated coreferential interpretation.
5.3 The eŸects of background assumptions and mutual knowledge Mutual knowledge that is shared by interlocutors because it has been mentioned in the discourse itself is what Clark and Marshall (1981) have called ‘linguistic co-presence mutual knowledge’. This may either combine with antecedent saliency to support implicatures of coreference, or it may operate alone to conªrm or cancel a potential implicature of coreference. We shall begin our investigation of the ways in which mutual knowledge in¶uences a speaker’s choice of linguistic form to express coreference by reexamining the exchange between S5 and L in (146). A portion of the excerpt is repeated in (147), beginning with the end of the ªrst turn: (147) 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
S5: …Pero Øk debe pensar que eso es poco y Øk se lleva un: un cesto enterol. L: ¿Øk sei lol roba? S5: Sí, Øk sei lol roba. ((S5 laughs)) L: ¿Y no se entera el otroi? S5: No, no Øi se entera, Øi está allí en el árbol cogiendo peras. Y: Øk va por el camino… S5: ‘But (hek) must think that that’s too little and (hek) takes a: a whole basketl.’ L: ‘Does (hek) steal itl from himi?’ S5: ‘Yeah, (hek) steals itl from himi. ((S5 laughs))’ L: ‘And doesn’t the otheri [guy] notice?’ S5: ‘No, (hei) doesn’t notice, (hei)’ s up there in the tree picking pears. A:nd (hek) goes along the path…’
In turn 2, L asks whether the man in the tree picking pears realizes that the boy is stealing a basket of pears: ¿Y no se entera el otroi? (‘And doesn’t the otheri [guy] notice?’). The fact that the pear picker is not the most salient entity in the discourse when el otroi (‘the otheri [guy]’) occurs may account for the speaker’s
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choice of this marked NP. While el otroi is contrastive, in that it implicates noncoreference with the last null subject (referring to the boy with the bicycle), it also implicates coreference with an alternative, less salient minimal expression in the previous utterance, sei (‘himi’), which refers anaphorically to the pear picker. From a cognitive standpoint, the speaker’s use of el otroi (‘the otheri [guy]’), instead of a lexically richer, more speciªc NP, such as ‘the man who was picking pears’, or simply ‘the man’, signals that the referent is in the participants’ short-term memory. In eŸect, the intended referent may be considered part of the mutual knowledge of the speaker and listener. In the last turn in (147), S5’s response to L’s question, No, no Øi se entera, Øi está allí en el árbol cogiendo peras (‘No, (hei) doesn’t notice, (hei)’ s up there in the tree picking pears’), conveys her understanding of the anaphoric NP el otroi. Her use of two consecutive coreferential null subjects in this utterance also reveals the fact that the intended referent, the man picking pears, is the most salient entity at this point in the narrative. However, her third consecutive null subject, in the utterance Y: Øk va por el camino (‘A:nd (hek) goes along the path’) is not coreferential with the previous null subject, which refers to the pear picker. Instead, it refers anaphorically to the boy with the bicycle. In this instance, the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000), whereby a minimal, null subject generates a preferred coreferential reading with the last relevant NP (preferably a subject as well) is broken. Speciªcally, a simple I-implicature of coreference between the null subject of Y: Øk va por el camino (‘A:nd (hek) goes along the path’) and the last relevant and most salient referential expression is inconsistent with what is known about the actors in the story and their local situations. Therefore, the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge overrides a simple I-implicature of coreference, while forcing an alternative interpretation that is consistent with the interlocutors’ knowledge of the story obtained from the discourse up to this point. Mutual knowledge obtained from the discourse itself also enables the interlocutors to infer that the null subject in Y: Øk va por el camino (‘And (hek) goes along the path’) refers to the boy on the bike. Even though the intended referent of an anaphoric expression is not in focus at a particular point, the interlocutors’ background knowledge enables a speaker to express coreference with that referent successfully through the use of a minimal, unmarked form. In such cases, mutual knowledge is a more powerful constraint on coreference than antecedent saliency, since it explains patterns of minimization of linguistic form that constitute exceptions to the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000).
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One type of anaphoric expression, which requires the speaker and addressee’s mutual knowledge of the intended referent for its felicitous use, is the demonstrative NP (e.g. esa pera, ‘that pear’). According to Gundel et al. (1993), the use of these lexical NPs indicates familiarity with the referent: “the addressee is able to uniquely identify the intended referent because he already has a representation of it in [either long or short-term] memory” (1993: 278). Furthermore, in Gundel et al.’ s hierarchy of cognitive statuses, both demonstrative NPs and demonstrative pronouns may be classiªed as ‘activated’ as long as the interlocutor is able to identify the intended referent because s/he already has a representation of the referent in short-term memory. This activated representation may be due to the immediate linguistic or extralinguistic context, or to its retrieval from long-term memory (Gundel et al. 1993: 278). Demonstrative NPs, such as esa peraj (‘that pearj’) in the following excerpt, are often used when the intended referent is not in focus, provided the interlocutors have mutual knowledge of the corresponding referent from the preceding discourse. (148) 1 2 3 4
5 6 1 2 3 4
5 6
L: Cuéntame la película. S8: Pues Ø empieza co:n cantando un gallo, ((laughs)) y luego // aparece I: ¿Qué? ¿Es por la mañana? S8: Sí al mediodía. Y luego pues aparece un hombrei cogiendo peras, (.) subido a una escalera. Y pues eso, mientras Øi está cogiendo peras, se lei cae unaj, I: M mm. S8: y: pues luego Øi baja, Øi echa las demás al balde, y luego Øi coge esa peraj. Øi laj limpia. L: ‘Tell me [about] the ªlm.’ S8: ‘Well (it) starts wi:th a rooster crowing, ((laughs)) and then // appears’ I: ‘What? Is (it) in the morning?’ S8: ‘Yeah at midday. And then well a mani picking pears, (.) up on a ladder appears. And well that [was happening], while (hei)’ s picking pears, hei drops onej,’ I: ‘Uh huh.’ S8: ‘a:nd well later (hei) climbs down, (hei) tosses the rest into the bucket, and then (hei) picks up that pearj. (Hei) cleans itj.’
When S8 introduces the ªrst actor in the ªlm using the NP, un hombrei cogiendo peras, (.) subido a una escalera (‘a mani picking pears, (.) up on a ladder’), the pear
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picker becomes the most salient entity in the discourse. Between turns 4 and 6, the speaker refers anaphorically to the pear picker six times through the use of the most minimal expressions possible, including ªve null subjects and the indirect object pronoun lei (translated as ‘hei’; literally ‘him’). In other words, coreference with the most salient antecedent NP, un hombrei cogiendo peras… (‘a mani picking pears…’) is I-implicated through the use of minimal, unmarked expressions. At the end of turn 4, the speaker mentions the fact that the pear picker drops a pear, stating, ‘hei drops onej’ (se lei cae unaj). According to Webber (1979), expressions like unaj (‘onej’) are ‘one-anaphors’ which substitute for descriptions. Following her deªnition, unaj is “a descriptor, i.e. a way of describing things” (1979: 19); in this case, the descriptor is ‘pear’, which is inferred from the speaker’s explicit reference to pears in the previous utterance, mientras Øi está cogiendo peras (‘while (hei)’ s picking pears’). Because the man is the most salient entity in the subsequent discourse (and not the dropped pear), a minimal object pronoun to refer to the pear would not be appropriate (e.g., if the speaker had said something like y luego Øi laj coge, ‘and then (hei) picks itj up’). Instead, the speaker reverts to a marked, demonstrative NP, esa peraj (‘that pearj’), stating y luego Øi coge esa peraj (‘and then (hei) picks up that pearj’), to implicate coreference with anaphoric unaj (‘onej’). Here, we see how a marked, demonstrative NP M-implicates a coreferential interpretation, by picking out a non-salient referent in a context where use of more minimal, unmarked expressions would have picked out other, more salient potential antecedents. Furthermore, prior knowledge of the entity to which the marked NP, esa peraj (‘that pearj’), refers, is shared by the interlocutors, because it has been introduced in the previous discourse. This example illustrates how demonstrative NPs can be used to implicate coreference when the intended referent is not the current focus of attention, as long as there is preexisting mutual knowledge of that referent. It also supports the revised prediction from the application of the M-principle proposed in Chapter 2 and repeated here for convenience: (149) Revised prediction from the application of Levinson’s M-Principle: The use of a marked (more complex, prolix) form, e.g. a lexical NP where a pronoun might have been used, or a pronoun where a zero might have occurred, will tend to M-implicate an alternative, nonstereotypical, or less predictable interpretation, which would not have been implicated by the use of a more minimal, unmarked expression.
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As I pointed out in Chapter 2, this generalization carefully avoids predicting coreference, thus resolving the problem of overprediction of non-coreference (arising from the use of ‘marked’ expressions) found in Levinson’s (1987a, b, 2000) proposal. At the same time, our revised prediction attempts to account for the use and interpretation of alternative linguistic forms, whether they are coreferential or not. In the following passage, we encounter another use of a marked NP to refer anaphorically at a point in the narrative where the intended referent is not in focus; however, the interlocutors have enough mutual knowledge of the referent to enable them to infer coreference. Below, in (150), only the referring expressions that make reference to the actors in the ªlm are coindexed: (150) 1
2 3 1
2 3
S9: …Luego viene un muchachoi con una bicicleta, y Øi baja de la bicicleta, Øi va a coger una pera pero parece que una no es m- s-, no es lo suªciente y Øi se lleva un cesto de las peras. Øi se lo lo coloca delante de la bici, y Øi se va por el camino. A // estL: Y el otroj no se entera. S9: El otroj no se entera de nada. A esto, Øi se cruza con una chicak que también iba en bicicleta,… 9: ‘… Then a boyi on a bicycle comes along, and (hei) gets oŸ the bicycle, (hei)’ s going to take a pear but (it) seems that one isn’t m- s-, isn’t enough and (hei) takes a basket of the pears. (Hei) puts it on the front of the bicycle, and (hei) goes oŸ down the path. Just at // thi-’ L: ‘And the other j [guy] doesn’t notice.’ 9: ‘The otherj [guy] doesn’t notice anything. Just at that moment, (hei) passes a girlk who was also riding on a bicycle,…’
In turn 1, the boy on the bike is the most salient entity in the discourse context. When the listener interjects Y el otroj no se entera (‘and the otherj [guy] doesn’t notice’) in turn 2, the anaphoric expression el otroj (‘the otherj [guy]’) changes the focus of attention to the pear picker, who had been referred to earlier in S9’s narrative. The marked NP el otroj refers anaphorically to the man in the tree, and not to the most recent male actor mentioned prior to introducing the bike boy, namely, a man with a goat. The interpretation of el otroj is made possible by the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the events and actors in the ªlm up to this point, as well as by a set of related inferences. Since the interlocutors mutually know that the man in the tree was picking pears, and therefore, is more likely to be interested in what happens to the pears, the most logical
200 Implicatures in Discourse
inference is that el otroj (‘the otherj [guy]’) refers to the picker. Therefore, it is not necessary to use a more prolix or informative NP, such as ‘the man who was picking the pears’, for successful reference. In turn 3 of (150), we ªnd further evidence of the in¶uence of the speakers’ assumed state of mutual knowledge in the pattern of anaphoric reference. In this turn, Levinson’s (1987a, b, 2000) I-based prediction of coreference is overridden in the utterance A esto, Øi se cruza con una chicak (‘Just at that moment, (hei) passes a girlk…’). According to Levinson’s proposal, the null subject in this utterance should trigger an I-implicature of coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP in the discourse, in this case, el otroj (‘the otherj [guy]’). However, this interpretation would be inconsistent with the interlocutors’ mutual background knowledge, which includes the fact that the pear picker is (for all the interlocutors know) still in the tree, while the boy is riding down the path on his bike. Therefore, while the I-principle of Minimization is upheld by the speaker through the use of a null subject for anaphoric reference, this null subject does not implicate coreference with the most salient NP as would be predicted by Levinson’s principle. Instead, it implicates coreference with the antecedent un muchachoi con una bicicleta (‘a boyi on a bicycle’) since this is the only feasible interpretation given the mutual knowledge of the interlocutors. A speaker’s choice of referring expressions reveals how both antecedent saliency and mutual background knowledge constrain implicatures of coreference. For instance, in the ªrst turn of the following sequence, S4 introduces the second actor to appear in the ªlm with the NP unoi con una: cabraj (‘a [guy]i with a: goatj’; literally ‘onei with a goatj’). Afterward, she uses a full NP, la cabraj (‘the goatj’), to implicate coreference with the most recent potential antecedent at this point in the narrative, una cabraj (‘a goatj’): (151) 1 2 3 1 2 3
4: … Y luego venía de izquierda a derecha unoi con una: cabraj, que yo he pensao que se iba a enganchar la cabraj a come:= L: =A comer peras. 4: A comer peras. Pero no, Øi/#j ha tenido prudencia. 4: ‘… And then a [guy]i with a goatj came [walking by] from left to right, and I thought that the goatj was going to start to ea:=’ L: ‘=To eat pears.’ 4: ‘To eat pears. But no [i.e. no it didn’t], (hei/#itj) was cautious.’
S4’s use of the marked lexical NP, la cabraj (‘the goatj’), instead of a minimal, null subject, re¶ects the fact that, at this point in the discourse, the man with a
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 201
goat, and not the goat itself, is the focus of attention and thus the most salient entity. The higher degree of saliency of the man triggers the speaker’s reversion to the marked subject NP, la cabraj, to refer anaphorically to una cabraj (‘a goatj’), a less salient, potential antecedent, due to its (non-subject) grammatical status. The full deªnite NP, la cabraj (‘the goatj’), at the end of turn 1 brings the goat into the foreground momentarily, making it a likely candidate for subsequent anaphoric reference through use of a minimal expression. However, coreference between the NP la cabraj (‘the goatj’) and the null subject in the subsequent utterance Pero no, Øi/#j ha tenido prudencia (‘But no [i.e. no it didn’t], (hei/#itj) was cautious’) is canceled by background assumptions. One such assumption might be the idea that it is highly unlikely for a goat to be ‘cautious’ or ‘prudent’ and avoid eating pears. The same type of assumptions also promotes an implicature of coreference between the null subject in question and the NP unoi con una cabraj (‘a [guy]i with a goatj’), which is the last relevant human antecedent, and thus the most pragmatically appropriate one in the discourse context. In the following excerpt, S2 uses an indeªnite subject NP, un señori con una cabraj (‘a mani with a goatj’), which implicates non-coreference with the last relevant NP expression, an anaphoric null subject that refers to the man picking pears. The man with the goat then becomes the focus of attention, and therefore, the most likely candidate for subsequent anaphoric reference. However, in the second turn of the segment, L interjects the question, ¿Y qué pasa? ¿Que Ø#i/ j se come las peras? (‘And what happens? Does (#hei/itj) eat the pears?’): (152) 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
S2: …y: mientras Øh está cogiendo peras pasa un señori con una cabraj (.) y ((L and I laugh)) sí. L: ¿Y qué pasa? ¿Que Ø#i/j se come las peras? S2: No. Es el señori con la cabraj primero ¿verdad? I: Pasa el señori con // la cabraj muy de cerca. S2: Pasa el señori con la cabraj, sí, y el señori muy prudente no lej deja ni enganchar una, o sea, ni coger una. Øi se marcha… S2: ‘… and while (heh)’ s picking pears a mani with a goatj passes by: (.) and ((L and I laugh)) yeah.’ L: ‘And what happens? Does (#hei/itj) eat the pears?’ S2: ‘No. It’s the mani with the goatj ªrst, right?’ I: ‘The mani with the goatj passes very close by.’ S2: ‘The mani with the goatj passes by, right, and the mani [since he’s] very cautious doesn’t let itj even snatch one, that is, not even take one. (Hei) goes oŸ…’
202 Implicatures in Discourse
Here, coreference between the most salient NP in the discourse, un señori con una cabraj (‘a mani with a goatj’), and the subsequent null subject is canceled on account of the stereotypical assumptions about goats and men. For instance, one knows that goats typically tend to eat anything, and thus are more likely to eat the pears; by contrast, it would be improper for a person to take something that does not belong to him/her. In other words, an I-implicature of coreference between un señori con una cabraj (‘a mani with a goatj’) and the null subject in ¿Que Ø#i/j se come las peras? (‘Does (#hei/itj) eat the pears?’), is canceled by inferences drawn from the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge, which is assumed to be shared by all ‘community members’ (Clark and Marshall 1981).9 S2’s felicitous understanding of the null subject is conªrmed in the ªnal turn of the segment, where she recalls the scene: y el señori muy prudente no lej deja ni enganchar una, o sea, ni coger una (‘the mani [since he’s] very cautious doesn’t let itj even snatch one, that is, not even take one’). In this turn, the use of a marked lexical NP, el señori (‘the mani’), to refer anaphorically to el señori con la cabraj (‘the mani with the goatj’), also avoids any ambiguity of reference, since two referents are being talked about simultaneously in the discourse context. In other words, the use of this marked full NP re¶ects adherence to the M-principle, which states “do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason” (Huang 1991: 306). At the same time, the M-based prediction of an implicature of non-coreference, due to the use of a marked NP, is overridden by semantic entailment. That is, the meaning of the more general expression, el señori (‘the mani’), is semantically entailed by the more speciªc antecedent, el señori con la cabraj (‘the mani with the goatj’). In the following example, which is a continuation of S2’s narrative, beginning with the end of turn 5 of (152), the speaker’s choice of NP types re¶ects the in¶uence of both antecedent saliency and mutual knowledge on implicatures of coreference versus disjoint reference. In this sequence, the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000) is violated, but the consistency constraints intervene to disambiguate the anaphoric expressions used: (153) 5
5
S2: …Øi se marcha. Pero luego pasa un chiquilloj con una bicicleta, yo no sé si es que hablaba el señork porque no hay voz, o es que Øj mira arriba y Øj se lek lleva el cesto. S2: ‘ …(Hei) goes oŸ. But then a boyj on a bicycle passes by, I don’t know if it’s that the mank was speaking because there isn’t any speech, or it’s that (hej) looks up and (hej) takes the basket from himk.’
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As indicated in our discussion of (152) above, the null subject in the utterance, Øi se marcha (‘(hei) goes oŸ’), refers anaphorically to the man with the goat. In the very next utterance, the speaker’s reversion to a marked, full NP, un chiquilloj con una bicicleta (‘a boyj on a bicycle’), M-implicates non-coreference with the last relevant NP, the null subject. Then, the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge that the man with the goat has left the scene, leads them to infer that the marked, deªnite NP, el señork (‘the mank’), refers to an alternative human actor in the ªlm, other than the man with the goat. According to Gundel et al.’ s cognitive status model, use of the deªnite article, such as singular, masculine el (‘the’), signiªes that “the addressee can identify the speaker’s intended referent on the basis of the nominal alone” (1993: 277). Furthermore, although ‘identiªability’ does not require previous familiarity with, or background knowledge of the referent, it “may be based on an already existing representation in the addressee’s memory” (1993: 277). In the case of the deªnite NP el señork (‘the mank’), identiªability of the intended referent is based on the interlocutors’ knowledge from the previous discourse. For instance, the interlocutors mutually know (or can ‘mutually assume’) that the pear picker has not left the scene and is still in the tree picking pears. Thus, although two human referents, to which the NP el señork (‘the mank’) could refer, have been mentioned, the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the previous discourse allows them to successfully infer the intended referent. According to Levinson’s (1987a, b, 2000) system of implicatures, the null subject in the next utterance in (153), o es que Øj mira arriba (‘or it’s that (hej) looks up’), after the subject NP el señork (‘the mank’), should result in an Iimplicature of coreference with this potential antecedent. However, this reading is canceled by the interlocutors’ mutual background knowledge, obtained from the speaker’s narrative, which includes the fact that, for all they know, the man is still up in the tree. As a result, the interlocutors infer the more likely of the two scenarios, namely, that the null subject of Øj mira arriba (‘ (hej) looks up’) refers to the boy, who, the interlocutors can assume, is on the ground and is therefore more likely to ‘look up’. Subsequently, since this null subject refers to the boy, the next null subject in the utterance Øj se lek lleva el cesto (‘ (hej) takes the basket from himk’) implicates coreference with the previous null subject, i.e., it too refers anaphorically to the bike boy. In other words, we have another I-implicature of coreference with the last relevant and salient antecedent in the discourse, one that is in keeping with our mutual background knowledge of the scene being depicted. This inference of coreference leads to an additional one: viz., that the object pronoun lek (‘himk’) must be
204 Implicatures in Discourse
coreferential with the NP el señork (‘the mank’), since this referent is picking pears and is the only other actor known to be present in the scene. This pattern of anaphoric reference shows how implicatures of coreference must be, ªrst and foremost, consistent with the interlocutors’ current state of mutual knowledge. The following excerpt from S1’s narrative illustrates once more how inferences based on mutual knowledge of the preceding discourse enable the hearer to infer the intended interpretation of an anaphoric expression when two human referents are being talked about: (154) S1: …había una escalera puesta en un árbol de peras de agua, y: y he visto — me ha parecido de pronto que era como algu:noi d’estos que se querían llevar las peras, como un ladronzueloi. Pero después yo he pensado que no. Que Øi debía de ser el amoi de la ªnca, porque había otro señorj que pasaba con una cabra, y: y he visto que no había pues un grito de decirlei, ¿y usted, qué hace allí? Digo este señori será el amoi. S1: ‘… there was a ladder leaning against a tree of dessert pears, a:nd and (I) saw — it seemed to me that all of a sudden (it) was like onei of these [guys] who wanted to take the pears, like a little thiefi. But afterward I thought no [it wasn’t]. So (hei) must have been the owneri of the farm, because there was another manj who was passing by with a goat, a:nd and (I) saw that there wasn’t even a shout so as to say to himi, and you, what are (you) doing there? I say [to myself] this mani is probably the owneri.’
Here, the speaker initially hypothesizes that the man picking pears was a thief and uses two indeªnite NPs to introduce this actor: algu:noi d’estos que se querían llevar las peras, como un ladronzueloi (‘onei of these [guys] who wanted to take the pears, like a little thiefi’). The null subject in the subsequent utterance, Que Øi debía de ser el amoi de la ªnca (‘So (hei) must have been the owneri of the farm’) generates a straightforward I-implicature of coreference with these indeªnite NPs. In the same utterance, S1 expresses her second hypothesis, namely, that the pear picker was ‘the owneri of the farm’ (el amoi de la ªncai). Then she introduces a second human referent via another indeªnite NP, otro señorj que pasaba con una cabra (‘another manj who was passing by with a goat’). Because of both the recency and saliency of the NP otro señorj que… (‘another manj who…’), the subsequent object pronoun, lei (‘himi’), in the utterance no había pues un grito de decirlei… (‘there wasn’t even a shout so as to say to himi…’) should promote a simple I-implicature of coreference with it. Instead, however, mutual knowl-
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edge of the previous discourse, including the speaker’s observation that the man in the tree must be the owner of the farm, enables the addressees to follow the speaker’s reasoning and draw the appropriate inferences. For instance, if the man in the tree were not the owner of the property, and thus a suspected thief, the man passing by with the goat might have shouted to him (the pear picker), but there was no such shout. In other words, following the speaker’s line of reasoning, the interlocutors can infer that it was ‘the man with the goat’ who didn’t shout to the pear picker (and not vice versa); therefore, lei (‘himi’) must refer anaphorically to the pear picker. In the ªnal utterance of excerpt (154), the demonstrative NP este señori (‘this mani’) is used right after the anaphoric pronoun lei (‘himi’). Here, an Mimplicature of non-coreference from the use this marked NP is overridden by the interlocutors’ knowledge of the previous discourse and pragmatic inferences derived from this knowledge. Speciªcally, the demonstrative NP is used in a context where a minimal, unmarked, null subject could have been used to implicate coreference with the previous pronominal expression, lei (‘himi’); therefore, this demonstrative NP should M-implicate non-coreference. However, S1 uses it in an utterance in which she repeats her initial hypothesis (expressed at the beginning of the excerpt) that the pear picker must be the owner: Digo este señori será el amoi (‘ (I) say [to myself] this mani is probably the owneri’). This marked NP is used by the speaker both ‘demonstratively’ and coreferentially, as if she were to say, ‘this man, who I was just talking about’. At the same time, S1 reiterates her original hypothesis about the actor. Thus, no M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of this marked expression arises. Instead, coreference is promoted from the use of the demonstrative NP, in keeping with the interlocutors’ knowledge obtained from the previous discourse. The pattern of anaphoric reference observed in (154) demonstrates how pragmatic inferences drawn from the preceding discourse can play a more important role in the disambiguation of coreference relations than do the actual referring expressions used by the speaker. Antecedent saliency and the interlocutors’ mutual background knowledge, as well as stereotypical assumptions, intervene to disambiguate coreference in the following excerpt. At the beginning of her narrative, S6 describes the ªrst scene and introduces the ªrst actor in the ªlm with the indeªnite NP un señori recogiendo peras en un árbol (‘a mani picking pears in a tree’). The speaker then refers anaphorically to the pear picker by using four null subjects, thereby strictly adhering to the I-principle of Minimization to implicate coreference:
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(155) S6: Pues e: es por la mañana, estamos en un campo y hay un un señori recogiendo peras en un árbol y Øi tiene tres cestos, dos llenos y uno vacío. Entonces pue:s, Øi las trata así con mucho cariño ¿no? Øi las limpia y Øi las cuida mucho, y pasa o- otro señorj con una cabra, pero vamos Øi no: no lej hace caso. S6: ‘Well i: it’s morning, (we) are in a ªeld and there’s a mani picking pears in a tree and (hei) has three baskets, two full [ones] and one empty [one]. So we:ll, (hei) treats them in this manner with great care, right? (Hei) cleans them and (hei) takes good care of them, and a- another manj with a goat passes by, but even so (hei) doesn:’ t doesn’t pay attention to himj.’
Next, S6 uses the indeªnite NP, otro señorj con una cabra (‘another manj with a goat’) to mention the second actor to appear in the ªlm. This marked NP Mimplicates non-coreference with the previous null subject, and turns the focus of attention away from the pear picker momentarily. At this point in the narrative, the speaker has referred to two actors in the immediate discourse context, and therefore, there are two possible antecedents for subsequent anaphoric reference to a human entity. Not surprisingly, anaphoric reference to each of these potential antecedents occurs in the very next utterance: pero vamos Øi no: no lej hace caso (‘but even so (hei) doesn’t pay attention to himj’). Either of the two minimal expressions in this utterance, the null subject or the indirect object pronoun lej (‘himj’), could be coreferential with one or the other of the two potential antecedents, so the possibility of ambiguity of reference arises. To interpret these anaphoric expressions, one must rely on pragmatic inferences based on the foregrounded status (or saliency) of the pear picker in this scene, on the background knowledge of the situation provided in the previous discourse, and also on the speaker’s use of the hedge pero vamos (‘but even so’). That is, the pear picker is brought to the foreground of the scene through the speaker’s reference to him and detailed description of his actions, such as picking the pears, treating them with care, cleaning them, and so on. This description could lead one to infer that the pear picker is so busy and engrossed in his work that he cannot pay attention to people passing by. This inference promotes coreference between the null subject in pero vamos Øi no: no lej hace caso (‘but even so (hei) doesn’t pay attention to himj’) and the antecedent, un señori recogiendo peras en un árbol (‘a mani picking pears in a tree’). In addition, the use of pero vamos (‘but even so’) appears to subordinate the ªrst conjunct in the utterance, y pasa o- otro señorj con una cabra, (‘and a- another manj with a goat passes by’).10 As a result, the second conjunct, pero
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 207
vamos Øi no: no lej hace caso (‘but even so, (hei) doesn’t pay attention to himj’) represents the speaker’s main point. Meanwhile the conjunction pero (‘but’) followed by vamos (‘even so’) can be taken to imply, ‘but even though the man with the goat was passing by’. In other words, the expression pero vamos shifts the interlocutors’ focus of attention back to the main character (the main point) of the narrative, namely the pear picker, who is referred to via the null subject. This inference leads us to infer that the less salient object pronoun lej (‘himj’) must refer to the most recent potential antecedent, otro señorj con una cabra (‘another manj with a goat’), which is pragmatically the less salient of the potential antecedents. We ªnd evidence of the speaker’s adherence to the Q- and M-principles, as well as the in¶uence of the participants’ mutual knowledge of the preceding discourse on the use of referring expressions in the following portion of S3’s narrative. Immediately before this point in the discourse, she has explained that the boy with the bicycle has just stolen a basket of pears. She goes on to describe how ‘he sneaks away’: (156) S3: Øi se va a escondidas, claro porque — para que el otro señorj, pues no loi, el señorj que está cogiendo las peras no loi vea. E:ntonces Øi llega y Øi se va por un camino. Øi se encuentra con u:na niñak que va en una bicicleta, éli se vuelve a mirarlak, y al volverse a mirar, pues Øi tropieza en una piedra, y Øi se cae con la bicicleta y las peras van por el suelo. S3: ‘ (Hei) sneaks away, of course because — so that the other manj, well won’t [see] himi, the manj who is picking the pears won’t see himi. Then (hei) gets by and (hei) goes oŸ along a path. (Hei) comes across a: girlk who’s going along on a bicycle, hei turns to look at herk, and upon turning to look, well (hei) hits a rock, and (hei) falls with the bicycle and the pears go all over the ground.’
From the beginning of (156), anaphoric reference is achieved through the use of minimal expressions. From a neo-Gricean standpoint, these minimal expressions I-implicate coreference with the most salient and relevant antecedent, which refers to the boy with the bicycle. This pattern of minimization upholds the ‘aboutness hypothesis’ (Bosch 1983), which maintains that, within a discourse, the most salient entity at any point is always the one that the discourse is ‘about’, and therefore the one most likely to be referred to anaphorically. In the same discourse context, S3 uses a full NP, el otro señorj (‘the other manj’), to refer to a currently non-salient antecedent, followed by
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an even more informative NP with a descriptive relative clause, el señorj que está cogiendo las peras (‘the manj who is picking the pearsj’). The speaker’s upgrade in informativeness through the use of a second, more speciªc and prolix NP reveals her awareness of the potential for ambiguity. That is, the informationally weaker expression, el otro señorj (‘the other manj’) could also be interpreted as referring to another human referent, introduced earlier in the discourse via the NP otro señor con una cabra (‘another man with a goat’). By resorting to an informationally stronger NP expression right after the weaker NP, el otro señorj (‘the other manj’), the speaker adheres to the Q-principle’s Speaker’s Maxim: “do not provide a statement that is informationally weaker than your knowledge of the world allows” (Levinson 1987b: 401). This increment in informativity through the use of more prolix NP also re¶ects the fact that recognition of the intended referent takes precedence over minimization of linguistic form. The more speciªc, prolix, and thus relatively more ‘marked’ NP, el señorj que está cogiendo las peras (‘the manj who is picking the pears’) also avoids any possible ambiguity of reference. In this sense, its use is also an instantiation of the M-principle’s Speaker’s Maxim: “do not use a prolix, obscure or marked expression without reason” (Huang 1991: 306). More generally, however, the speaker’s sensitivity to the potential for ambiguity of reference, inherent in using the NP el otro señorj (‘the other manj’), reveals her consideration of what the interlocutors already know (i.e. their current state of mutual knowledge) at this point in the narrative. In (156), S3 proceeds to narrate the next scene in the ªlm, in which the boy is riding his bike with the stolen basket of pears on it, and passes a girl riding a bike in the opposite direction. When S3 introduces the girl in the utterance Øi se encuentra con u:na niñak que va en bicicleta (‘(Hei) comes across a: girlk who’s going along on a bicycle’), both the boy and the girl are in focus. However, reference to the boy in subject position makes him hierarchically more salient, while the girl is referred to in object position, and is therefore hierarchically less salient. Nevertheless, S3 uses a marked overt subject pronoun, éli (‘hei’), in the very next utterance, éli se vuelve a mirarlak (‘hei turns to look at herk’), even though an overt pronoun is not needed in this context to avoid ambiguity of reference or mark a contrast in reference. Recall that in Chapter 3, we identiªed three reasons given frequently for why a lexical subject pronoun should be used instead of a null subject in Spanish: for emphasis, for contrastive purposes, and to avoid ambiguity. In that chapter, we also noted that the contrastive function of Spanish overt pronouns, as opposed to null ones, is
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demonstrated by the ‘parallel function strategy’, or “the preference to match grammatical function in the interpretation of pronoun-antecedent pairs” (Luján 1986: 255). And, wherever the parallel function strategy is applicable, a stressed alternate, such as overt éli (‘hei’) in (156), should pick out the ‘unexpected’ antecedent, i.e., the one which the unstressed null subject would not select (Solan 1983, 1984). In other words, the marked overt pronoun éli (‘hei’) in (156) should select an antecedent other than the usual, expected, or stereotypical one. This, however, is not the case, since the overt subject pronoun éli (‘hei’) generates the same implicature of coreference that a null subject in the same context would have generated. Therefore, our revised prediction for the M-principle, which states that a marked form will promote an alternative interpretation, other than that which would have been implicated by the use of the unmarked alternate, is not borne out. The M-based prediction of a contrast from the use of a marked expression, such as an overt pronoun in lieu of zero, is overridden by the saliency of the intended referent (here, the boy). The implicature of coreference between éli (‘hei’) and the previous null subject is also supported by the interlocutors’ stereotypical assumptions, given their mutual knowledge of the situation, e.g., a boy, when passing a girl on a bike, is very likely to look at her. The examples analyzed in this section show how various types of mutual knowledge may be needed to disambiguate the meaning of anaphoric expressions, particularly when two referents are in focus at a particular moment in discourse, and anaphoric reference to both entities is possible. On the other hand, assumptions based on mutual knowledge also in¶uence the speaker’s use of an anaphoric expression when the intended referent is not in focus, as long as the speaker is fairly sure that the addressee will be able to correctly interpret the expression. The data support the hypothesis that I-implicatures of coreference from the use of reduced forms, as well as M-implicatures of non-coreference from the use of marked forms, must be consistent with the interlocutors’ state of mutual knowledge, including knowledge that is shared by the interlocutors because it has been mentioned in the discourse itself, but also stereotypical common background assumptions. As I have shown, such knowledge can intervene to promote an alternative interpretation, one that deviates from what Levinson’s scheme predicts based on the interaction of the neo-Gricean principles. This is precisely what Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) proposes as the function of the consistency constraints.
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5.4 The role of agreement In Chapter 2, agreement was proposed as one of the grammatical constraints on implicatures of coreference. In the analysis of the role of agreement in coreference in the Spanish narratives, I was interested in determining how and when agreement intervenes to force the cancellation of an implicature of coreference, as predicted by Levinson’s model, and to simultaneously support an alternative interpretation. In other words, I wanted to understand better the conditions under which agreement helps to determine the interpretation of an anaphoric expression. At ªrst glance, one might expect the features of agreement to combine with the consistency constraints so as to condition both the speaker’s choice of referring expressions, as well as the addressees’ interpretations of these expressions. Also, in accordance with the rules of Spanish grammar, we can predict that two coreferential elements will, generally speaking, agree in gender, number, and person whenever these agreement features are applicable to the forms in question. However, agreement between coreferential expressions in naturally occurring spoken discourse does not always occur. In some cases, the lack of agreement may be attributed to performance errors, while in others, speakers may use a singular antecedent, such as la gente (‘the people’), which calls to mind a plural real-world referent and can trigger the use of plural expressions to refer anaphorically to this antecedent. These cases notwithstanding, in the majority of examples from the pear ªlm narratives, agreement functions to help disambiguate the meaning of an anaphoric expression. Still, there are contexts in which, even though an anaphoric expression does not agree with its antecedent, an implicature of coreference is possible, because it is supported by one or more of the consistency constraints. In the following passage, agreement intervenes, along with antecedent saliency and mutual knowledge of the previous discourse, to disambiguate the meaning of the masculine demonstrative pronoun éstei (‘this [guy]i’). Prior to this expression, the speaker has referred to two third-person, singular entities, ‘a mani who was picking pears’ (un señori que estaba cogiendo peras) and ‘the ladderj’ (la escaleraj): (157) S4: Pues hijo Øarb se ve un señori que estaba cogiendo peras que a mí me daba apuro de verlei subir por unas escaleras y se movía la escaleraj y digo éstei se cae, como tantas veces he subido yo a coger peras.
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse
S4: ‘Well son (youarb) see a mani who was picking pearsi and seeing himi climb up on some rungs made me nervous and the ladderj was moving and (I) say [to myself] thisi [guy] is going to fall, since so often I have climbed up to pick pears.’
The only potential antecedent that agrees in gender with the demonstrative pronoun éstei in the utterance y digo éstei se cae (‘and (I) say [to myself] thisi [guy] is going to fall’) is un señori que estaba cogiendo peras (‘a mani who was picking pears’). The most recent potential antecedent is, however, the feminine NP la escaleraj (‘the ladderj’). This subject NP directs the interlocutors’ attention to the ladder, making it momentarily salient. Therefore, the subsequent use of the demonstrative éstei (‘thisi [guy]’) in subject position serves two important purposes. On the one hand, since it is masculine, it selects the only potential antecedent in the discourse that is also masculine, un señori que estaba cogiendo peras (‘a mani who was picking pears’). However, more importantly, since the demonstrative is a stressed form, and thus marked, when compared to an unmarked null subject, it also functions contrastively. That is, it implicates coreference with an alternative antecedent, which has been introduced in recent discourse, but is not the most recent and salient NP. Furthermore, mutual knowledge of the previous discourse, in which the speaker expresses how nervous she was watching the pear picker, and not the ladder, also plays an important role in coreference assignment. More speciªcally, an implicature of coreference between éstei (‘thisi [guy]’) and the antecedent un señori que estaba cogiendo peras (‘a mani who was picking pears’) is supported by the concern that the speaker has expressed about the intended referent in the preceding discourse. The in¶uence of our mutual knowledge of the preceding discourse, when combined with the contrastiveness of the marked demonstrative éstei (‘thisi [guy]’) may in fact play a more central role in disambiguating coreference than does agreement. At times, a speaker may breach the basic pattern of anaphora in favor of minimization of linguistic form. When this happens, agreement often intervenes with one or more of the consistency constraints to disambiguate anaphoric reference. This is the case in the following excerpt, in which agreement combines with stereotypical assumptions, based on the interlocutors’ current state of mutual knowledge, in order to support implicatures of coreference from the use of minimal expressions. In the scene described by the speaker, the pear picker, who is wearing a bandana around his neck, takes it oŸ to clean a pear. Since the pear picker is the only actor in the scene and the most salient
211
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referent at this point in the narrative, he is referred to via minimal expressions, all of which are anaphoric null subjects: (158) S4: Øi se llevaba un plástico como un pañuelo de picoj, color: (.) chorizo, el color de la tela. Y Øi se va, Øi se va — Øi se loj ha quitado y Øi ha limpiado una perak. Digo bien hombre, todas — el sudor del cuerpo a la perak que ha ido. ((L laughs)) Y luego Øi se loj ha vuelto a poner, y al bajar Øi se lash echa en el cubo, en un cubo, o sea en una en una un // balde, un: canasto. S4: ‘(Hei) was wearing a plastic like a triangular scarfj, the colo:r of (.) chorizo, the color of the fabric. And (hei)’ s going, (hei)’ s going — (hei) took itj oŸ and Øi cleaned a peark. (I) say [to myself] well [done] man, all of the — the sweat from your body has gone [right] on the peark. ((L laughs)) And then (hei) put itj back on again, and upon climbing down (hei) tosses themh in the bucket, in a bucket, in other words in a in a // pail, a: basket.’
In the ªrst utterance in this segment, the second most salient entity is the bandana worn by the pear picker, which S4 introduces into the discourse using an indeªnite NP, un panuelo de picoj (‘a triangular scarfj’, i.e. ‘a bandana’). S4 then expresses coreference with this NP, which functions as a direct object, by using a masculine, direct object pronoun, loj (‘itj’), in the utterance, Øi se loj ha quitado (‘(hei) took itj oŸ’). The saliency of two referents in the discourse, the man picking pears and the bandana, is su¹cient to generate implicatures of coreference from the use of the minimal null subject and the object pronoun in this utterance. At the same time, these I-implicatures of coreference are supported by the other consistency and grammatical constraints on anaphora. Once S4 states, Øi Se loj ha quitado y Øi ha limpiado una perak (‘(hei) took itj oŸ and Øi cleaned a peark’), three entities, the man picking pears, the scarf, and ‘a pear’, are available for subsequent anaphoric reference. However, for a brief moment, S4 turns the focus of her narrative from the ‘ªlm point of view’ (i.e. her narration of the ªlm’s events) to ‘her own point of view’. This is achieved through the speaker’s reference to herself via the ªrst-person verb digo (‘ (I) say [to myself]’), and her interjection of an aside, in which she evaluates the pear picker’s behavior and refers anaphorically to ‘the (cleaned) pear’ using a full NP. Speciªcally, she states, Digo bien hombre, todas — el sudor del cuerpo a la perak que ha ido (‘ (I) say [to myself] well [done] man, all of the — the sweat from your body has gone [right] on the peark’). At this point in the discourse, ‘the peark’ (la perak) is the most recent and, apparently, the most salient non-
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human entity mentioned. However, the very next utterance contains two direct object pronouns that refer anaphorically to two other non-human referents not currently in focus, the scarf and the pears. The anaphoric pronouns, masculine loj (‘itj’) and feminine lash (‘themh’), in Y luego Øi se loj ha vuelto a poner y al bajar Øi se lash echa en el cubo (‘And then (hei) put itj back on again, and upon climbing down (hei) tosses themh in the bucket’) are disambiguated by agreement in number and gender between the pronouns and their NP antecedents, the masculine NP un pañuelo de picoj (‘a triangular scarfj’) and the feminine noun perash (‘pearsh’), respectively.11 Perhaps more importantly, however, these coreference relations are consistent with the stereotypical background assumption that, for all the interlocutors know, the pear picker is more likely to put ‘a scarf’ back on and toss ‘pears’ into a bucket. The pattern of anaphora reference observed in (158) suggests that the Principle of Minimization may take precedence over Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora when agreement, as well as the interlocutors’ knowledge of the preceding discourse, and of the world in general, intervene to help disambiguate the minimal anaphoric expressions used. The following example reveals how agreement and the contrastive function of overt pronouns, as well as assumptions of mutual knowledge, play a crucial role in the use and interpretation of anaphoric expressions. The segment begins with S7’s anaphoric reference to the bike boy who has stolen the pears (the most salient human referent), and to the bicycle (the most salient non-human entity), using minimal forms. These include a null subject in Øi va con la bicicletaj (‘(hei) goes along on the bicyclej’), and a null subject to refer to the bike, followed by an indirect object pronoun to refer to the boy in Øj lei venía grande y la capaza y eso (‘(itj) was (too) big for himi and the basket and [all] that’). These minimal expressions, which implicate coreference with the most recent and salient entities, re¶ect the I-principle of Minimization: (159) S7: …Entonces pues Øi va con la bicicletaj así con un poco de diªcultad, ¿no? Porque entre que Øj lei venía grande y la capaza y eso, y Øarb se ve la imagen de la capaza, y luego de dos bicicletas, o sea, éli por un camino y una chicak por el otro. Y al cruzarse, es que no me he dado cuenta si lei quita ellak el sombrerol o si Øl se lei va. De eso no me he dado cuenta. Entonces el otroi se vuelve para, yo creo que para mirarlak, y Øi se choca contra una piedra. Entonces Øi se cae. L: Øi se cae Øi se cae // de la bicicleta y se lei cae todo.
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S7: ‘…Then well (hei) goes along on the bicyclej like that with a little bit of di¹culty, right? Because between [the fact] that (itj) was [too] big for himi and the basket and [all] that, and (youarb) see the scene with the basket, and then [one] with two bicycles, that is, HEi [was going] down one path and a GIRLk [was going] down another. And upon passing each other, the thing is that (I) didn’t notice whether SHEk takes the hat oŸ of himi or if (itl) comes oŸ of himi [by itself]. (I) didn’t notice that. Then the other [guy]i turns around to, I think to look at herk, and (hei) hits a rock. Then (hei) falls.’ L: ‘ (Hei) falls (hei) falls // oŸ the bicycle and everything falls.’ [Literally: ‘everything falls from himi’]
The narrator then refers to two entities, la capaza (‘the basket’) and dos bicicletas (‘two bicycles’), which are brought to the foreground in an utterance in which subject reference is impersonal: y Øarb se ve la imagen de la capaza, y luego de dos bicicletas (‘ (youarb) see the scene with the basket, and then [one] with two bicycles’). Then, in the subsequent utterance, S7 clariªes her reference to the two bicycles by adding, o sea, éli por un camino y una chicak por el otro (‘that is, HEi [was going] down one path and a GIRLk [was going] down another’). At ªrst blush, S7’s choice of the overt pronoun éli (‘HEi’) appears to be triggered by the fact that ‘two bicycles’ (dos bicicletas) is the most salient referent at the point in the discourse where the marked subject pronoun is used, while the referent corresponding to éli (‘HEi’), the boy, is not currently the focus of attention, even though it is ‘activated’, i.e. represented in short-term memory (Gundel et al. 1993). More importantly, however, an overt pronominal expression is necessary in the utterance éli por un camino y una chicak por el otro (‘HEi [was going] down one path and a GIRLk [was going] down another’) in order to mark a focal contrast and also because new information is introduced. As we observed in Chapter 3, when pronominal reference is used for contrastive purposes or for emphasis, or whenever new information is introduced into the discourse, such reference must be realized in the utterance. In other words, the overt subject pronoun éli (‘HEi’) must be used in this context, since a null subject would be inappropriate.12 The following hypothetical dialogue illustrates the need for an overt pronoun in the utterance in question. Here, stronger focal stress falls on the English pronoun ‘HEi’ (indicated by upper case), which corresponds to the overt subject pronoun éli: (160) A: ¿Cómo es que había dos bicicletas? ‘How come there were two bicycles?’
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B: {Él/*Ø} iba por un camino y una chica iba por el otro. ‘{‘ HE/*he} was going down one path and A GIRL was going down the other.’
In the hypothetical question, ¿Cómo es que había dos bicicletas? (‘How come there were two bicycles?’), the NP dos bicicletas focuses the interlocutor’s attention on the ‘two bicycles’, rendering them the most salient referent in the current discourse. Speaker B’s answer to this hypothetical question provides new information, in an attempt to explain the appearance of two bikes in the ªlm. The response to the hypothetical question in (160) is very similar to the utterance actually used by S7 in the excerpt in (159). If the speaker wants to mark a contrast between ‘the boy’ going one way and ‘a girl’ going the other, she must refer to the two actors via overt stressed expressions. The pronoun éli (‘HEi’) is the most minimal form available, both semantically and phonetically, to refer anaphorically to the boy in subject position, and therefore, the Iprinciple of Minimization is strictly followed. Finally, the fact that there is agreement between the masculine pronoun éli (‘HEi’) and the intended antecedent un muchachoi (‘a boyi’), used earlier in the narrative, also helps to conªrm the interpretation of the pronoun. Agreement plays an even more signiªcant role in the subsequent discourse in (159). The clitic pronoun se in the utterance Y al cruzarse (‘And upon passing each other’) is a ‘reciprocal se’ (‘each other’). This means that it refers anaphorically to both the boy and the girl; it brings the two referents into focus, making them both salient. On the one hand, the boy on the bicycle is, pragmatically speaking, the more salient of the two actors at this point in the narrative, given his role as the protagonist in the ªlm. On the other hand, however, one could just as easily argue that using reciprocal se to refer anaphorically to both actors simultaneously renders them equally salient. Regardless of the stance taken, the saliency of the two referents accounts for the overt subject pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’) in the subsequent utterance, es que no me he dado cuenta si lei quita ellak el sombrerol o si Øl se lei va (‘the thing is that (I) didn’t notice whether SHEk takes the hat oŸ of himi or if (itl) comes oŸ of himi [by itself]’). The overt pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’), like éli (‘HEi’) in the preceding discourse, is more prolix and requires greater eŸort than does a null subject, and thus may be considered ‘marked’. Furthermore, it is grammatically in¶ected for gender, and thus avoids the potential ambiguity of a null subject, which could have been interpreted as referring to either the boy or the girl. Such potential ambiguity also has to do with the fact that the other anaphoric
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pronoun in the utterance, lei (‘himi’), is likewise ambiguous. That is, it could mean either ‘him’ or ‘her’, referring anaphorically to either the boy or the girl. But since the feminine subject pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’) must be coreferential with the only salient feminine antecedent in the discourse, una chicak (‘a GIRLk’), the speaker’s use of the pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’), with its grammatical in¶ection for gender, enables the interlocutors to infer that the object pronoun lei must be interpreted as ‘himi’, i.e., it must refer anaphorically to the boy on the bicycle.13 The use of overt ellak, being a marked expression, needed to circumvent ambiguity, thus supports the M-principle. At the same time, the Iprinciple of Minimization is also upheld: using the most minimal form possible, the speaker at the same time facilitates disambiguation of reference, thanks to the agreement between the feminine pronoun and its feminine antecedent. The overt subject pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’), in si lei quita ellak el sombrerol o si Øl se lei va (‘whether SHEk takes the hat oŸ of himi or if (itl) comes oŸ of himi [by itself]’) of (159), serves an additional purpose. It makes the girl, as opposed to the boy, the most salient human referent in the current discourse. This greater saliency is due to the girl’s ‘subject status’ and renders her the most likely referent for subsequent minimal anaphoric reference in subject position. In other words, if a null subject were to be used in the subsequent discourse, it would most likely implicate coreference with the previous subject, ellak (‘SHEk’), as long as no consistency constraints intervened to cancel such an implicature. The saliency and subject status of the girl seem to account for the speaker’s choice of a marked, masculine NP, el otroi (‘the otheri [guy]’), to refer to the boy in subject position at the end of (159). Speciªcally, when S7 states, Entonces el otroi se vuelve para, yo creo que para mirarlak (‘Then the otheri [guy] turns around to, I think to look at herk’), the NP, el otroi (‘the otheri [guy]’), M-implicates non-coreference with the previous feminine subject ellak (‘SHEk’), due in part to the lack of agreement. At the same time, el otroi, being a marked expression, generates an alternative implicature of coreference with the previous, less salient, non-subject pronoun, lei (‘himi’), with which it agrees. Meanwhile, both agreement and mutual background knowledge (e.g., the knowledge that the boy and girl have just passed each other) promote an inference of coreference between the feminine object pronoun lak (‘herk’) and the previous subject pronoun ellak (‘SHEk’). Finally, once reference to the boy in subject position is made, and the focus of attention on this actor is established by the NP el otroi (the otheri [guy]’), the subsequent minimal, anaphoric expressions in (159) generate simple I-implicatures of coreference with this NP.
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 217
The following segment is the continuation of the narrative presented in (159). Here, S7 refers for the ªrst time to a group of three boys, who appear in the ªlm after the boy who has stolen the pears falls oŸ his bike. As a result, two human referents are salient in the discourse, one singular (the bike boy) and one plural, introduced by the NP tres chicosi (‘three boysi’). Again, as in other contexts, one must rely on agreement to interpret the minimal anaphoric expressions:14 (161) 1
2 3
1
2 3
S7: Entonces luego Øarb se ve una — Øarb se ve un ruido de una pelota, y salen tres chicosi que yo en un principio pensaba que Øi serían unos matones que: L: Que lej iban a quitar // todo. ((All laugh)) S7: que lej iban a quitar las peras. Pero luego pues Øi lej empiezan a ayudar y: Øi lej limpian, Øi lej meten todas las peras en la canasta, (.) entonces el chicoj se va, Øi lej ponen la canasta bien, Øj se — Øi lej ayudan a subir la bicicleta y el chicoj se va otra vez, y los otrosi van en dirección contraria. S7: ‘Then later (youarb) see a — (youarb) see a sound from a ball, and three boysi appear and at ªrst I thought that (theyi) were probably some thugs who:’ L: ‘Who were going to take everything from // himj.’ ((all laugh)) S7: ‘who were going to take the pears from himj. But then well (theyi) start to help himj a:nd (theyi) clean himj oŸ, (theyi) put all the pears in the basket for himj, (.) then the boyj leaves, (theyi) put the basket on straight for himj, (hei) — (theyi) help himj lift the bicycle and the boyj goes oŸ again, and the othersi go in the opposite direction.’
In turn 1, coreference with the antecedent tres chicosi is implicated by the minimal null subject with a third-person plural verb (serían, ‘were probably’) in the phrase que Øi serían unos matonesi que: (‘that (theyi) were probably some thugs who:’). In this case, we have a simple I-implicature of coreference with the last relevant and salient NP. And, since there is only one potential plural antecedent, agreement simply conªrms this implicature. In the subsequent discourse, minimization of linguistic form is possible due in part to the contrast in number between the singular object pronouns used to refer to the boy (lej, ‘himj’), and the third-person, plural verb forms with null subjects used to refer to the group of three boys. This minimization is also possible because of the fact that, throughout the sequence of minimal references, there is no change in the grammatical function of the references to the boy as the object,
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and to the three boys as the subject. When the speaker reverts to marked lexical NPs, in turn 3 of the segment (entonces el chicoj se va (‘then the boyj leaves’); and y el chicoj se va otra vez, y los otrosi van en dirección contraria (‘and the boyj leaves again, and the othersi go in the opposite direction’)), this may be attributed to the changes in grammatical function of the respective discourse referents. That is, the marked expressions are used only at points where the referent (either the boy or the group of three boys) gains or regains subject status. The speaker uses marked NPs (el chicoj…el chicoj…los otrosi, ‘the boyj…the boyj…the othersi’) to implicate coreference with the less expected (non-subject) expression in the previous utterance, even though the speaker could have chosen unmarked, minimal expressions instead, since agreement would have been su¹cient to disambiguate reference. This pattern of reference is similar to the parallel function strategy that operates in cases where stressed alternates, such as Spanish overt subject pronouns in lieu of null subjects, pick out ‘unexpected’ antecedents which their unstressed alternates would not select (Luján 1986; Solan 1983, 1984). Thus, the use of marked NPs in (161) supports our neo-Gricean generalization that the use of a marked form promotes, or ‘M-implicates’, an alternative reading, i.e. selects a diŸerent antecedent other than the usual, expected one, associated with the more minimal, unmarked form. At times, agreement, along with background knowledge of the story gained from the previous discourse, enables the addressee to infer a pronoun’s intended antecedent, even though it is not the most recent and salient potential antecedent in the discourse. This is the case in one instance in the following excerpt. Here, S9 describes a scene from the pear ªlm, in which the three boys, each with a pear in his hand, pass by the pear tree; just then, the pear picker climbs down and realizes that he is missing a basket of pears: (162) 1
2 3
4 5 6
S9: M mm. Entonces luego los tres chavales con, cada uno con su perai, pasan por el peral que estaba el hombre, y el hombre que ya había bajao: del peral para:= L: =Para echar más peras al= S9: =Sí, al cesto, Ø se da cuenta de que le falta un cestoj. Entonces al ver a los chavales pasar comiéndose la perai, Ø se queda un poco:, Ø se mosquea, ¿no? I: M mm. S9: Y // ya. L: O sea, ¿Ø piensa que se loj han robao ellos o qué?
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 219
1
2 3
4 5 6
S9: ‘Uh huh. Then later the three kids with, each one with his peari, pass by the pear tree where the man was, and the man who had already co:me down from the pear tree to:=’ L: ‘=To toss more pears into the=’ S9: ‘=Yeah, into the basket, (he) realizes that he’s missing a basketj. So upon seeing the kids pass by eating the peari, (he) gets a little:, (he) gets annoyed, right?’ I: ‘Uh huh.’ S9: ‘And // that’s all.’ L: ‘In other words, does (he) think that THEY stole itj from him or what?’
In the last turn of this excerpt, when L asks, O sea ¿Ø piensa que se loj han robao ellos o qué? (‘So (he) thinks THEY stole itj from him or what?’), the most recent and salient potential antecedent for the object pronoun loj (‘itj’) is the NP la perai (‘the peari’) in turn 3. Thus, from a cognitive perspective, it is the most likely antecedent. However, as the pronoun loj (‘itj’) is masculine, it does not agree in gender with the feminine NP la perai (‘the peari’). L’s use of masculine loj, in turn 6, therefore implicates coreference with the masculine antecedent un cestoj (‘a basketj’), which occurs prior to la perai (‘the peari’) in turn 3. In this instance, agreement combines with the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the story in disambiguating the anaphoric pronoun. For instance, the interlocutors mutually know that a whole basket of pears was stolen, and not just the pears the three boys were eating. Thus, in terms of our neo-Gricean framework, agreement and mutual knowledge together override a simple Iimplicature of coreference with ‘the last relevant NP’, la perai. Simultaneously, agreement and background knowledge force an alternative I-implicature of coreference between the minimal masculine pronoun loj (‘itj’) and the masculine antecedent un cestoj (‘a basketj’), used by S9 in turn 3, an interpretation that is consistent with these two constraints. The following passage illustrates how antecedent saliency and mutual knowledge of the events and roles of the actors, obtained from the discourse itself, constrain and disambiguate coreference in instances where agreement does not play a role. The predominant use of minimal referring expressions, including null subjects and unstressed object pronouns, re¶ects the speaker’s adherence to the I-principle of Minimization. In these instances, the consistency constraints on anaphora enable the addressee to easily infer the intended implicatures of coreference. In one case of minimization, however, we shall see
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how agreement, along with antecedent saliency and mutual knowledge, enables the addressees to interpret an anaphoric pronoun. In this excerpt, S1 describes the ease with which the boy with the bicycle takes a basket of pears: (163) S1: He visto un chicoi que se acercaba con una bicicleta y he dicho este chicoi será — que Øi es un: — que está dando un paseo o Øi será de la casa. Entonces Øi ha querido coger una pera de: — y Øi se ha arrepentido. Y al coger con tanta facilidad el: el: la cesta o cestón de perasj, he pensado que Øi sería de la casa. El hombrek estaba muy cerca y Øk loi podía haber renegado de decirlei, ¿tú por qué te llevas las peras? He dicho Øi será hijoi delk que estaba cogiendo las peras. Esa, e- me ha parecido a mí eso. Y Øi loj ha cargado con muchísima facilidad aunque Øi era un críoi. Y entonces Øi loj ha puesto en la bicicleta y Øi loj llevaba con mucha facilidad. S1: ‘ (I) saw a boyi who was approaching on a bicycle and (I) said this boyi must be — that (hei) is a: — that (hei) is taking a ride or (hei) must be from the house [i.e. a member of the family]. Then (hei) wanted to take a pear fro: — and (hei) thought twice about it. And upon picking up the: the: the basket or hamper of pearsj so easily, (I) thought that (hei) was probably a member of the family. The mank was very close and (hek) could have scolded himi by saying to himi, (hey) you why are (you) taking the pears? (I) said [to myself] (hei) is probably the soni of the onek who was picking the pears. That, th- that’s what (it) looked like to me. And (hei) carried itj very very easily even though (hei) was a kidi. And then (hei) put itj on the bicycle and (hei) carried itj away very easily.’
In the second to last statement of the excerpt, S1 refers anaphorically to the NP la cesta o cestón de perasj (‘the basket or hamper of pearsj’), using an object pronoun, loj (‘itj’): Y Øi loj ha cargado con muchísima facilidad (‘And (hei) carried itj very very easily’). Here, the most recent, relevant potential antecedent is the NP las peras (‘the pears’), in the previous utterance, He dicho Øi será hijoi delk que estaba cogiendo las peras (‘(I) said [to myself] (hei) must be the soni of the onek who was picking the pears’). However, the feminine las peras (‘the pears’) does not agree with the masculine, singular pronoun loj (‘itj’). As a result, coreference between these two expressions is canceled. Simultaneously, our knowledge that the boy picked up the ‘basket or hamper’ with ease (as gained from the previous discourse), along with the agreement, lead to an inference of coreference between masculine loj (‘itj’) and the most relevant, masculine singular NP, cestón de perasj (‘hamper of pearsj’), occurring earlier in (163).
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 221
In the following example, S10 describes a scene from the ªlm in which the boy, who has stolen a basket of pears, rides his bike past a girl who is riding her bike in the opposite direction. The boy hits a rock and falls oŸ his bike, and all the pears tumble to the ground. In this segment, we can observe once more how agreement works together with antecedent saliency and mutual background knowledge to create implicatures of coreference:15 (164) S10: A eso que Øi ha visto a una chiquillaj de sui edad, de unos doce años también. Al ir a mirarlaj Øi se ha caído de la bicicleta, porque había una piedra grande allí y tal, y: ((brief interruption)). Había una piedra en medio de un camino, y: y Øi se ha caído, al no ver s- al no verla, Øi se ha caído. Había tres, tres niñosk de sui misma edad, que lei hayan- lei han ayudado a coger las peras en el cesto, las l- Øk han puesto el cesto en la bicicleta y tal, total que luego cuando ya se iban los otrosk, Øk han visto que se lei había caído el sombrero, Øk han ido a darlei el sombrero, y entonces el chiquilloi lesk ha dado dos, tres peras, una pera para cada unok. S10: ‘Just at that moment (hei) saw a little girlj hisi age, about twelve years old too. Upon turning to look at herj (hei) fell oŸ the bicycle, because there was a big rock there and so on, a:nd ((brief interruption)). There was a rock in the middle of the path, a:nd and (hei) fell, not seeing s- not seeing it, (hei) fell. There were three, three boysk hisi own age, who [helped] himi- helped himi gather the pears into the basket, the th- (theyk) put the basket on the bicycle and so forth, so later when the othersk were ªnally leaving, (theyk) saw that hisi hat had fallen oŸ, (theyk) went to give himi the hat, and then the kidi gave themk two, three pears, one for each onek.’
At the beginning of this excerpt, the boy on the bicycle, who is referred to anaphorically in subject position, is the most salient referent in the discourse. A second actor, a girl riding her bicycle, is introduced in the ªrst utterance via the indeªnite object NP una chiquillaj de sui edad (‘a little girlj hisi age’). As a result, anaphoric reference to the two actors in focus, the boy and the girl, is expressed via minimal expressions with parallel grammatical functions in the ªrst utterances of the excerpt. These references include a series of four null subjects, which refer anaphorically to the boy, and the feminine, direct object pronoun laj (‘herj’), in the phrase Al ir a mirarlaj (‘Upon turning to look at herj’), which picks out the feminine object NP una chiquillaj de sui edad (‘a little girlj hisi age’) as its antecedent. Then S10 introduces another human referent, three boys, using an indeªnite NP modiªed by a relative clause: tres niñosk de sui misma edad,
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que lei hayan- lei han ayudado a coger las peras en el cesto (‘three boysk hisi own age, who [helped] himi- helped16 himi gather the pears into the basket’). Here, the only possible interpretation for the singular object pronoun lei (‘himi’) is one of anaphoric reference to the bike boy. This interpretation is constrained by antecedent saliency and our mutual knowledge from previous discourse, along with inferences derived from that knowledge (e.g., we mutually know that the boy has fallen oŸ his bike and that the pears are on the ground, etc.). In the very next utterance, Øk han puesto el cesto en la bicicleta y tal (‘(theyk) put the basket on the bicycle and so forth’), the null subject is potentially ambiguous, since the corresponding third-person, plural verb han puesto (‘put’; literally, ‘have put’) could implicate anaphoric reference to the three boys, or both the three boys and the bike boy together. However, since it seems irrelevant to the narrative, in any case, whether or not the null subject is inclusive of the bike boy, the speaker’s use of a minimal, unmarked null subject is su¹ciently informative. In contrast, in the very next utterance, the speaker uses a marked anaphoric NP los otrosk (‘the othersk’) to emphasize non-inclusiveness: total que luego cuando ya se iban los otrosk (‘so later when the othersk were ªnally leaving’). Here, the marked NP los otrosk (‘the othersk’) implicates a contrast in reference by signaling the non-inclusion of the bike boy, while expressing coreference with the only relevant and salient, plural antecedent, viz. tres niñosk de sui misma edad, who… (‘three boysk hisi own age, who…’). Agreement further disambiguates the meaning of the semantically minimal expression los otrosk (‘the othersk’), inasmuch as the singular-plural contrast also identiªes the linguistic antecedents expressed earlier in the discourse. But what makes this expression, in the ªnal analysis, su¹ciently informative, is the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge of the previous discourse. That is, since they mutually know that all four boys are present in the scene being described, a more reduced form, such as zero or an overt subject pronoun, might implicate that all four boys ‘were ªnally leaving’ (ya se iban). In other words, the speaker’s use of the marked, yet minimally informative, plural NP los otrosk is justiªed and re¶ects a tension between the I-principle of Minimization, which instructs speakers to use the most minimal linguistic expression possible, and the M-principle, which instructs them to use marked forms only when necessary. Throughout the Spanish pear ªlm narratives, the narrators employ anaphoric expressions such as los otros (‘the others’), el otro (‘the other [guy]’), and los tres (‘the three [of them]’) to express coreference, but avoid possible ambiguities, which might arise from the use of a more reduced form. These NP expressions are relatively marked when compared with more minimal, un-
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 223
stressed pronouns and null subjects. They are typically used to delimit reference in contexts where a more minimal null subject, or even an overt subject pronoun, could implicate indiscriminate reference to all or any antecedents in the immediate discourse context. These expressions are also used when the intended referent is in the interlocutors’ short-term memory, but is not the current focus of attention, so that a marked expression is needed to implicate coreference with a less salient antecedent. The meaning of these semantically general, yet marked expressions may be inferred by the interlocutors on the basis of their mutual knowledge about the events and characters mentioned in the discourse itself, and also on account of grammatical agreement with the intended antecedent. The alternation between minimal, third-person singular and plural expressions (e.g. pronouns and zeros) at a given point in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives frequently serves to either disambiguate or conªrm anaphoric reference. However, in cases where speakers refer to two actors alternately in the discourse context, and agreement cannot disambiguate the anaphoric expressions, a possible ambiguity arises. This problem is illustrated in the following segment, in which S3 uses minimal, singular expressions to refer anaphorically to the boy with the bicycle, on the one hand, and to one of the group of three boys, on the other: (165) S3: Y Øj se van y eh ya ya se va el chicoi, y entonces Øi se ha dejao el sombrero, unok de ellosj le:i lei silba, para que Øi se pare, Øi se para con la bicicleta, y: le:i — y Øk lei dice que el sombrero — que Øi se lo ha- que Øi se lo ha dejado, el sombrero, que Øi se lo ha perdido. Y Øi va y Øi se lo pone en la cabeza el sombrero. S3: ‘And (theyj) are leaving and uh right then the boyi is leaving, and then (hei) has left hisi hat, onek of themj whistles to hi:mi to himi, so that (hei)’ll stop, (hei) stops with the bicycle, a:nd [to] hi:mi — and (hek) tells himi that the hat — that (hei) has- that (hei) has left it, the hat, that (hei) has lost it. And (hei) goes and (hei) puts the hat on hisi head.’
The ªrst null subject in this segment occurs with a plural verb, Øj se van (‘(theyj) leave’), and refers anaphorically to the group of three boys, who have just helped the bike boy pick up the stolen pears. This is followed by a full, marked subject NP, el chicoi (‘the boyi’), which M-implicates a contrast in reference with the previous null subject, and brings the boy with the bicycle to the foreground. The saliency of the boy at this point in the narrative licenses
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the use of a minimal, null subject to I-implicate coreference in the very next utterance: y entonces Øi se ha dejao el sombrero (‘and then (hei) left hisi hat behind’).17 With the boy in focus at this point, the speaker uses the marked, yet semantically minimal, expression, unok de ellosj (‘onek of themj’), to implicate non-coreference with the last null subject and simultaneously pick out a less salient referent in the recent discourse, ‘one’ of the three boys. The plural pronoun ellosj (‘themj’) in unok de ellosj is also the most minimal referring expression possible in this syntactic position, yet it is informative enough to allow the interlocutors to infer anaphoric reference to the group of three boys. The expression unok de ellosj, (‘onek of themj’) also moves the focus of attention to a single boy, and serves as an antecedent for subsequent anaphoric reference. In the utterance unok de ellosj le:i lei silba, para que Øi se pare, Øi se para con la bicicleta (‘onek of themj whistles to hi:mi to himi, so that (hei)’ll stop, (hei) stops with the bicycle’), the indirect object pronoun, lei (‘himi’), I-implicates coreference with the only recent and salient potential antecedent, el chicoi (‘the boyi’). The semantics of the re¶exive verb pararse (‘to stop’) (in the subordinate clause para que Øi se pare (‘so that (hei)’ll stop’)), and the subsequent statement, Øi se para con la bicicleta (‘(hei) stops with the bicycle’), generate additional I-implicatures of coreference with the same antecedent. In the subsequent discourse, however, the intended referents of the minimal null subjects and object pronoun le (‘him’) must be inferred based on the most likely scenario, given what is mutually known about the situation at hand. For instance, after anaphoric reference to the bike boy in subject position in the utterance Øi se para con la bicicleta (‘ (hei) stops with the bicycle’), the listeners must infer the referent of the next upcoming null subject. That is, they must determine which of the two boys tells the other that he has left his hat in the utterance y Øk lei dice que el sombrero — que Øi se lo ha- que Øi se lo ha dejado (‘and (hek) tells himi that the hat — that (hei) has- that (hei) has left it’). Here, if we follow Levinson’s I-based Recipient’s strategy, and “assume the richest temporal, causal and referential connections between described situations and events” (2000: 114), we can infer that it is one of the three boys who whistles to the bike boy and tells the him that he has left his hat. Similarly (and stereotypically), a person whistling to someone does so in order to communicate something (in this case, that the boy with the bicycle has left his hat). Here, pragmatic inference takes precedence over the fact that the last and most salient reference to an actor in subject position, prior to the utterance y Øk lei dice… (‘and (hek) tells himi…’), refers to the bike boy. In other words, inferences based on our mutual knowledge of the situation and stereotypical rela-
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 225
tions win out over local saliency or ‘in focus’ status. These pragmatic inferences also lead to the assumption that the null subjects in the subsequent utterance, que Øi se lo ha dejado, el sombrero, que Øi se lo ha perdido (‘that (hei) has left it, the hat, that (hei) has lost it’), refer anaphorically to the boy with the bicycle. Finally, the null subjects in the last utterance, Y Øi va y Øi se lo pone en la cabeza el sombrero (‘and (hei) goes and (hei) puts it, the hat, on hisi head’), may be interpreted coreferentially with the most recent null subject in the preceding discourse, which refers to the bike boy. In other words, the inference is that the boy with the bike goes to get his hat and puts it on himself. However, an alternative reading, i.e. that the boy who whistles goes and puts the hat on the bike boy’s head, is also possible. However, this reading seems less probable, given what we mutually know about the situation and about boys in general. In discourse contexts such as this, where two or more actors are referred to using minimal anaphoric expressions, agreement does not help to disambiguate reference. Instead, listeners must rely on other factors, including inferences based on their mutual knowledge and stereotypical assumptions, to infer the most plausible meaning of the anaphoric expressions used.
5.5 The use of marked NPs According to the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000), semantically general, minimally informative expressions, such as pronouns and zeros, favor a coreferential interpretation. Furthermore, Levinson predicts that “the use of a marked form, a lexical NP where a pronoun might have been used, or a pronoun where zero might have occurred, will Q/Mimplicate a non-coreferential interpretation” (1987b: 410). Within the neoGricean theory of anaphora, this pattern is generated by the M-principle (originally Levinson’s ‘Q/M-principle’), which instructs the speaker not to use a prolix, obscure, or marked form without reason. Thus, if speakers abide by the M-principle wherever reference is concerned, we should expect them to use marked expressions only when there is a reason for doing so. In this section, we shall examine occurrences of marked lexical expressions in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives, and attempt to determine the reasons for their use, in an eŸort to seek evidence in support of the M-principle. Perhaps the most common use of marked NPs in the narratives involves the speaker’s reversion to a marked expression, after having used a minimal, unmarked one, in order to implicate either non-coreference with the previous
226 Implicatures in Discourse
minimal expression, or an ‘alternative interpretation’, which an unmarked alternate would not have conveyed. In addition, a marked expression is generally (though not always) used to refer to an entity that is not currently the most salient referent in the discourse. From a cognitive perspective, this means that the intended referent of a marked expression is not usually the focus of attention of the utterance before the expression occurs (see, for example, Gundel et al. (1993), Linde (1979), and also Chapter 3, Section 3.2.2). The following segment illustrates this pattern. First, S2 introduces the ªlm’s protagonist with an indeªnite NP, un chiquilloi con una bicicleta (‘a kidi on a bicycle’). This indeªnite NP serves to focus the listeners’ attention on the boy. The speaker then uses a marked lexical NP, el señorj (‘the manj’), to express non-coreference with the previous indeªnite NP: (166) S2: …Pero luego pasa un chiquilloi con una bicicleta, yo no sé si es que hablaba el señorj porque no hay voz, o es que Øi mira arriba y Øi se lej lleva el cestok. No lo puedo saber. La cosa es que Øi se va con el cestok, y por mirar a una chiquillal que pasa con una bicicleta, Øi tropieza con una piedra, y se cae el cestok. S2: ‘…But then a kidi on a bicycle passes by, I don’t know if (it)’ s that the manj was speaking because there is no voice, or (it)’ s that (hei) looks up and (hei) takes the basketk away from himj. (I) have no way of knowing. The thing is that (hei) takes oŸ with the basketk, and because of looking at a little girll who passes by on a bicycle, (hei) hits a rock, and the basketk falls.’
The marked NP el señorj (‘the manj’), in the utterance yo no sé si es que hablaba el señorj (‘I don’t know if (it)’s that the manj was speaking’), M-implicates noncoreference with the most recent and salient, potential antecedent un chiquilloi con una bicicleta (‘a kidi on a bicycle’). Once the speaker uses the NP el señorj (‘the manj’), there are two potential human antecedents in the discourse context. El señorj (‘the manj’), the most recent subject NP, is a likely antecedent for a subsequent null subject; however, the null subject which follows, refers anaphorically to the boy instead. On the one hand, the speaker’s choice of a null subject to refer to the bike boy, immediately after reference to the man with the full NP el señorj, may be triggered by the subordinating eŸect of the speaker’s negative hedge, no sé si es que… (‘(I) don’t know if (it)’s that…’). This hedge seems to de-emphasize the salience of the man, thus making him a less likely referent of the subsequent null subject. On the other hand, the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge about the actors, obtained from the preced-
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ing discourse, as well as the semantics of the verb phrase mira arriba (‘looks up’), would enable the speaker to use a minimal null subject to refer anaphorically to the bike boy, even though a contrast in reference (i.e. noncoreference with the last NP) is present, i.e., no implicature of coreference with the last NP, el señorj (‘the manj’), is intended. This is because the interlocutors mutually know that the boy is down on the ground, and therefore, is more likely to ‘look up’ than the pear picker, who, for all they know, is still up in the tree. This mutual background knowledge also facilitates the listeners’ interpretation of the minimal references that follow, in the utterance y Øi se lej lleva el cestok (‘and (hei) takes the basketk away from himj’). In the same utterance, y Øi se lej lleva el cestok (‘and (hei) takes the basketk away from himj’), the full, direct object NP el cestok (‘the basketk’) brings the basket into focus, and becomes a potential antecedent for a subsequent minimal coreferential expression. But why does the speaker have to repeat the NP el cestok (‘the basketk’) to refer to the same entity for a second time, in the subsequent utterance, La cosa es que Øi se va con el cestok (‘The thing is that (hei) leaves with the basketk’)? Why doesn’t the speaker abide by the I-principle of Minimization and use a reduced form, rather than a full NP. The reason may be that non-human NP complements of prepositional phrases (PPs) in Spanish are less likely to be pronominalized than are human ones, which in its turn may be explained in terms of a graded ‘saliency hierarchy’: NPs in PPs are, generally speaking, syntactically less salient, when compared with subjects, direct objects, and indirect objects, and therefore, are less likely to be pronominalized. At the end of the excerpt, we encounter yet another instance of the marked NP el cestok (‘the basketk’) in the utterance y se cae el cestok (‘and the basketk falls’). In this context, a null or an overt pronoun in place of el cestok would have implicated coreference with the last relevant NP, a null subject which refers anaphorically to the boy on the bicycle. This use of the marked NP el cestok (‘the basketk’) illustrates the speaker’s adherence to the M-principle, since it implicates a contrastive, non-coreferential interpretation in a context where a null subject would have expressed coreference with the last relevant subject. The following segment provides another example of the speaker’s reversion to a full NP in order to M-implicate a non-coreferential interpretation, in a context where the use of a minimal form would have I-implicated coreference with the last relevant NP. In addition, we encounter some instances where the I-principle of Minimization appears to be breached, and the basic pattern of anaphora is broken, due to the use of marked referring expressions. In turn
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1 of this excerpt, S12, using minimal expressions, refers anaphorically to the pear picker, the most salient entity in the discourse at this point: (167) 1 S12 …Entonces la Øi coge, Øi se quita el pañuelo, Øi limpia la pera, y en ese momento Øarb se: se está oyendo como: mmm una oveja, o una cabrak. 2 L: M mm. 3 S12: Entonces aparece un hombrej por un camino con suj cabrak, Øi si//gue 4 L: ¿Lei lei dice algo el hombre esej o — ? 5 S12: no no, Øj sigue con la: con la cabrak, la cabrak parece que:, Øj lak lleva un poco:, que Øk se va de su — que Øk se desvía del camino, y:// 6 L: ¿Qué, Øk se quería comer las peras? 7 S12: Øk se queda así mirando las peras pero el hombrej lak coge y Øj se lak lleva. Entonces ya Øj se va, el hombrei creo que sube otra vez al árbol, Øi sigue cogiendo peras,… 1 S12: ‘… Then (hei) picks it up, (hei) takes oŸ the bandana, (hei) cleans the pear, and at that moment (youarb) are hearing li:ke uhh a sheep, or a goatk.’ 2 L: ‘M mm.’ 3 12: ‘Then a manj appears along a path with hisj goatk, (hei) contin// ues’ 4 L: ‘Does that manj say something to himi himi18 or — ?’ 5 12: ‘no no, (hej) continues on with the: with the goatk, the goatk (it) seems tha:t, (hej) takes itk a little:, that (itk) goes out of its/his — that (itk) veers oŸ the path, a:nd//’ 6 L: ‘What, did (itk) want to eat the pears?’ 7 12: ‘ (Itk) stands there sort of looking at the pears but the manj grabs itk and (hej) takes itk away. So then (hej) leaves, the mani (I) believe climbs back up the tree, (hei) continues picking pears,…’
At the end of the ªrst turn, S12 introduces a new referent, ‘a goatk’ (una cabrak), followed by another new referent, ‘a manj’ (un hombrej) in subject position. According to Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora, we should expect an unmarked, minimal expression (preferably a subject) to express coreference with this indeªnite NP in the next utterance. Instead, however, L interjects a question in turn 4, using a marked demonstrative NP, el hombre esej (‘that manj’), to implicate coreference with the subject of the previous utterance, un hombrej (‘a manj’). This marked NP seems to have been used for two reasons: contrast
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 229
and thematic prominence, both of which fall into the category of discourse function which Himmelmann (1996) calls ‘tracking use’. According to Himmelmann, “[t]racking use makes reference to (usually major) participants, which helps the hearer keep track of what is happening to whom” (1996: 226).19 One of the tracking uses of the demonstrative NP el hombre esej (‘that manj’) involves the need to contrast the intended referent “to another similar referent” (Himmelmann 1996: 227). In the present case, L’s question in turn 4, ¿Lei, lei dice algo el hombre esej o — ? (‘Does that manj say anything to himi himi or —’), contains anaphoric reference to two similar referents, here, two men. This results in a need to contrast the two referents, which is achieved by the use of the marked demonstrative NP el hombre esej (‘that manj’) to express coreference with the last subject NP. Simultaneously, this implicature of coreference enables the speaker to use a minimal, object pronoun, lei (‘himi’), to refer to the man picking pears, the only other human entity introduced into the discourse, who, the listeners mutually know, is still present in the scene being described. While the need to mark a contrast in reference seems to account for L’s use of the demonstrative NP in turn 4, Himmelmann points to another common tracking use of demonstratives, identiªed by Lichtenberk (1996), which may also account for the demonstrative NP in turn 4. Lichtenberk refers to this use as ‘immediate anaphora after ªrst mention’. In his study, he considers the contexts in which lexical NPs, including demonstrative NPs, are used anaphorically after the referent’s ªrst mention in To’aba’ita narratives. He ªnds that when a new referent is ‘thematically prominent’ (meaning that it is what the local or global text or discourse is about), this prominence is expressed via a full lexical NP, which is used anaphorically, immediately after the ªrst mention of the referent. Similarly, Himmelmann observes that demonstrative NPs are often used for this purpose at the beginning of English stories, as in, for example, Once upon a time there was a king. This king had… (1996: 229). In our text, the use of the anaphoric demonstrative NP el hombre esej (‘that manj’) immediately after ªrst mention of the man with the goat, suggests that this marked expression may be explained, at least in part, by the thematic prominence of the actor in the local discourse. In turn 5 of the exchange, S12 uses a null subject, in the utterance no no, Øj sigue con la: con la cabrak (‘no no, (hej) continues on with the: with the goatk’), to I-implicate coreference with the demonstrative NP el hombre esej (‘that manj’) in the previous turn. Even though the last NP expression in this utterance is la cabrak (‘the goatk’), we encounter la cabrak in the subsequent utter-
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ance as well. This left-dislocated, direct object NP is used in a syntactically prominent position to focus the listeners’ attention on the goat: la cabrak had been used in the previous utterance in a PP, which is a non-salient position. The increased saliency of the goat, due to the use of the marked NP, la cabrak, in a grammatically salient position, licenses the use of a series of ªve minimal coreferential expressions in turns 5–7. Then, in turn 7, S12 explains, Øk se queda así mirando las peras pero el hombrej lak coge… (‘ (Itk) stands there sort of looking at the pears but the manj grabs itk…’). The marked NP, el hombrej (‘the manj’), M-implicates non-coreference with the previous null subject, which refers to the goat; in other words, the basic pattern of anaphora occurs. At this point, the man with the goat becomes the most salient referent in the discourse once more, thus licensing the use of two consecutive coreferential null subjects: y Øj se lak lleva. Entonces ya Øj se va (‘and (hej) takes itk away. So then (hej) leaves’). Then, once more the speaker uses the same full NP as the most recent full NP used, el hombrei (‘the mani’); doing this, he M-implicates non-coreference with the last null subject, even though, semantically speaking, this NP could refer to either of the two men referred to previously. This instance of a marked, full NP lends further support to the M-principle, as its use signals that the speaker does not mean the same as he would have, had he used a minimal, unmarked expression instead. In the Spanish pear ªlm narratives, the speakers often use a marked NP, which corefers with the last salient NP in the discourse, in requests for clariªcation and in responses to such requests. This pattern occurs in the following excerpt, in which S12 describes a scene from the ªlm, in which the boy on the bicycle passes a girl riding a bike in the opposite direction: (168) 1 S12: …entonces Øi sigue por el camino y Øarb se ve una escena bastante maja que, que viene una chicaj por un lado, y: y luego sale una imagen con las dos bicicletas= 2 L: =Ah que la chicaj iba en bicicleta. 3 S12: La chicaj va en bicicleta también, y entonces la chicaj va pedaleando, el chicoi va pedaleando, Øij se enfrentan, … 1 S12: ‘…then (hei) continues along the path and (youarb) see a pretty nice scene where, where a girlj comes along on the one hand, a:nd and afterward an image with the two bicycles comes on=’ 2 L: ‘=Oh so the girlj was riding on a bicycle.’ 3 S12: ‘The girlj is riding on a bicycle too, and so the girlj goes pedaling along, the boyi goes pedaling along, (theyij) come face to face with each other…’
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In the ªrst turn of this segment, the boy is in focus, and as a result, he is referred to anaphorically via a minimal null subject in the utterance entonces, Øi sigue por el camino (‘then (hei) continues along the path’). Subsequently, the speaker uses two indeªnite NPs in sequence: una escena bastante maja (‘a pretty nice scene’) and una chicaj (‘a girlj’), each of which changes the focus of attention. These NPs are followed by another indeªnite NP, ‘an image with the two bicycles’ (una imagen con las dos bicicletas), which brings into focus a particular scene in the ªlm. S12’s ªrst mention of ‘the two bicycles’ (las dos bicicletas) leads L to an assumption, which he expresses in turn 2: Ah que la chicaj iba en bicicleta (‘Oh so the girlj was riding a bicycle’). In this utterance, the marked NP, la chicaj (‘the girlj’) turns the focus of attention back to the girl, making her the most salient entity in the discourse at this point in the narrative, and a likely candidate for subsequent anaphoric reference via minimal forms. L’s utterance in turn 2 also functions as a request for clariªcation. This is revealed by S12’s response in turn 3, in which he repeats the full NP, la chicaj (‘the girlj’): La chicaj va en bicicleta también (‘The girlj is riding on a bicycle too’). S12’s use of the repeated NP la chicaj (‘the girlj’) may be viewed as an instance of ‘repetition as conªrmation’, since the utterance in turn 3 conªrms the supposition promoted by L in turn 2. Furthermore, S12’s use of la chicaj (‘the girlj’) in subject position at the beginning of turn 3, once more makes the girl the most recent and salient referent in the discourse; hence, we should expect a minimal coreferential expression in the discourse that follows. However, contrary to our expectations, S12 refers to the girl in the very next utterance with the same full NP, la chicaj (‘the girlj’): y entonces la chicaj va pedaleando (‘and so the girlj goes pedaling along’). S12’s repetition of la chicaj appears to blatantly ¶out the M-principle, since there is no apparent reason for the use of this marked NP at this point. However, its use is justiªed if we analyze the discourse that follows. In the next utterance, the speaker refers to the boy with a full NP in the utterance el chicoi va pedaleando (‘the boyi goes pedaling along’). By using two equally marked NPs, la chicaj (‘the girlj’), and then el chicoi (‘the boyi’), in juxtaposed and syntactically identical utterances, the speaker expresses a contrast between the actions of one actor (the girl), as opposed to those of another actor (the boy), both of whom appear together in the same scene. Finally, a null subject with a third-person plural verb is used to refer anaphorically to both of the actors, while the reciprocal se (‘each other’) grammatically encodes reference to both actors. This minimal reference in the utterance Øij se enfrentan (‘(theyij) come face to face with each other’) is interpretable on account of the fact that both referents (the boy and the girl)
232 Implicatures in Discourse
are highly salient, since they are the last two human referents mentioned in the discourse. Furthermore, there is no ambiguity, since they are the only potential human referents mentioned in the preceding discourse. Another tendency observed in the narratives is the use of marked lexical NPs, or at times a marked subject pronoun in place of zero, to place emphasis on a referent or to act in a demonstrative way (cf. Bolinger 1979). For instance, in the following excerpt, S1 uses an anaphoric NP introduced by a proximal demonstrative, este chicoi (‘this boyi’), right after her ªrst mention of the boy via an indeªnite NP, un chicoi que se acercaba con una bicicleta (‘a boyi who was approaching on a bicycle’): (169) S1: He visto un chicoi que se acercaba con una bicicleta y he dicho este chicoi será — que Øi es un: — que está dando un paseo o Øi será de la casa. S1: ‘(I) saw a boyi who was approaching on a bicycle and (I) said [to myself] this boyi must be — that (hei) is a: — that (hei) is taking a ride or (hei) must be from the house [i.e. a member of the family].’
This demonstrative NP serves at least two purposes. On the one hand, it expresses coreference with the previous, indeªnite NP; on the other, it plays a deictic role by picking out the boy who the speaker was watching while she had the thoughts. The utterance y he dicho este chicoi será… (‘and (I) said [to myself] this boyi must be…’) is an instance of ‘inner speech as dialogue’ (Tannen 1989), in which the speaker expresses her own thoughts (which she may never have actually ‘said’ to herself), referring demonstratively to the boy in the ªlm. This deictic reference to the boy in the speaker’s extralinguistic context, i.e. that of the moment of viewing the ªlm, explains the use of the demonstrative determiner + NP.20 The following passage illustrates the use of a lexical NP to mark a contrast in reference, while at the same time laying emphasis on the nature or a particular quality of the intended referent. In this instance, S12 emphasizes the fact that the boy was far too small for the bike he was riding: (170) 1 S12: Bueno entonces aparece el- un niñoi de lejos, pedaleando en una bicicletaj demasiado grande para: para lo que es el niñoi, el hombrek sigue cogiendo, parece que: Øk no lei da importancia. Entonces pasa el niñoi, Øi se queda mirando las peras, y: entonces Øi dice ah — , Øi mira un poco arriba a asegurarse que: que, bueno quién hay en el árbol, Øi deja la bicicletaj con mucho cuidao, porque lei cuesta: lei cuesta dejarlaj porque: el niñoi=
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 233
2 L: =//es pequeño. 3 S12: es demasiado pequeño para la bicicletaj. 1 S12: ‘Well then the:- a boyi appears from far away, pedaling on a bicyclej too big fo:r for how big the boyi is, the mank keeps picking, (it) seems that (hek) doesn’t worry about himi. Then the boyi passes by, (hei) stops to look at the pears, a:nd then (hei) says oh — , (hei) looks up a little bit to make sure tha:t that, well who is there in the tree, (hei) puts the bicyclej down very carefully, because (it)’ s hard for himi (it)’ s hard for himi to put itj down becau:se the boyi=’ 2 L: ‘=//is little.’ 3 S12: ‘is too little for the bicyclej.’
First, the boy on the bicycle is introduced by the indeªnite NP un niñoi (‘a boyi’). Then, the speaker uses another indeªnite NP, una bicicletaj demasiado grande para: para lo que es el niñoi (‘a bicyclej too big fo:r for how big the boyi is’), to introduce the bicycle. Within this NP there is a marked NP, el niñoi (‘the boyi’), which refers anaphorically in a context where a pronoun, i.e. él (‘him’), could have been used to successfully implicate coreference. Thus, the speaker seems to have breached the I-principle of Minimization in favor of a marked NP. However, the marked NP el niñoi (‘the boyi’) may be considered an emphatic one, which serves to both emphasize and contrast the boy’s size with that of the bicycle. Subsequently, another marked NP, el hombrek (‘the mank’), is used in the utterance el hombrek sigue cogiendo (‘the mank keeps picking’). This marked expression implicates non-coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP in the discourse context, which refers to the boy. In this way it re¶ects the operation of the M-principle and supports Levinson’s prediction of noncoreference from the use of a marked NP. The NP el hombrek (‘the mank’) also brings the pear picker into focus, so that the subsequent null subject, in the utterance parece que: Øk no lei da importancia (‘ (it) seems that (hek) doesn’t worry about himi’), constitutes a straightforward I-implicature of coreference with el hombrek. In the same utterance, the minimal, indirect object pronoun, lei (‘himi’), I-implicates coreference with the less salient, potential antecedent, el niñoi (‘the boyi’), which is the only possible interpretation in this context. Then, a contrast in subject reference is promoted by the use of a full lexical NP in subject position, when the speaker says, entonces pasa el niñoi (‘then the boyi passes by’). This NP is followed by a series of four null subjects and two instances of the indirect object pronoun lei (‘himi’) in a dative construction, all
234 Implicatures in Discourse
of which I-implicate coreference with el niñoi (‘the boyi’). Then, although the boy is still the most salient entity, the speaker subsequently uses the marked NP el niñoi (‘the boyi’) to emphasize once more the fact that ‘the boy’ was too small for ‘the bicycle’. This emphatic use of el niñoi occurs at the end of turn 1 (this utterance includes turn 3): lei cuesta dejarlaj porque: el niñoi= …es demasiado pequeño para la bicicletaj (‘it’s hard for himi to put itj down because the boyi=…is too small for the bicyclej’). Here, although a full marked NP is used where a minimal form could have been used in its place to successfully express coreference, the marked expression serves to emphasize once more the same characteristic of the intended referent, namely, the size of the boy as compared with the bicycle. In this sense, the speaker’s use of the marked NP el niñoi (‘the boyi’), at the end of turn 1, adheres to the M-principle, since it is used for a reason, albeit not one involving a contrast in reference. The following segment provides further evidence of the contrastive function of marked forms. At the beginning of the excerpt, a full subject NP, el chicoi (‘the boyi’), is used, making the boy the most salient entity in the discourse. In what follows, null subjects are used to express coreference with this antecedent, in accordance with the I-principle: (171) 1 S12: …Mientras el el chicoi se está limpiando, Øi se está:= 2 L: =Que Øi se había caído. 3 S12: Øi se había hecho un poco de daño y Øi se: hace eso un poco en las rodillas y eso, entonces cuando está el: cubo, Øarb se levanta la bicicletaj, o sea laj levanta éli, y el chicoi (.) se va, y los otrosk se van como, es que es muy raro porque Øk se van sin decirlei nada. (.) O sea no hay: diá//logo. 1 S12: ‘…While the the boyi is cleaning himself oŸ, (hei) i:s=’ 2 L: ‘=Because (hei) had fallen.’ 3 S12: ‘(Hei) had hurt himself a little and (hei) does that to hisi knees and so on, then when the: bucket is ready, the bicyclej gets lifted up, that is HEi lifts itj, and the boyi (.) leaves, and the othersk leave like, the thing is (it) is very strange because (theyk) leave without saying anything to himi. (.) In other words there isn’t any dia// logue.’
The focus of attention turns to ‘the bucket’ (el cubo) and then ‘the bicycle’ in the third turn, when S12 says, entonces cuando está el: cubo, Øarb se levanta la bicicleta (‘then when the bucket is ready, the bicycle gets lifted up’). At this point, the speaker corrects himself, and uses a marked, overt subject pronoun, éli (‘HEi’), in the utterance o sea la levanta éli (‘that is HEi lifts it’), possibly to
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 235
implicate non-coreference with the previous null subject, which may have been used to indicate an arbitrary (impersonal) agent of the action.21 As we observed in Chapter 3, the use of overt subject pronouns in Spanish has been equated with the use of English stressed pronouns. Like English stressed pronouns, Spanish overt subject pronouns have a contrastive function (Luján 1985, 1986). When S12 uses the overt (stressed) subject pronoun, éli (‘HEi’), it could be that he wishes to indicate a contrast in reference with the previous (arbitrary) null subject, in the impersonal se construction: Ø searb levanta la bicicleta (‘the bicycle gets lifted up’).22 S12’s use of the marked, overt subject pronoun, éli (‘HEi’), after the null pronoun, is semantically speciªc and informative enough to be interpreted as referring back to the boy. It also reveals the speaker’s adherence to the M-and the I-principles, since the marked subject pronoun appears to indicate a contrast in reference, while being a minimally informative, reduced expression. In turn 3 of (171), the speaker reverts to a full NP, el chicoi (‘the boyi’), immediately after the overt pronoun éli (‘HEi’) in the utterance o sea la levanta éli, y el chicoi (.) se va (‘that is HEi lifts it, and the boyi leaves’). This full NP is coreferential with the preceding overt pronoun, although an unmarked null subject could have been used in its place to express coreference. We may recall that, according to the M-principle, the use of a marked lexical NP, where a pronoun or zero could have been used coreferentially, should implicate an alternative interpretation (Levinson 1987a, b, 2000). In other words, el chicoi (‘the boyi’) should refer to another boy, other than the one just referred to anaphorically via the subject pronoun éli (‘HEi’). However, such an interpretation would be inconsistent with the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge about the characters in the story, which promotes a coreferential reading between the pronoun and the subsequent full NP. This instance of a full NP after an overt subject pronoun shows how an M-implicature of non-coreference, predicted from the use of a relatively more marked NP, must be consistent with the participants’ mutual knowledge; otherwise, it is canceled, and an alternative inference must be drawn. As noted in Chapter 2, Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) proposes that an Mimplicature of non-coreference can be canceled in cases where one NP semantically entails another. On several occasions in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives, a full lexical NP implicates coreference with a full NP in the previous discourse, because the meaning of the coreferential NP is semantically entailed by the NP that precedes it.23 Generally, the examples of semantic entailment observed in the narratives involve either synonymy or hyponymy, i.e., the meaning of the
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anaphoric NP can be included within the meaning of the antecedent, but not vice versa (cf. Bolinger 1975: 213–214; Cornish 1986: 20; see also above, Chapter 2). At the beginning of the following passage, the speaker uses a full subject NP, el niñoi (‘the boyi’), and then reverts to minimal expressions, including the object pronoun lei (‘himi’) and a series of ªve null subjects to implicate coreference with el niñoi (‘the boyi’). In this respect, Levinson’s (1987a, b, 2000) basic pattern of anaphora, that is, the use of minimal pronouns and zeros leading to I-implicatures of coreference, is realized. However, on two occasions in this excerpt, Levinson’s pattern is breached, when marked NPs are used coreferentially in places where minimal expressions could have been used for the same purpose: (172) S6: Entonces pues el niñoi para y: y lei apetece una pera y Øi la va a coger, pero Øi piensa que es mejor llevarse todo el cestoj, y: Øi coge el cestoj, Øi loj carga en la bici y Øi se marcha. Y: este niñoi sigue su camino y Øi se cruza con otra chica que tiene una bicicleta. S6: ‘Then well the boyi stops a:nd and hei feels like [taking] a pear and (hei) is going to take it, but (hei) thinks that (it)’ s better to take the whole basketj, and (hei) picks up the basketj,(hei) loads itj onto the bike and (hei) takes oŸ. A:nd this boyi continues down his path and (hei) passes another girl who has a bicycle.’
Speciªcally, S6 uses a full NP, el cestoj (‘the basketj’), to express coreference with the previous NP todo el cestoj (‘the whole basketj’), when she states, pero Øi piensa que es mejor llevarse todo el cestoj, y: Øi coge el cestoj (‘but (hei) thinks that (it)’ s better to take the whole basketj, and (hei) picks up the basketj’). In this context, an unmarked, object pronoun (i.e. loj, ‘itj’) in place of the full NP el cestoj (‘the basketj’) would have been enough to implicate coreference. However, todo el cestoj (‘the whole basketj’) semantically entails el cestoj (‘the basketj’), and therefore, the two NPs are interpreted coreferentially. In other words, the neoGricean prediction of an M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of the marked expression, el cestoj (‘the basketj’), is canceled out by the consistency constraint of semantic entailment, and coreference is inferred. In the ensuing discourse, we encounter another marked NP, the proximal demonstrative NP este niñoi (‘this boyi’), where zero could have been used to express coreference. This marked expression, like other instances of demonstrative NPs in the Spanish narratives, does not implicate non-coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP in the discourse context, as Levinson’s
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framework predicts for so-called ‘marked NPs’. Instead, it signals continuity of reference. Furthermore, because the intended referent is the most salient referent in the discourse when the demonstrative NP is used, its use cannot be explained in terms of accessibility (Ariel 1988, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996), or of the activation state of the intended referent (Gundel et al. 1993). According to Ariel (1990), demonstrative NPs are used when the accessibility level of the intended referent is intermediate. However, when S6 uses the expression este niñoi (‘this boyi’) in (172), the accessibility of the intended referent, the boy, is ‘high’; in fact, it is the most salient entity in the discourse. Furthermore, in this context, the demonstrative NP indicates neither a contrast in reference, nor coreference with an alternative, less salient referent, nor is it used to avoid ambiguity (a typical use of the demonstrative in many languages, according to Himmelmann (1996: 228)). Neither can this use be explained in terms of what Himmelmann (1996: 226) calls the ‘tracking use’ of demonstratives (deªned earlier in this section). Instead, este niñoi (‘this boyi’) in (172) may be considered an instance of what Himmelmann refers to as the ‘recognitional use’ of demonstratives. Speciªcally, the speaker uses este niñoi as a reminder of what is, up to this point in the narrative, shared knowledge. The ‘recognitional use’ of demonstrative NPs, when they are ‘later’ (as opposed to ‘ªrst’) mentions of a referent, is explained by Himmelmann (1996: 239) as follows: In line with the features characteristic of recognitional ªrst mentions, recognitional later mentions have the distinct ¶avor of a reminder. With respect to later mentions, the reminder is not so much aimed at the referent per se but rather, to the whole episode in question. There is generally no new information presented regarding the referent. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the hearer should, in principle, be able to recall both referent and episode.
In our case, este niñoi (‘this boyi’) may be considered an ‘emphatic’ demonstrative NP, which calls the listener’s attention to the fact that he is already familiar with the referent. In other words, it is used by the speaker as if she were to say, ‘You know, this boy I have been telling you about.’ Another explanation for the use of este niñoi (‘this boyi’) in (172) is oŸered by Fox (1987) in her study of anaphora in both conversations and written prose in English. According to Fox, the distribution of anaphoric expressions is determined by the hierarchical structure of the discourse. For instance, at the beginning of a ‘discourse structural unit’ (e.g. a turn, event, episode, event sequence, paragraph), references, including both ªrst mentions and subsequent ones, tend to be expressed via full NPs, whereas anaphoric references within the same discourse structural unit are expressed via reduced expres-
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sions. Thus, the use of a full NP to refer to a referent that has been mentioned before in the discourse, indicates that the preceding sequence (or discourse structural unit) containing mentions of the same referent, is ‘closed’. In other words, reference to a previously mentioned entity, through the use of a full NP, signals the beginning of a new discourse structural unit, such as a new episode or sequence of events. In (172), the speaker uses the full demonstrative NP, este niñoi (‘this boyi’), at a point in the discourse where she has ªnished narrating the events in a scene from the ªlm, in which the boy steals a basket of pears and takes oŸ on his bike. The notions of ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ event sequences, proposed by Fox to account for the distribution of anaphoric expressions, provides us with an alternative explanation for the speaker’s use of the demonstrative NP este niñoi (‘this boyi’) in (172), since, in using it, the speaker ‘closes down’ one scene and ‘opens’ another. In two cases in the following excerpt, (173), Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora is broken. In the ªrst instance, the I-principle is ¶outed, since a marked, full NP is used where we would expect a minimal, anaphoric null subject. In the second case, the M-principle is overridden in favor of minimization, in the sense that a null subject occurs in a context where a contrast in reference is intended. Here, according to the neo-Gricean theory, a marked NP should have been used to indicate this contrast, but was not. (173) 1 S11: Después, eeh e- Ø sigue trascurriendo, lo- el señori baja a: a dejar las peras en un cesto, 2 I: M mm. 3 S11: y Øi vuelve a subir pero, eeh cuando Øi ya sube hacia arriba, eeh, por las escaleras, eeh aparece en la imagen de- un chiquillo en una bicicletaj. El chiquilloj eeh llega hasta el pie casi del árbol donde están las cestas, y al señori Øj lei roba una. Por lo- allí es donde deduzco que el hombrei o es tonto o Øi es sordo porque Øj tira la bicicleta y el hombrei ni se inmuta. 1 S11: ‘Afterward, uuh u- (it) continues, th- the mani climbs down to: to leave the pears in a basket, 2 I: ‘Uh huh.’ 3 S11: ‘and (hei) climbs back up but, uuh when (hei) ªnally climbs toward the top, uuh, on the ladder, uuh a kid on a bicyclej appears in the picture. The kidj uuh gets almost to the foot of the tree where the baskets are, and (hej) steals one from the mani. Therefo- that’s where (I) deduce that the mani is either stupid or (hei)’ s deaf because (hej) throws the bicycle down and the mani doesn’t even bat an eyelid.’
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At the beginning of this segment, S11 refers to the man picking pears with the NP el señori (‘the mani’), and then uses two null subjects to implicate coreference, in keeping with Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora and the I-principle of Minimization. Afterwards, he introduces the boy, using an indeªnite NP, un chiquillo en una bicicletaj (‘a kid on a bicyclej’). This full NP implicates noncoreference with the last subject reference, a null pronoun, which refers anaphorically to el señori (‘the mani’). It also brings the boy on the bicycle into focus, so that subsequent anaphoric reference to him through minimal expressions would be warranted. But instead, the speaker uses a full NP, el chiquilloj (‘the kidj’), to express coreference. The use of this marked NP runs counter to the I-principle, which directs speakers to produce as little as necessary to achieve coreference; and, in this context, a minimal, null subject could have been used in place of the full NP to felicitously implicate coreference. However, because the meaning of el chiquilloj (‘the kidj’) is semantically entailed by the more informative and speciªc, intended antecedent, un chiquillo en una bicicletaj (‘a kid on a bicyclej’), an M-implicature of non-coreference from the use of the full (marked) NP el chiquilloj (‘the kidj’) is overridden. Because this subject NP refers to the most salient referent in the discourse (the boy), coreference is I-implicated by a minimal, null subject in the following discourse. In contrast, the pear picker, who is no longer the most salient referent at this point in the discourse, is referred to via a full, indirect object NP, el señori (‘the mani’), in the utterance y al señori Øj lei roba una (‘and (hej) steals one from the mani’). Subsequently, the speaker uses a marked full NP, el hombrei (‘the mani’), to pick out the unexpected, (less salient, non-subject) antecedent el señori (‘the mani’), when he states, Por lo- allí es donde deduzco que el hombrei o es tonto o Øi es sordo (‘Therefo- that’s where (I) deduce that the mani is either stupid or (hei)’s deaf’). The expressions el señori (‘the mani’, or ‘the gentleman’) and el hombrei (‘the mani’) are practically synonymous in Spanish (even though they are strictly hyponyms, in the sense that ‘all gentlemen are men, but not all men are (necessarily) gentlemen’). In this sense, we can safely say that el señori semantically entails el hombrei, and that the two expressions therefore may be interpreted coreferentially. In the utterance y al señori Øj lei roba una (‘and (hej) steals one from the mani’), the boy is a more salient actor than the man. This relatively greater saliency is due to the boy’s ‘subject status’, and sets up a situation in which a marked NP, in this case, el hombrei (‘the mani’), is needed to implicate noncoreference with the most recent and salient referential expression, which is a null subject, referring anaphorically to the boy. Thus, the speaker’s use of the
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marked NP, el hombrei (‘the mani’), re¶ects the application of the M-principle, which states, ‘do not use a prolix or marked expression without reason’. At the same time, as previously noted, this marked expression is able to receive a coreferential reading, because its meaning is semantically entailed by the intended antecedent, el señori (‘the mani’, or ‘the gentleman’). In the last utterance in turn 3 of (173), we encounter an instance of minimization of linguistic form, which seemingly violates Levinson’s general anaphora pattern. Speciªcally, after S11 states, Por lo- allí es donde deduzco que el hombrei o es tonto o Øi es sordo (‘Therefo- that’s where (I) deduce that the mani is either stupid or (hei)’ s deaf’), we should expect a null subject to implicate coreference with el hombrei (‘the mani’), which is the last full subject NP in the discourse. Instead, the null subject in the ensuing discourse refers back to ‘the kidj’ (el chiquilloj): porque Øj tira la bicicleta y el hombrei ni se inmuta (‘because (hej) throws the bicycle down and the mani doesn’t even bat an eyelid’). This implicature of coreference is the only possible one, given the interlocutors mutual knowledge of the ªlm. That is, they mutually know from the previous discourse that the boy has ridden up to the pear tree on a bicycle. As a result, a simple I-implicature of coreference, between the null subject and the most recent and salient NP, el hombrei (‘the mani’), is overridden in light of this mutual knowledge, and an alternative implicature of coreference is promoted. In the following segment, S13 narrates the last scene in the ªlm: (174) S13: Entonces estos tres niñosj pasan con susj tres peras comiéndosela por el sitio donde estaba el el el agricultork cogiendo susk peras. Y el señork losj ve que Øj están comiéndose susk peras y Øj pasan plácidamente delante de élk. S13: ‘Then these three boysj pass with theirj three pears eating it by the place where the the the farmerk was picking hisk pears. And the mank sees themj [and] that (theyj) are eating hisk pears and (theyj) pass calmly in front of himk.
The subject NP estos tres niñosj (‘these three boysj’) is followed by the possessive, susj (‘theirj’), promoting a simple I-implicature of coreference with this subject in the ªrst utterance of the segment: Entonces estos tres niñosj pasan con susj tres peras (‘Then these three boysj pass with theirj three pears’). S13 then reintroduces the pear picker, who has not been mentioned in the recent discourse, using the full NP el agricultork (‘the farmerk’). This NP is followed by another I-implicated, coreferential possessive adjective susk (‘hisk’). Immediately afterwards, however, S13 refers to the same actor once more, using a non-
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minimal, full NP, el señork (‘the mank’). Here, there is no need to resort to a marked NP to express coreference with the antecedent el agricultork (‘the farmerk’), since the only singular, human referent in focus at this point is the man picking pears. Furthermore, since no contrast in reference is warranted, the speaker could have safely used a null subject in place of el señork, and both agreement and antecedent saliency would have promoted a clear-cut I-implicature of coreference. One reason for the speaker’s use of the marked el señork (‘the mank’), in lieu of a null subject, may be the fact that her previous reference to the man, via the NP el agricultork (‘the farmerk’), occurs in a subordinate clause. This subordination makes the antecedent el agricultork (‘the farmerk’) grammatically less salient than the subject NP of the main clause, estos tres niñosk (‘these three boysk’), which in turn may have triggered the speaker’s use of the marked, yet coreferential NP el señork (‘the mank’). But regardless of the hypothesized in¶uence of antecedent saliency in this case, an implicature of coreference is promoted by both mutual knowledge and semantic entailment: the interlocutors mutually know that only one man is present in the scene; and, the NP el señork (‘the mank’) is semantically entailed by the masculine antecedent el agricultork (‘the farmerk’), although not vice versa, since all (male) farmers are men, but not all men are necessarily (male) farmers. Thus, semantic entailment, combined with mutual knowledge, overrides the predicted Mimplicature of non-coreference from the use of the marked subject NP el señork (‘the mank’), giving way to a coreferential reading.
5.6 Backward anaphora and discourse structure In the ªfteen Spanish pear ªlm narratives, there are only two cases in which an antecedent is mentioned for the very ªrst time in the discourse after its anaphor. Interestingly, these two instances of what is known as ‘backward anaphora’ (henceforward, BA) support Mittwoch’s (1983) argument that BA is constrained by pragmatic factors.24 According to Mittwoch, BA should be analyzed pragmatically in terms of its role in discourse structure; she hypothesizes that the constraints involved in the use of BA are “pragmatic rules for the appropriate use of sentences” (1983: 130). Although anaphora in conjoined sentences, just like intersentential anaphora, is normally forward, meaning that the antecedent precedes its anaphor, Mittwoch points out that completely grammatical cases of BA in coordinate
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structures have also been found. However, she adds, there is a vast diŸerence between cases of BA where the antecedent is recoverable from the previous discourse context, and those in which the antecedent is mentioned for the ªrst time in the discourse after the anaphor. Speciªcally, whereas BA in sentences coordinated with and and or seems to be restricted by the previous discourse, Mittwoch suggests that in sentences coordinated with but, BA serves a communicative purpose when used in the appropriate context. For example, she argues that in sentences such as the following, BA indicates pragmatic subordination (1983: 131): (175) I haven’t seen him yet but John is back.
That is, when the anaphoric pronoun is placed in the ªrst clause, the second clause may be used by the speaker to express his/her main communicative intention, which, according to Mittwoch, is to determine the subsequent course of the conversation. Since the second conjunct, John is back, is viewed as the ‘new’ information, it is therefore the appropriate place to introduce the antecedent. Furthermore, the appearance of the as yet uninterpretable anaphor in the ªrst conjunct, I haven’t seen him yet, signals to the hearer that this is a pragmatically subordinated clause, and that the main point is to follow. Based on her analysis of English data, Mittwoch suggests that two other factors may also contribute to a clause becoming pragmatically subordinated to one that follows it. For instance, she observes that, in eleven of the ªfteen examples included in her analysis, the ªrst clause is overtly negative, while in three others, it carries negative implications. Thus, in the sentence (from Mittwoch 1983: 134) (176) I’ve sold mine but shares are going up.
the ªrst clause implies ‘I haven’t got any’. The following explanation is oŸered for this negativity: Since the ªrst clause is used essentially to remove obstacles that might stand in the way of a proper understanding of the second clause it is only natural that it should take a negative form while the main thrust of the communication is positive (Mittwoch1983: 134).
In addition to the expression of negativity, Mittwoch notes that in several of her examples, there is a tendency for the ªrst clause to be in a past tense, while the second is in the present or future, which in turn may re¶ect the relationship of background versus main information.
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The second type of BA involves sentences with subordinate adverbial clauses in sentence-ªnal position. In such cases, Mittwoch views BA as having the eŸect of identifying the ªnal subordinate clause containing the antecedent as something being asserted by the speaker, rather than being presupposed. This, according to Mittwoch, results in the downgrading of the main clause containing the anaphor. For example, in the following sentence (from Mittwoch 1983: 136):25 (177) Mary hit himi before Johni had a chance to get up.
the second clause may interpreted as indirectly asserting that ‘John did not have a chance to get up’. In such cases, the embedded clause containing the antecedent represents new information. This explanation seems quite similar to that proposed by Mittwoch for sentences conjoined with but, which is that the clause containing the antecedent is the dominant one, or the one which communicates the speaker’s the main point. However, Mittwoch suggests that, in sentences characterized by ªnal subordinate clauses, BA serves to downgrade the main clause and upgrade the subordinate clause, so as to give both clauses equal weight, and hence draw the same amount of attention to both. In Mittwoch’s proposal, BA is constrained by a pragmatic rule for the appropriate use of sentences. This rule could be derived from independently existing pragmatic principles such as the ªrst and/or fourth sub-maxims of Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Manner: ‘avoid obscurity of expression’, and ‘be orderly’. Speciªcally, Mittwoch argues, “in the absence of an overt marker of subordination, the introduction of a pronoun before its antecedent has been established…would oŸend against these rules, making the hearer’s task unnecessarily di¹cult” (1983: 130). Mittwoch demonstrates convincingly that in complex sentences where BA is permissible, the hearer is prepared by a subordinating marker to anticipate the advent of an antecedent. As she points out, her position supports Reinhart’s (1976: 27) pragmatic constraint: (178) When the grammar (i.e. the rules of syntax — A. M.) permits both backward and forward pronominalization, use the backward option only if you have a reason to do so. (from Mittwoch 1983: 135)
In other words, Mittwoch’s argument that BA functions as either (1) a marker of pragmatic subordination, or (2) an attempt by the speaker to assert the proposition in a subordinate adverbial clause in sentence-ªnal position, provides a ‘speaker’s motive’ for using this marked ordering of the anaphor and antecedent.
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Both of the instances of BA in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives were produced by S12. The ªrst occurs in the following passage, in which the speaker describes a scene in which the boy on the bicycle and a girl, also on a bike, pass each other, at which moment, the boy’s hat comes oŸ (expressions involved in the BA relation appear in italics): (179) S12: …La chicaj va en bicicleta también, y entonces la chicaj va pedaleando, el chicoi va pedaleando, Øij se enfrentan, ((demonstrates with hands)) y para mí no sé si sei lok quita la chicaj o del viento Øk se lei va, pero el: el:- al mir- en el momento de cruzarse, el niñoi hace así, ((demonstrates with hands)) y se lei va el gorrok. ‘… The girlj is riding on a bicycle too, and so the girlj goes pedaling along, the boyi goes pedaling along, (theyij) come face to face with each other ((demonstrates with hands)) and for me [i.e. as far as I could tell] (I) don’t know if the girlj takes itk oŸ of himi or because of the wind (itk) comes oŸ of himi, but the: the- upon look- right when (theyij) pass by each other, the boyi goes like this, ((demonstrates with hands)) and and the hatk comes oŸ of himi.’
The speaker’s ªrst reference to the hat is made via the anaphoric pronoun lok (‘itk’), before his ªrst mention of the hat with a full NP: y para mí no sé si se lok quita la chicaj (‘and for me [i.e. as far as I could tell] (I) don’t know if the girlj takes itk oŸ of himi’). Another coreferential null subject follows it in the coordinate clause o del viento Øk se lei va (‘or because of the wind (itk) comes oŸ of himi’). Finally, the antecedent NP el gorrok (‘the hatk’) is expressed in the coordinate clause beginning with the conjunction pero (‘but’): pero el: el:- al mir- en el momento de cruzarse, el niñoi hace así, y se lei va el gorrok (‘but the: the- upon look- right when (theyij) pass by each other, the boyi goes like this, and and the hatk comes oŸ of himi’). The only other instance of BA involves a ªrst reference to three boys through the use of a null subject (expressions that refer to the three boys appear in italics): (180) 1 S12: …Entonces el tíoi se incorpora un poco, en ese momento Øj aparecen, en un principio Øj parecían tres matones ((L laughs, then 12 laughs)), pero aparecen así ((gestures)) tres chicosj de: sui misma edad más o menos, alguno más pequeño otro más alto, y entonces en principio yo creía que: Øj lei iban a quitar las peras o Øj lei iban a:= 2 L: =A robar la bicicle//ta.
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3 S12: a robar la bicicleta o algo. 1 S12: ‘…Then the guyi sits up a little, at that moment (theyj) appear, at ªrst (theyj) looked like three bullies ((L and S12 laugh)), but three boysj hisi own age more or less appear just like that ((gestures)), some smaller others taller, and then at ªrst I thought tha:t (theyj) were going to take the pears from himi or (theyj) were going to:=’ 2 L: ‘=To steal the bicy//cle.’ 3 S12: ‘to steal the bicycle or something.’
At the beginning of this segment, S12 refers to the bike boy with the NP el tíoi (‘the guyi’). Then, he uses two consecutive null subjects in the absence of an antecedent, in the utterance en ese momento Øj aparecen, en un principio Øj parecían tres matones (‘at that moment (theyj) appear, at ªrst (theyj) looked like three bullies’). The antecedent is expressed in the subsequent clause, which begins with the conjunction pero (‘but’): pero aparecen así tres chicosj de: sui misma edad más o menos (‘but three boysj hisi own age more or less appear just like that’). The ªrst noteworthy observation about these two cases of BA is the similarity in the syntactic structure of the clauses in which both the anaphors and antecedents occur. In each case, anaphoric reference occurs in a preceding clause, while the antecedent occurs in a subsequent coordinate clause that is conjoined by pero (‘but’). In addition, both instances of backward anaphora appear to play a similar pragmatic role in discourse structure, thus lending support to Mittwoch’s proposal, based on her analysis of English BA. For example, in both cases of BA in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives, the clauses containing the minimal, anaphoric expressions communicate uncertainty or negativity. For instance, in (179) when the speaker says, y para mí no sé si se lok quita la chicaj o del viento Øk se lei va (‘and for me [i.e. as far as I could tell] (I) don’t know if the girlj takes itk oŸ of himi or because of the wind (itk) comes oŸ of himi’), he expresses his inability to remember what exactly happened in the ªlm. Similarly, in (180) when he says, en un principio Øj parecían tres matones (‘at ªrst (theyj) looked like three bullies’), he communicates both uncertainty and negativity, by stating that the boys looked (or ‘seemed’) like hoodlums. In both instances of BA, the clauses containing the antecedents communicate a main event about which the speaker is certain. That is, in (179), when the speaker says, pero el: el:- al mir- en el momento de cruzarse, el niñoi hace así, y se lei va el gorrok (‘but the: the- upon look- right when they pass by each other, the boyi goes like this, and and the hatk comes oŸ of himi’), he asserts the fact that
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the boy’s hat came oŸ, which is the main point of the utterance. Furthermore, in (180), when the speaker utters the clause pero aparecen así tres chicosj de: sui misma edad más o menos (‘but three boysj hisi own age more or lessi appear just like that’), the fact that the three boys appeared is the new information, and “represents the speaker’s main point, which is to determine the subsequent course of the conversation” (Mittwoch 1983: 133). In contrast, whether or not the boys were bullies is uncertain, and therefore ‘pragmatically subordinate’ information, in the sense that it is “subsidiary material [presented] ªrst so as to get it out of the way” (Mittwoch 1983: 134). In addition, the speaker’s utterances containing the anaphoric expressions that precede their antecedents prepare the listener to anticipate the advent of the antecedent, inasmuch as they deal with some less important, background information. Furthermore, the speaker, in using the conjunction pero (‘but’), also signals to the listener that new information, or the main point the speaker wishes to communicate, is coming up. Mittwoch’s (1983) observation that BA functions as a marker of pragmatic subordination provides a ‘speaker’s motive’ for the use of an anaphor before its antecedent. Her proposal also underscores the importance of pragmatic factors in overriding M-implicatures of non-coreference which, according to Levinson (1987a, b, 2000), should arise when the speaker reverts to a full marked NP after a more minimal, unmarked, pronoun or zero. In the cases of BA encountered in the Spanish narratives, reversion to a full NP does just the opposite, implicating coreference with a preceding minimal expression, while serving a discursive and pragmatic purpose.
5.7 Summary and conclusions The patterns of anaphora use in the Spanish pear ªlm narratives lend clear support to Levinson’s pragmatic principles of Informativeness and Manner (the I- and M-principles). However, they also reveal the need for the incorporation of speciªc consistency and grammatical constraints in order to fully account for implicatures of coreference and non-coreference within the neoGricean theory of anaphora. Close examination of the narratives has enabled us to observe a general tendency on the part of the speakers to conform to Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora, as well as to the I-principle of Minimization (Levinson 1987a, b, 2000). With few exceptions, the speakers produce the most minimal form available to them to express coreference. The pattern of
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 247
minimization of linguistic form in the expression of anaphora in the narratives results in large part from the in¶uence of antecedent saliency, a consistency constraint on coreference, which I have equated with the cognitive status of ‘in focus’ (Gundel et al. 1993). This constraint is evidenced in the narrators’ use of minimal forms, including null subjects and unstressed object pronouns, to implicate coreference with the last relevant and most salient potential antecedent and referent in the discourse. In contrast, marked alternates, including pronouns in lieu of null subjects, and deªnite or demonstrative NPs in place of minimal, unstressed expressions, often occurred when the intended referents were not in focus, but were mentioned in recent discourse, and were therefore “in current short-term memory” (Gundel et al. 1993). We observed a strong tendency for grammatical subjects, as opposed to objects, to be hierarchically more salient, thus being more likely to function as antecedents of subsequent minimal expressions. This supports Huang’s (1991, 1994) proposal regarding antecedent saliency and coreference, namely, that in the absence of other consistency constraints, addressees will tend to favor as antecedents, topics over subjects, subjects over objects, and objects over any other NPs. The in¶uence of antecedent saliency on implicatures of coreference is also evidenced in the speakers’ tendency not to pronominalize NPs in prepositional phrases, since these NPs tend to be less salient than grammatical subjects and objects. Furthermore, the narrative data reveal that there is a greater likelihood for a minimal form to be used to refer anaphorically when there is continuity of grammatical roles. In other words, minimization in the expression of anaphora is more likely when consecutive anaphoric references to the same entity have the same grammatical function. This relates directly to the ‘parallel function strategy’, which is “the preference to match grammatical function in the interpretation of pronoun-antecedent pairs” (Luján 1986: 255; cf. Chapter 3). The tendency for marked expressions to pick out alternative, less salient, or ‘non-parallel’ antecedents, supports the revised prediction, based on the M-principle, according to which the speaker’s choice of a marked form will tend to implicate an alternative, non-stereotypical, or less predictable interpretation, which would not have been implicated by a more minimal, unmarked expression (cf. Chapter 2). The data demonstrate that, regardless of the type of referring expression, interpretations of coreference are in¶uenced by, and, above all, must be consistent with, the interlocutors’ state of mutual knowledge. On several occasions in the narratives, the felicitous interpretation of anaphoric expressions depended upon inferences based on stereotypical background assumptions,
248 Implicatures in Discourse
world knowledge, and the interlocutors’ mutual knowledge obtained from the narrative discourse itself. Such inferences were often needed to interpret anaphoric references at points in the narratives where more than one actor was being talked about simultaneously. The data also reveal that inferences based on mutual knowledge cancel predicted implicatures of coreference, when these are based solely on the saliency of the potential antecedents and the use of minimal forms. That is, in several cases in the narratives, Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora, according to which a minimal expression supposedly implicates coreference with the last relevant and most salient NP, was overridden by inferences derived from mutual knowledge, which in turn forced an alternative interpretation which was in keeping with this knowledge. The analysis of marked anaphoric expressions in the narratives reveals that they tend to be used only when the speaker has a reason or motive for doing so; this also supports the neo-Gricean M-principle. For example, the speakers used marked expressions, such as full NPs or overt (stressed) subject pronouns, to implicate non-coreference with the last relevant referential expression, to express coreference with an alternative antecedent, other than the one which would have been implicated by a more minimal, unmarked expression, or to avoid ambiguity. Also, in some cases, marked anaphoric expressions tended to be used for a speciªc discursive or stylistic purpose, e.g. to be demonstrative or emphatic, or to express subjectivity by interpreting the ªlm’s events. And, where two full and thus marked NPs were used consecutively, the ªrst NP semantically entailing the second, Levinson’s prediction of non-coreference from the use of a marked NP was overridden. In these instances, even though minimal, unmarked expressions could have been used to implicate coreference, the predicted contrast in reference from the use of a marked NP was canceled, and coreference was promoted due to semantic entailments. Only two instances of backward anaphora were found in the ªfteen narratives analyzed, which suggests that BA in this particular genre of Spanish discourse is uncommon. However, the two cases encountered in the data suggest that the appropriate use of BA is sensitive to the discourse conditions identiªed by Mittwoch (1983), and that speakers utilize this marked ordering of the antecedent and anaphor for communicative and pragmatic purposes. Throughout the narratives, the speakers’ use of anaphoric and non-anaphoric referring expressions shows a sensitivity regarding the kind and amount of information needed to enable the addressee to successfully interpret the expressions. This generalization is upheld by the observation that there are very few places in the narratives where the listener makes requests for clariªcation,
Referring expressions in Spanish narrative discourse 249
which in turn suggests that relatively few referring expressions in the narratives were ambiguous to the listener. In other words, the narrators adhered to the Quantity-based Q- and I-principles in their choice of referring expressions, so as to insure the addressee’s felicitous interpretation of these expressions.
Chapter 6
Conclusions
6.
Introduction
In this book, I have attempted show how the neo-Gricean pragmatic principles are instantiated by the use and interpretation of anaphoric expressions in spoken Spanish discourse. These principles are not meant to be ªxed rules of language use. Instead, as Levinson (1987a: 97) emphasizes, what the neo-Gricean ideas specify are default principles of interpretation that apply to certain alternative modes of expression. In eŸect, they predict a ‘code’ of preferred interpretations, as it were; how and why this ‘code’ is employed in the ways it empirically is, is properly accounted for by social and interactional motivations.
The notion of ‘default principles’ appears to be crucial to the neo-Gricean pragmatic theory, since, as the data presented in this book illustrate, the failure of one principle to predict and explain certain patterns of anaphora results in the application of an alternative principle. Using the neo-Gricean principles as my basis, in Chapter 2 I laid out a revised neo-Gricean framework, following Huang’s (1991, 1994, 2000b) approach, in which it is argued that implicatures of coreference must be consistent with pragmatic and semantic ‘consistency constraints’ on anaphora. These constraints, which are known to in¶uence anaphora interpretations, include the relative saliency of the potential antecedents in the discourse, various types of mutual knowledge, and semantic constraints and entailments. In my analysis of the Spanish data, I have concentrated on the role of the consistency constraints in both anaphora use and interpretation, showing how they may be incorporated into the neoGricean framework. However, the revised theory recognizes that the grammar, too, plays a role in anaphora; speciªcally, non-grammatically stipulated (i.e. non-obligatory, pragmatically determined) anaphora relations will likewise be subjected to the grammatical rules of agreement and c-command, as long these constraints are not overridden by pragmatic and semantic factors.
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6.1 Evidence for the Q-principle The basic idea behind the Q-principle is “what isn’t said, isn’t” (Levinson 2000: 31). As Levinson points out, this general heuristic is grossly underspeciªed, and “must be understood to be restricted to a set of salient contrasts” (2000: 32).1 More speciªcally, Q-implicatures are based on the opposition between stronger and weaker linguistic expressions which form a ‘contrast set’; if a speaker chooses the semantically less informative expression from the set, s/he implicates that the meaning associated with the stronger expression in that set was not intended. As noted in Chapter 2, Levinson (1987a, b, 1991, 2000) proposes that the use of a (semantically weaker) pronoun in an environment where coreference can be grammatically encoded by a (semantically stronger) re¶exive, results in a Q-implicature of non-coreference. Because the contrast in meaning between Spanish clitic re¶exives and pronouns in the same environment, for instance, re¶exive se (‘himself/herself/ yourself/yourselves/themselves’) versus lo (‘him/it’), is grammatically entailed, there was no need to seek empirical evidence of this pattern of implicatures. However, in a separate study (Blackwell 2000), I test for evidence of the application of the Q-principle in native Spanish speakers’ interpretations of pronouns in environments where the use of non-clitic re¶exives (e.g. sí mismo/ a, ‘himself/herself’) could be used to directly encode coreference relations. The data from this study involved a comprehension test for preferred anaphora interpretations in Spanish, and revealed that Q-implicated contrasts in meaning between pronouns and non-clitic re¶exives can be leveled or canceled due to the eŸects of the consistency constraints. For instance, results from the comprehension test show that a pronoun, when used in a non-clitic re¶exivization environment (e.g. where sí mismo (‘himself’) could occur), tends to be interpreted coreferentially when the interpretation is in keeping with semantic constraints, background assumptions, mutual knowledge, and/ or antecedent saliency. This result suggests that hearers may depend more on the context of use than on the choice of linguistic expression, when inferring the meaning of pronouns in non-clitic re¶exivization environments. However, analysis of the Spanish conversations (Chapter 4) and the pear ªlm narratives (Chapter 5) raises doubts about whether the contrast between the use of pronouns versus non-clitic re¶exives in the same environment constitutes a Qimplicature at all, as there were no instances of non-clitic re¶exives (e.g. sí mismo/a, ‘himself/herself’) in either the conversations or the narratives. The absence of these stressed re¶exives in the data points to the fact that they occur
Conclusions 253
far more rarely than do clitic re¶exives such as se; the latter may be considered to represent the ‘unmarked’ re¶exive form, in contrast to the non-clitic, strong re¶exives (such as sí mismo (‘himself’)), representing the marked forms used only in certain contexts to encode re¶exivity.2 In light of this observation, the use of non-clitic re¶exives might be better explained by the M-principle, which instructs the speaker not to use a prolix or marked expression without reason.
6.2 Evidence for the I- and M-principles The I-principle instructs the hearer to infer the most speciªc interpretation in line with stereotypical expectations and assumptions. Central to this principle is the notion that I-implicatures result in preferred interpretations that are more informative (and more semantically speciªc) than what is actually said. Thus, as Levinson (1987b: 406) argues, the I-principle allows us to prefer coreferential readings, these being inherently more informative than noncoreferential ones. Both the spontaneous Spanish conversations and the narratives analyzed in this book provide empirical evidence of the I-principle and of the basic pattern of anaphora proposed by Levinson (1987a, b, 2000). This pattern, whereby a full NP is used to bring a referent to the foreground, and subsequently, minimal forms are used to implicate coreference with the foregrounded referent, is a common feature of both genres of spoken discourse. However, as the data also demonstrate, the mere mention of a full lexical NP is not su¹cient to warrant or license subsequent anaphoric reference via minimal expressions. As excerpts from both data sets reveal, speakers tend to use a minimal form to express coreference with the most salient NP in the local discourse, which is usually a grammatical subject, though sometimes an object. Also, minimal coreferential expressions tend to have the same grammatical function as their antecedents. Furthermore, minimization in the expression of anaphora seems to be facilitated by agreement, especially in contexts where this grammatical constraint either helped to disambiguate third-person reference, or simply conªrmed interpretations of coreference promoted by other constraints. The narrative and conversational data also reveal that the expression of coreference is sensitive to hierarchical degrees of saliency, which relate directly to the grammatical function of NPs. As a result, topics, which are usually (but not always) subjects, but sometimes objects, are more likely to serve as antecedents of minimal (unmarked) anaphoric expressions.3 In other words,
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Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora relies on the notion that a minimal, coreferential expression will tend to pick out the most salient NP as its antecedent, and that both anaphor and antecedent will tend to share the same grammatical function. In this sense, Levinson’s basic pattern of anaphora is inextricably tied both to antecedent saliency, either deªned cognitively (e.g. in terms of the cognitive status of the intended referent) or pragmatically (e.g. in terms of topicality and aboutness), and to the parallel functioning of antecedent-minimal anaphor pairs. The eŸects of the ‘antecedent saliency hierarchy’ and of the ‘parallel functioning’ of antecedents and anaphors were observed in use of marked lexical forms in both discourse genres studied. When two entities were in focus, the one a grammatical subject, the other an object, the continuity of these grammatical roles tended to be expressed via unmarked, minimal forms. However, when the grammatical roles of the entities were reversed, meaning that an entity previously referred to in object position gained subject status, speakers chose a marked expression in subject position to promote an M-implicature of noncoreference with the previous subject, in order to mark a contrast in reference. This use of marked expressions re¶ects the in¶uence of the relative saliency of the referents in the discourse on the speaker’s choice of anaphoric expressions; it also shows the speakers’ adherence to the M-principle-based Speaker’s Maxim, i.e., only use a marked expression if you have a reason to do so. The interaction of both the I- and M-principles, as well as the eŸects of antecedent saliency, could be observed in the interlocutors’ choice of referring expressions. For instance, when anaphoric reference to an entity other than the most salient one in the discourse was intended, speakers tended to use marked forms, both in the conversations and in the narratives. These forms included overt subject pronouns in place of null subjects, and lexicalized NPs (e.g. el otro, ‘the other [guy]’, el hombre, ‘the man’) in place of unstressed pronominals. In other words, marked expressions were used to implicate a contrast in reference, which oftentimes meant coreference with an alternative, less salient NP in the discourse context. The reversion to a marked form to express coreference with a potential antecedent other than the most salient one in the discourse lends support to the M-principle, which predicts that the use of a marked expression will tend to implicate a meaning other than the one implicated by an unmarked alternative. At the same time, the tendency on the part of the Spanish speakers to use marked (i.e. non-minimal, stressed, or prolix), yet semantically reduced anaphoric expressions in contexts where more minimal forms would have miscommunicated, also re¶ects speakers’
Conclusions 255
adherence to the I-principle-based Speaker’s Maxim of Minimization. For instance, by using a marked pronoun instead of a potentially ambiguous unmarked null subject, the speaker produces the minimal linguistic information needed to enable the hearer to establish the intended anaphoric link. The most striking evidence of ‘minimization of linguistic form’ and ‘inferential maximization’, the two notions forming the core of the I-principle, was observed in the spontaneous conversations. The conversationalists exhibited a tendency toward linguistic and informational minimization both in their choice of antecedents and of anaphoric expressions. This minimization may be explained in part by the intimate social relationships between the interlocutors; the fact that all the conversationalists were either close friends or members of the same family seemed to enable them to be less explicit in their use of referring expressions. For instance, the frequent use of demonstrative pronouns, pronouns, and null subjects, in contexts where the intended referent was not currently salient, reveals the conversationalists’ preference for minimal expressions when they can assume that their interlocutors will be able to interpret them successfully, regardless of the cognitive status of the referent. In addition, the tendency to use minimal forms in the absence of an explicit antecedent re¶ects a more general tendency (also observed in other work in conversation analysis), whereby speakers avoid telling others what they already know. The Spanish conversations reveal the eŸects of socially and culturally scripted norms on patterns of anaphora. For instance, in a conversation focused on a typical cultural or social event (e.g. a bullªght, an encierro (‘running of the bulls’), or a town festival), and characterized by predetermined roles and a familiar script, minimal forms could be used to express coreference relations. Such minimal references could be interpreted felicitously by the addressees because of their familiarity with the event being depicted. This illustrates the fact that anaphora interpretation often requires not only knowledge of the linguistic code, but also familiarity with the cultural practices assumed to be shared by speakers in a given community. Thus, the felicitous interpretation of anaphoric reference in spontaneous conversations may often depend on the addressee’s familiarity with the cultural norms and practices of the speech community to which his/her interlocutors belong. The need for interlocutors to rely on their mutual knowledge in order to interpret anaphoric references could be observed in both genres of spoken Spanish discourse, especially when there were two or more potential antecedents in the local discourse context. However, on several occasions in the spontaneous conversations, null subjects with third-person plural verb forms
256 Implicatures in Discourse
(e.g. Ø dicen, ‘(they) say’) were used in contexts where there were no appropriate antecedents at all. Frequently, null subjects used under these conditions implicated ‘arbitrary’ or ‘impersonal’ (non-anaphoric) reference. However, in some contexts where null subjects occurred with third-person plural verbs and there was no viable antecedent in the discourse, the interlocutors’ background knowledge and related inferences resulted in an interpretation of coreference with an implicitly understood antecedent. At times, speakers avoided using explicit antecedents in the conversations when the meaning of the intended referents could be easily inferred from the use of minimal forms (pronouns and zero) and their context of use. The eŸects of speakers’ assumptions about the mutual knowledge of their interlocutors, on account of their close social relationships to one another, were particularly discernable in the spontaneous conversations. Such assumptions provide an explanation for the use of minimal referring expressions in the absence of explicit or grammatically appropriate antecedents. For instance, in one conversation, in which all of the interlocutors (myself excluded) had shared knowledge of one speaker’s ‘cataracts’, her mention of ‘the eyes’ licensed the subsequent use of minimal forms to refer anaphorically to las cataratas (‘the cataracts’), even though this NP was never explicitly mentioned in the conversation. The omission of antecedents re¶ects an economy both of informativeness and of linguistic form, which are the two features Levinson (1987a, b, 2000) uses to deªne ‘minimization’, the notion at the core of his I-principle. However, perhaps a more important generalization is that patterns of minimization of linguistic form and inferential maximization tend to occur in conversations precisely because of the common ground of the interlocutors, as a result of their social relationships. This suggests that patterns of minimization, such as those observed in the conversation entitled Las cataratas (‘The Cataracts’), would be less likely in conversations involving interlocutors of diŸerent age groups or social circles. That is, interlocutors pertaining to diŸerent social circles can be expected to share less common ground, and, as a result, they would be able to make fewer assumptions of mutual knowledge. Under such conditions, speakers could be expected to use less minimal, more semantically informative referential expressions, and to avoid anaphora involving implicit antecedents. A more in-depth study of anaphoric reference in conversational discourse might reveal a correlation between social intimacy and linguistic informativeness, such that the more intimate the social relation between two interlocutors, the greater the tendency toward the use of minimal referring expressions. A study of this type would lend further support to the I-principle,
Conclusions 257
and conªrm a more general social principle of informativeness such as that proposed by Levinson (1987a: 95), which states, “if we are socially close we don’t need to be explicit.” Minimization of linguistic form was also evident at points in the spontaneous conversations at which speakers referred to family members known to their interlocutors. The speakers’ assumptions about such knowledge resulted in their use of minimally informative antecedents to refer to the members in question. Also, oftentimes the conversationalists referred to a certain family member through the use of a ªrst name, and then used grammatically plural minimal expressions to implicate coreference both with the person indicated by the name, and with all the pertinent persons implied by the name’s use. For instance, one speaker’s mention of her adult son and his plans to visit her resulted in the use of plural anaphors to refer to both the son and his immediate family (i.e. his wife and children). The use and interpretation of minimal forms in such contexts are made possible by the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the addressee, and because the inferred interpretations of these expressions are in keeping with stereotypical expectations and background assumptions. This type of minimization in conversation where references to people are concerned, also re¶ects the tendency on the part of speakers to avoid explicitly stating what hearers already know or can infer from the context of the conversation. Both the conversations and narratives reveal patterns of escalation in informativeness and markedness of linguistic form, characterized at times by the use of a minimal form, followed by more informative expressions, until ªnally the interlocutor recognizes the intended referent. This pattern re¶ects the preference of speakers for recipient (addressee) recognition of the intended referent over their desire to minimize linguistic form. As I noted in Chapters 3 and 4, this tendency has also been observed by others working in conversation analysis (see for example, Sacks and SchegloŸ 1979). Evidence for the M-principle and the need for the consistency constraint of semantic entailment to restrict its operation was found in both of the genres of spoken discourse analyzed. While the use of marked lexical NPs tended to result in implicatures of non-coreference with previous relevant and salient NPs, a marked lexical form whose meaning was semantically entailed by a previous NP promoted an implicature of coreference with that NP. This pattern of coreference occurs several times in the pear ªlm narratives. For example, more informative, semantically speciªc NPs, such as el señor (‘the man/the gentleman’) and el agricultor (‘the farmer’), semantically entail less
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speciªc, linguistically marked, lexical NPs such as el hombre (‘the man’). In such cases, the implicature of non-coreference predicted by the M-principle from the use of a marked lexical NP is overridden, giving way to a coreferential interpretation. Although only isolated instances of coreference involving semantic entailment occurred in the spontaneous conversations, the few cases encountered justify the need for this consistency constraint in order to restrict M-implicatures of non-coreference that otherwise would arise from the use of marked forms. We also noted that marked lexical NPs with demonstrative determiners (e.g. esa pera (‘that pear’), estos amigos (‘these friends’)) tended to be used to implicate coreference with antecedents whose referents were not currently in focus. Simultaneously, the use of such marked NPs, in place of minimal unmarked expressions, signaled to the hearer that non-coreference with the last relevant NP was intended. We observed that the conditions under which demonstrative determiners are used in both the conversational and narrative data, are those identiªed by Gundel et al. (1993) as necessary for the appropriate use of this NP type. For instance, demonstrative NPs are appropriate when the intended referent has been talked about in previous discourse, such that the addressee has knowledge of the referent either in short-term or in long-term memory. Also, more generally, the use of both demonstrative and deªnite determiners signals not only deªnite reference, but also that that the hearer, being familiar with the intended referent, should be able to identify it. In this way, assumptions of mutual background knowledge of (or familiarity with) the intended referent account for the use of coreferential demonstrative and deªnite NPs.
6.3 Conclusion The main ªnding of the present work is that any full explanation of discourse anaphora in Spanish (or in any other language for that matter) requires us to consider a multiplicity of intervening factors. Traditionally, the factors known to be involved in anaphora have been assigned to speciªc linguistic ‘domains’, such as the ‘cognitive’, the ‘syntactic’, the ‘pragmatic’, and the ‘semantic’ domains. However, the analysis of anaphora in spoken Spanish presented has blurred these divisions, in that neither the proposed deªnitions of, nor the in¶uence of the ‘pragmatic’ factors and principles can be divorced entirely from cognitive, semantic, and grammatical constraints on anaphora. The fact
Conclusions 259
that so far, no single theory, approach, or set of principles has been able to explain the entire problem complex surrounding discourse anaphora, points to the need to seek a better explanation, furnished by an integrated theory, drawing on useful notions from the diŸerent domains cited above. Finally, more detailed analyses of empirical evidence are needed to support any claims about the nature of discourse anaphora. Doing that, we must continue to carefully examine how language is actually used and interpreted by speakers in a variety of communicative contexts.
Notes
Notes to Chapter 1 1. Chomsky’s (1981, 1982) binding principle A accounts for the obligatory interpretation of coreference between the subject María and third-person, re¶exive se, interpreted as ‘herself’ in (3). 2. For a more detailed discussion of the c-command constraint on coreference and related notions see Reinhart (1983a). 3. According to Suñer (1983: 190), the Spanish ‘impersonal se construction’ is one of the alternatives used for “indicating arbitrariness of reference in tensed clauses”. She points out that the pro subject in constructions of this type “must be totally unspeciªed in its reference, so that the sentence can be interpreted as a general statement which draws attention away from the subject entity” (1983: 190). Suñer shows that for these constructions, there must be a pro in subject position, which receives an indeªnite/unspeciªed or ‘arbitrary’ interpretation (thus, ‘pro-arb’). By ‘arbitrary’, Suñer means that the referential interpretation assigned to the subject is irrelevant, since what really counts is the predication being made. 4. Both Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature and the grammatical and ‘consistency constraints’ on anaphora are discussed in Chapter 2.
Notes to Chapter 2 1. McCray (1980) provides various examples of this type of backward anaphora in English. See also example (9) in Chapter 1, which is taken from McCray (1980: 331). 2. Levinson uses the following notation conventions (1983: xv): A W S <> K ~
Sentential variables the weaker expression in an ordered set the stronger expression in an ordered set ordered sets speaker knows that; thus Kp = speaker knows that p negation
3. Although re¶exives may be referred to as ‘pronouns’ as well, the term pronoun is used in this book to refer to non-re¶exive pronouns. 4. Ariel (1994: 20–21) notes, however, that although minimal forms (e.g. pronouns, zero) tend to be semantically less speciªc than full NPs, and shorter and less complex in form,
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there are marked cases in which these minimization criteria do not apply. Ariel makes her point using the examples Bea and she, which are equally long, but substantially diŸerent with regard to semantic speciªcity, and U.S. versus the United States, the former being substantially shorter but equally rich semantically. Thus, this notion of minimization must be viewed as a general tendency and not an exceptionless rule. 5. Both the Q- and the M-principles are meant to block I-implicatures that call for more informative and more speciªc stereotypical interpretations. However, as Levinson (1987a) points out, Q-implicatures are based on the quantity of information expressed by the anaphoric form and do not make reference to the manner of expression, except to require contrasting alternates of roughly equal brevity. That is, the contrast between the Spanish re¶exive se (‘himself’, but also ‘herself, ‘themselves’, or ‘yourself/selves’) and lo (‘him’/’it’MASC) is one of informativeness, since the use of re¶exive se automatically entails coreference, whereas pronominal lo (in contrast to se) is less informative due to the fact that, beyond gender-number-deªniteness speciªcation, it is free in reference (cf. Levinson 1987b: 411). However, implicatures arising from the M-principle are based on the brevity versus the prolixity of manner of expression (and thus can be derived directly from Grice’s sub-maxims of Manner, ‘be brief; avoid prolixity’), as well as on the contrast between usual or expected forms versus unusual or unexpected choices. 6. As noted in footnote 5, Spanish re¶exive se can mean ‘himself’, ‘herself’, ‘themselves’, or non-familiar ‘yourself/yourselves’. Its meaning is determined by the meaning of the subject NP that serves as its antecedent. 7. Luján (1985: 435) maintains that “while unstressed pronouns in English would correspond to null pronouns in NLP [null pronominal] languages, the contrastively stressed English pronouns may correspond to the normally stressed [i.e. overt] pronouns or to the contrastively stressed ones” in NLP languages like Spanish. Therefore, overt él in (47b) may be translated as stressed ‘HE’. 8. Although epithets look like full lexical NPs, Thráinsson (1991) classiªes them as ‘pronominal epithets’. According to Bolinger (1979: 290), they are like pronouns, since, for example, both pronouns and pronominal epithets can be used only when the referent is clear from the previous discourse or from knowledge of the world or of the circumstances. However, Thráinsson points out that, while epithets do have certain things in common with names such as John, names are capable of independent reference. In other words, they can pick out a deªnite reference freely in the world without depending on previous discourse or knowledge of the circumstances, whereas pronominal epithets cannot. This diŸerence between nouns and epithets is clearer if we compare (a) with (b): a. b.
No me gusta Juan. ‘I don’t like John.’ No me gusta el cabrón. ‘I don’t like the bastard.’
Upon hearing (a), the addressee can associate a speciªc real-world referent with the name Juan (‘John’), whereas use of the epithet in (b) makes it impossible to know who is being referred to in the absence of any previous discourse or additional contextual knowledge. Epithets are therefore most likely to be anaphoric or deictic.
Notes 263
9. According to Clark and Marshall (1981), the notion of ‘common ground’ was introduced by Karttunen and Peters (1975) as “the set of propositions ‘any rational participant [in an exchange of talk] is rationally justiªed in taking for granted, for example, by virtue of what has been said in the conversation up to that point, what all the participants are in a position to perceive as true, whatever else they mutually know, assume, etc.’” (Clark and Marshall 1981: 20, citing Karttunen and Peters 1975: 286). 10. Bosch (1983) uses the term object to refer to an entity introduced in discourse. In other words, it does not refer to a ‘grammatical object’. 11. Huang (1991, 1994) notes that semantic constraints in general will cancel out pragmatic implicatures, meaning that even though the antecedent saliency constraint on implicatures predicts that addressees tend to prefer topics over subjects and subjects over objects as antecedents, these preferences will invariably be constrained by semantics as the following examples from Chinese demonstrate (Huang 1994: 165, italics mine): (i) Xiaoming gebo teng, Ø shui bu zhao jiao. Xiaoming arm ache sleep not sleep ‘Xiaoming has a pain in the arm and (he) cannot fall asleep.’ (ii) Xiaoming gebo teng, Ø zhong le qilai. Xiaoming arm ache swell pfv up ‘Xiaoming has a pain in the arm and (it) has swollen up.’ Example (ii) shows how the saliency hierarchy for preferred antecedents proposed by Huang can be overridden by the lexical semantics of the predicate verb zhong (‘swell up’).
Notes to Chapter 3 1. Similarly, SchegloŸ (1979) studies the ways in which parties in a telephone conversation achieve identiªcation and recognition of each other in their ªrst turns on the phone. He illustrates how the caller’s ªrst turn (after the answerer’s ªrst turn) reveals whether s/he has recognized the answerer, and is thus recipient-designed, i.e. “selected by virtue of who the recipient is” (1979: 34). 2. In a subsequent study on information ¶ow in discourse, Chafe (1987) proposes that the given-new distinction be distributed over three activation states: ‘active’ (what the speaker assumes to be in the addressee’s consciousness); ‘semi-active’ (what the speaker assumes to be in the addressee’s peripheral consciousness); and ‘inactive’ (what the speaker does not assume to be in the addressee’s consciousness) (see also Geluykens 1994: 28–30). 3. Chafe contrasts his deªnition of givenness with Halliday’s (1967) notion of ‘recoverability’. According to Halliday even if an addressee is no longer thinking about the referent in question, s/he is still able to retrieve or ‘recover’ it from memory. Thus, s/he is able to interpret an NP expression that is no longer ‘given’. 4. Marslen-Wilson et al. (1982: 359) report that, when only lexical properties of the pronoun were considered, the recency strategy was responsible for the subjects’ choosing the correct antecedent 66% of the time; when syntactic non-coreference constraints were
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added, the recency strategy led subjects to select the correct antecedent 87% of the time; and, with the addition of prosodic cues, the correct antecedent was determined 97% of the time by the subjects using this strategy. 5. According to van Dijk and Kintsch (1983: 336), ‘text representation’ is a notion assumed by most discourse processing models, which refers to the idea that, during comprehension, a language user gradually constructs a representation of the text in episodic memory based on surface, semantic, and pragmatic information, as well as schematic superstructures such as narrative ‘schemata’, i.e. knowledge structures comprising the distinct properties (also variously called ‘frames’ and ‘scripts’) characterizing a story. 6. The ‘situation model’ refers to “the cognitive representation of the events, actions, persons, and in general the situation, a text is about” (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983: 11–12). 7. Gundel et al. (1993) support their proposal with empirical evidence from English and Spanish, as well as Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian. 8. As previously noted in Chapter 2, Section 2.4, Levinson (1987a, b) proposes that the use of a minimal, unmarked form (e.g. a pronoun or zero) will tend to implicate coreference with another NP in all positions where a re¶exive could not have been used; however, reversion to a marked lexical NP will tend to implicate a disjoint reading from another NP in the discourse that might otherwise have served as an antecedent. With regard to markedness, Levinson suggests that wherever zero could be used to express coreference, the use of a pronoun would be considered the marked form, but wherever a pronoun could be used to express coreference, a more prolix NP would constitute the marked expression. 9. This analogy is supported by Gundel’s (1996) generalizations with regard to ‘inferrables’, and by Clancy’s (1980) observation that even zero in Japanese can be used to introduce a referent into narrative discourse when the speaker can assume that the addressee is familiar with the character to which the zero refers (1980: 145). 10. Chafe (1994) proposes that a more accurate characterization of ‘new’ would be “newly activated at this point in the conversation”, and that a more accurate deªnition of ‘given’ would be “already active [in the interlocutors’ consciousness] at this point in the conversation” (1994: 72). Chafe adds a third category, which he calls ‘accessible’, to account for information that has been activated from a previously ‘semiactive’ state. Entities that are semiactive are ideas that are in the periphery (as opposed to being the focus) of the speaker’s/addressee’s consciousness. 11. Luján (1985, 1986) shows that the overt/null distinction in Spanish and other pro-drop languages is analogous to the stressed/unstressed opposition found in non-pro-drop languages such as English. This analogy is re¶ected in my translations of Montalbetti’s examples in (103), where the null and overt pronouns in the Spanish sentences are translated as English unstressed and stressed pronouns, respectively. 12. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, Section 2.4, Levinson (1987a, b) argues that, from an empirical standpoint, statements receiving coreferential readings are more informative and speciªc than statements receiving non-coreferential ones. Therefore, the use of a null pronoun resulting in a relation of obligatory coreference, is more informative than the noncoreferential interpretation arising from the use of an overt pronoun in the same syntactic environment.
Notes 265
13. Suñer (1983) proposes that Spanish null pronouns in impersonal constructions, which include the ‘impersonal third-person plural pro construction’ and the so-called ‘impersonal se construction’, should be interpreted as ‘arbitrary’ in reference. However, as Jacob Mey (p.c.) has pointed out, the term arbitrary suggests that ‘anything goes’, i.e. any interpretation is possible for these null pronouns, when, in fact, these null pronouns always make reference to a human, albeit unspeciªed subject. While the term ‘arbitrary’ may be misleading, it is used this book as it is used by Suñer (1983), Jaeggli (1986), and Huang (2000b) (see also footnote 3 of Chapter 1). 14. Brucart (1987) points out that there is a diŸerence between the two Spanish constructions used to indicate arbitrariness of reference: null subjects with third-person plural verbs receiving arbitrary readings must be interpreted as referring to third persons, whereas null subjects with impersonal se constructions need not be interpreted as such. Regardless of this diŸerence, I treat the null subjects in both of these constructions as ‘pro-arb’, following Suñer’s (1983) proposal. 15. According to Luján (1985), the same contrast in interpretation between null and overt pronouns in preposed subordinate clauses is also observed in the case of object pronouns (although this contrast is more subtle), and where pronouns occur in preposed complement clauses.
Notes to Chapter 4 1. For example, Sacks’ (1972) analysis of how minimal descriptions give rise to inferences, based on stereotypical and social relations and activities, supports the I-principle, and speciªcally, the notion that “minimal speciªcations can get maximal interpretations” (Levinson 1987a: 84). 2. This is not to say that prosodic features are not signiªcant for the understanding of anaphoric reference in conversation, but only that for the purposes of the present analysis, a more detailed transcription of the speech was not deemed necessary. A more in-depth analysis of the prosodic features of the conversations may constitute a topic for future research. 3. Johnstone (1990) points out that conversational stories are usually characterized by unusually long turns taken by the storyteller. 4. According to Huang (2000b), emphatic expressions can be used for diŸerent purposes or ‘eŸects’, one being for “contrastiveness or being contrary to expectation” (2000b: 230). 5. This instance of lo (‘it’-masc) refers back to the entire utterance, Mañana hay corrida en la tele (‘Tomorrow there’s a bullªght on TV’) in the ªrst turn. Webber (1979) refers to this type of discourse anaphora as ‘sentential it’ anaphora. In the English translation, no pronoun is used: Me lo ha dicho un: – (‘A: – [e.g. friend] told me’). 6. As previously noted in footnote 3 of Chapter 1, arbitrary null subjects, indexed as ‘arb’, can also involve what is known as the Spanish ‘impersonal se construction’ (Suñer 1983).
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7. This use of the demonstrative esto (‘this’) gets its meaning from the antecedent el tarro aquel (‘that bowl’), so in this sense, it may be considered coreferential. However, it is used in an utterance involving ‘constructed dialogue’ (Tannen 1989), in which C imitates what María Jesús supposedly said at the time of the incident being described. María Jesús’s actual use of esto in the bar in Galicia, where the incident actually took place, was deictic. 8. Whereas English captures the notion of possession of body parts through the use of possessive adjectives, e.g. she sticks ‘her’ hands in, this relationship is captured in Spanish by the use of the re¶exive pronoun (in this case third-person se) and the deªnite article instead of the possessive pronoun, as in lavándose las manos (‘washing her hands’; but literally, ‘washing.3refl the hands’). 9. The use of sei (‘her’) in the utterance Pero oírseilo contar a María Jesúsi (‘But to hear María Jesús tell it’) is an instance of duplicación (‘duplication’) (King and Suñer 1999), also referred to as reduplicación (Terrell and Salgués de Cargill 1979), of the indirect object, María Jesús. This construction involves the obligatory use of the indirect object pronoun, in this case, se, which ‘duplicates’ the reference expressed by the indirect object, María Jesús, instead of replacing it. 10. Both the feminine noun, la gorra, and the masculine one, el gorro, mean ‘the hat’ or ‘cap’, for example, gorro de baño (‘bathing cap’), gorro de cocinero (‘chef’s hat’), pasar la gorra (‘to pass the hat around’). 11. Jorge Guitart (p.c.) reports hearing the use of personal pronouns to refer to inanimate entities by educated native speakers. However, as a rule, overt personal pronouns, e.g. él (‘he’), ella (‘she’), are not usually used for reference to inanimate entities in Spanish. In subject position, reference to inanimate entities is realized by either zero or a lexical NP, since there is no Spanish pronominal equivalent of English inanimate ‘it’ and ‘they’. This rule may help explain why overt pronouns (e.g. él, ella) are not commonly used to refer to inanimate entities in prepositional phrases in Spanish. The fact that null pronouns cannot be used in PPs due to grammatical constraints, further accounts for the speaker’s choice of a full lexical NP in the phrase con el gorroj enganchado (‘with the hatj caught’). 12. The object pronoun lo (masculine ‘it’), in the utterance Øi se lo había preguntado a la que… (‘(shei) had asked the one [i.e. the gal] who…about it’), does not refer to ‘the hat’ (el gorro); instead, lo is discourse ‘cataphoric’ (i.e. it is a case of backward discourse anaphora) in that it implicates reference to an explanation for ‘how the hat was supposed to be worn’. This explanation, which is given by C in turn 27 of (121), follows the pronoun in the discourse instead of preceding it. 13. Clark and Marshall (1981) refer to this type of mutual knowledge as ‘linguistic copresence mutual knowledge’. 14. This explanation is consistent with Gundel et al.’s (1993) claim regarding the cognitive status necessary and su¹cient for the appropriate use of demonstrative pronouns in English and Spanish. These authors maintain that the use of demonstrative pronouns requires not only familiarity with the intended referent, but also that the intended referent be represented, or ‘activated’, in current short-term memory. According to Gundel et al. (1993: 278), an activated representation of an intended referent may have been retrieved
Notes 267
from long-term memory, or may arise from the immediate linguistic or extralinguistic context. Thus, the interpretation of demonstrative pronouns in discourse requires mutual knowledge of the existence of the intended referent, although not necessarily previous linguistic reference to it in the discourse itself. 15. However, Cameron (1997) ªnds that there are no statistical diŸerences in the frequencies of overt subject pronoun expression in plural subjects preceded by split versus not-split antecedents in his analysis of the speech of ten native Spanish speakers from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and ten from Madrid, Spain. 16. Evidence for this maxim can also be found in pre-announcement sequences (Terasaki 1976), in which a speaker ªrst checks to ªnd out whether or not the addressee has heard some news. The stereotypical version of these conversational devices are joke-pre-announcements whereby the speaker ªrst asks, ‘Have you heard the one about…?’ According to Levinson (1983), although there seem to be a number of motivations of pre-announcement sequences, perhaps the most prominent one, re¶ected in the sequential organization of such sequences, is the speaker’s concern with not telling people what they already know. 17. Similarly, Cornish (1996) ªnds evidence of implicit antecedents in English and French, thus providing further support for Levinson’s Maxim of Minimization. 18. These null subjects could also be considered ‘arbitrary’ in reference, since it is not necessary to specify the identities of the referents to which they refer. However, in this context, the interlocutors mutually know who the real world referents of the null subjects are. In other words, although it is irrelevant at this point in the conversation to specify the speciªc agents of the actions, so that in this sense the null subjects may be assigned ‘impersonal’ readings, the context and the interlocutors’ background knowledge allow the addressees to infer their identities. 19. Because portions of this conversation could not be transcribed, some questions may be raised regarding the analysis. Admittedly, the untranscribable speech may have contained the overt antecedents, which are not present in the transcribed portions of the conversation. 20. In the utterance, Y además que es un médico buenoi esei (literally, ‘And besides is a good doctori thati’), the demonstrative pronoun ései (‘thati’) occurs to the right of copula es (‘is’) + NP, instead of occurring before the verb, as in Ése es un buen médico (‘That’s a good doctor’), which is the more common, unmarked order. 21. ‘Identity of sense’ anaphora contrasts with ‘identity of reference’ anaphora in that the latter involves a coreferential relation between an anaphoric NP and an antecedent NP, both of which make reference to the same real-world referent, whereas in the case of ‘identity of sense’ anaphora, the antecedent and anaphor are related in terms of their sense, but not in terms of their reference (Webber 1979). According to Webber, the antecedents for identity of sense anaphors are ‘descriptors’, or a way of describing things. An example of this type of anaphora is, Pedro quería un globo rojo, pero Ø le dieron uno azul (‘Peter wanted a red balloon, but (they) gave him a blue one’). 22. As Gundel et al. (1993) observe, Prince’s (1981) ‘inferrables’ have also been called ‘bridging inferences’ (Clark and Haviland 1977), ‘associated anaphors’ (Hawkins 1978), and ‘indirect anaphors’ (Erkü and Gundel 1987).
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23. In the pronominal construction lesi…a ellosi (‘themi…to/for themi’) in turn 5, the indirect object pronoun lesi duplicates the information provided by the NP expression in the prepositional phrase a ellosi (‘to/for themi’). The clitic indirect object pronoun (e.g. les) is obligatory in this grammatical construction, which is known as duplicación (‘duplication’) (King and Suñer 1999) or reduplicación (‘reduplication’) (Terrell and Salgués de Cargill 1979). (Cf. footnote 9 of Chapter 4.) 24. In this example, T’s sister-in-law, referred to by the NP mi cuñada (‘my sister-in-law’), may or may not be included as one of the intended referents to which the subsequent thirdperson, plural pronominal expressions refer. However, T’s use of the NP mi cuñada appears to disambiguate the meaning of these minimal forms. 25. The use of the adverbial expression allí (‘there’) in this utterance is also minimally informative, requiring the addressee “to amplify the informational content of the speaker’s utterance by ªnding the most SPECIFIC interpretation,” in keeping with Levinson’s I-principle (1987b: 402). It makes implicit reference to ‘Madrid’, and more speciªcally, to ‘Javier’s home in Madrid’. This inference is only possible given the discourse context and the state of mutual knowledge of the speaker and addressee.
Notes to Chapter 5 1. Although there are also sub-dialects spoken within the regions of Spain where Castilian is spoken, Spain can be divided into two large dialectal regions, the Castilian region, which includes central and northern Spain, and the Andalusian region, in southern Spain, where Andalusian Spanish is spoken (Dalbor 1997). 2. Of the thirty speakers participating in this experiment, only four were men. I randomly chose the ªrst ªfteen narratives videotaped for the analysis, only two of which were produced by men. If asked, I would justify my use of mostly women in the study by stressing, ªrst, that as a matter of practice, the sex of the speaker is not assumed to be a factor in¶uencing the use and interpretation of anaphora. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the participants were indeed female because the women in the town of Maleján, where I collected the narratives, were more available to participate in my study than were the men. 3. The consistency constraint of antecedent saliency was deªned in Chapter 3 in terms of ‘aboutness’ (Bosch 1983) and the ‘foregrounded’ (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983), or ‘in focus status’ of the intended antecedent (Linde 1979; Reichman 1981; Marslen-Wilson et al. 1982; Gundel et al. 1993). 4. The indirect object pronoun lei (‘himi’), which is repeated with the impersonal pronoun se in a false start (se lei-) in this utterance, is obligatory in this Spanish construction. Both the impersonal se and the indirect object pronoun, which duplicates the information provided by the full NP in the prepositional phrase al niñoi (‘oŸ of the boyi’) (cf. King and Suñer 1999), have no English equivalent, and therefore they are not represented in the translation.
Notes 269
5. As noted in Chapter 3, Huang (1991, 1994, 2000b) proposes a hierarchical scale of antecedent saliency, whereby topics and the subjects are generally considered to be more salient than objects. Because the antecedent otros tres niñosh (‘another three boysh’) is the subject of a subordinate clause, it may be considered less salient than the subject of the main clause of the utterance, éli (‘hei’). 6. Following Gundel et al.’s (1993) cognitive status approach, the NP expression estos tres niñosh (‘these three boysh’) is used at a point in the discourse where the intended referent has the cognitive status of ‘in focus’. This implies that the criterion of ‘activated’ is also met, since ‘in focus’ entails the lower status of ‘activated’ in these authors’ implicational hierarchy. As Gundel et al. explain, the status of ‘activated’ signiªes that “the referent is represented in current short term memory” (1993: 278), and, it is the status necessary for the use of the deªnite demonstrative determiner este/estos (‘this/these’). 7. The expression cada uno (‘each one’) in turn 1, as well as cada uno followed by su (‘his’) in turn 4, are not ‘coreferential’ expressions; that is, they are not “understood as being coreferential with a referring expression occurring elsewhere in the sentence” (Montalbetti 1984: 75). Instead, they are instances of ‘identity of sense’ anaphora (Webber 1979), since they are related to the antecedent los chicosh (‘the boysh’) in turn 1 in terms of their sense, but not in terms of their reference (see also footnote 21 of Chapter 4). Thus, the expressions cada uno (‘each one’) and su (‘his’) are understood as referring in sense to each instance of a ‘boy’ (chico). 8. Recall that we encountered instances of impersonal or arbitrary reference under the same discursive circumstances in the conversational data analyzed in the previous chapter. 9. As noted in Chapter 2, Clark and Marshall (1981) refer to this type of mutual knowledge as ‘community membership mutual knowledge’ (see also Ariel (1988) and Clark and Carlson (1992)). 10. I propose that the expression pero vamos (‘but even so’) has a subordinating eŸect on the ªrst conjunct in the utterance, following Mittwoch’s (1983) substantiated argument that the English conjunction but has a subordinating eŸect in sentences involving backward anaphora (see further discussion in Section 5.6). 11. S4 uses the antecedent peras (‘pears’) in the discourse that precedes the excerpt presented in (158). 12. As I noted in Chapter 3, there are two types of grammatical emphasis that require the use of overt referring expressions in Spanish, ‘contrastive focus’ and ‘exhaustive listing interpretations’ (Kuno 1972; Brucart 1987). Recall that, wherever contrastive focus is involved, the emphasized element contrasts with another constituent of the same category, and intonational stress marks this contrast (Brucart 1987). According to Chafe (1976), contrastiveness involves the assertion of which candidate (i.e. discourse referent) is the correct one. In other words, the speaker identiªes, via the use of contrastive stress, which referent out of a set of possible candidates, s/he has in mind. Constituents that receive exhaustive listing (distinctive, but non-contrastive) interpretations, simply provide new information in the discourse. However, in cases of both ‘contrastive focus’ and ‘exhaustive
270 Implicatures in Discourse
listing interpretations’, new information is introduced into the discourse; this requires that pronouns be realized phonetically (Brucart 1987). 13. This implicature of coreference also re¶ects the ‘parallel function strategy’, whereby unstressed (i.e. unmarked) pronouns (e.g. null subjects) tend to match their antecedents in grammatical function (Luján 1986; Solan 1983, 1984; see also Chapter 3). 14. In example (161), only references to human referents are in italics and coindexed, since they are the only ones analyzed. 15. In example (164), only references to human referents are in italics and coindexed, since they are the only ones analyzed. 16. The so-called ‘present perfect’ tense is composed of the auxiliary verb haber (‘have’), conjugated in the present for person and number, plus a past participle, as in han ayudado. Although this verb phrase can be translated as ‘(they) have helped’, the present perfect is frequently used in Castilian Spanish in lieu of the Spanish preterit, a simple past tense with perfective aspect. This accounts for my translation of Øk lei han ayudado as ‘(theyk) helped himi’, as opposed to ‘(they) have helped him’, as well as many other instances in the narrative and conversational discourse where I translate verbs in the Spanish present perfect as simple, past tense verbs in English. 17. The relation expressed in English as possessive ‘hisi in ‘hisi hat’, is captured in Spanish through the use of the re¶exive pronoun se, with a deªnite article being used in the NP: Øi se ha dejado el sombrero (‘(hei) has left hisi hat’; literally, ‘(he) himself has left the hat’). Because re¶exives, which are considered to be part of the grammatical domain of anaphora (see Chapter 1), are not the focus of our analysis, they have not been coindexed here or elsewhere in this study. 18. In the original Spanish version of turn 4, S12 repeats the indirect object lei (‘himi’), which constitutes the ªrst syllable of the turn. This repetition might be better re¶ected in English in the ªrst syllable of the utterance, e.g. ‘Does does’. However, in my translations, I have elected to give the lexical equivalent of referring expressions that are repeated or lengthened in Spanish, regardless of changes in word order which occur in the English translation. 19. Himmelmann (1996) uses the term ‘tracking’ much the same way Du Bois (1980) uses the term ‘tracing’. According to Du Bois, objects are ªrst introduced into the discourse as ‘discrete entities’, and are then “traced through the evolving narrative” (1980: 204). Tracing objects through a narrative involves establishing the continuity of the object’s identity through the use of “phrases which appear at intervals in the narration” (1980: 204). 20. According to Gundel et al. (1993), the use of proximal demonstrative determiners with NPs corresponds to the cognitive status of ‘activated,’ meaning that the intended referent is represented in current short-term memory. More speciªcally, they note, “both determiner and pronominal this require the referent to be not only activated, but speaker-activated, by virtue of having been introduced by the speaker or otherwise included in the speaker’s context space” (1993: 279). In the case of este chicoi (‘this boyi’) in (169), the intended referent is both introduced linguistically by the speaker, and, from the perspective of the moment of the inner thoughts expressed in the utterance, it is also ‘in the speaker’s context space’. 21. There are two possible interpretations for se in the utterance Ø se levanta la bicicleta: (1) it may signal that the null subject is impersonal (‘arb’), in which case the utterance would
Notes 271
translate as ‘the bicycle gets lifted up’; or (2) se may be re¶exive and therefore the null subject and the re¶exive se would be anaphoric (making reference to ‘the boyi’ (el chicoi), so that the translation would be ‘(hei) lifts the bicycle [for/by] himselfi.’ I believe the arbitrary interpretation was intended, given the speaker’s subsequent use of the overt pronoun, éli (‘HEi’), which seems to be used to indicate a contrast in reference with the previous null subject. 22. As noted previously (see footnote 3, Chapter 1), when Spanish impersonal se is used, “the sentence can be interpreted as a general statement which draws attention away from the subject entity. The subject referent is irrelevant; what really counts is the predication being made” (Suñer 1983: 190). 23. Semantic entailment was deªned in Chapter 2 as follows: “A semantically entails B iŸ every situation which makes A true makes B true; or: in all worlds in which A is true, B is true” (Levinson 1983: 174). 24. Petrovitz (1996: 1–2) deªnes ‘backward anaphora’ as “intended coreference between a pronoun and a following noun when an immediate antecedent is lacking.” In our analysis, instances of backward anaphora involve the ªrst mention of the intended antecedent NP after the use of a coreferential pronominal expression. 25. Note that the structural constraint of c-command prohibits backward anaphora when the anaphor is the subject, while allowing it when the anaphor is the object, such that there is an ‘asymmetry’ between subjects and objects (Reinhart 1983). Therefore, while the sentence ‘Mary hit him before John had a chance to get up’ is acceptable from the point of view of coreferentiality of NPs, coreference between the pronoun and the name in ‘He was hit before John had a chance to get up’ is not. This is due to the fact that the subject c-commands all of the other NPs in the sentence, and a pronoun that c-commands a full NP cannot be coreferential with that NP.
Notes to Chapter 6 1. Recall that the Q-principle, which is directly related to Grice’s ªrst Maxim of Quantity (‘make your contribution as informative as required’), has been used to account for classic scalar and clausal implicatures (Levinson 1987b, 2000; see also Chapter 2, Sections 2.1 and 2.4). 2. For example, in the expression Está satisfecho de sí mismo (‘He is satisªed with himself’), a non-clitic, strong re¶exive is obligatory to express the intended re¶exive relation, whereas the re¶exive pronoun se would be impossible here. 3. The notion that topics are more salient than subjects is important in the case of Spanish, since there are many structures in Spanish that result in the foregrounding of a non-subject NP. For instance, in the juxtaposed sentences, A Juan no le gusta María. Ø preªere salir con Alicia (‘John doesn’t like Mary. (He) prefers to go out with Alice’), although the NP Juan is a grammatical object, it is more salient than the grammatical subject, María, and may be considered a pragmatic topic in this context; therefore, it is the preferred antecedent of subsequent minimal forms. This example helps explain why Spanish topics take precedence over Spanish subjects in the salience hierarchy.
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Appendix: Transcription conventions
In my transcriptions of the Spanish conversations and the pear ªlm narratives, I attempted to re¶ect recurrent features of the speakers’ pronunciation using Spanish orthography. For example, when speakers deleted intervocalic /d/ in verb participles (i.e. -do forms) such as gustado (‘liked’), this was represented in the transcriptions as ‘gustao’. The conventions used to transcribe the conversations and narratives discussed in this book are taken from Levinson (1983: 369–370). As Levinson points out (1983: 369), many of these conventions were developed by Gail JeŸerson and others. An additional two transcription conventions, one used to indicate that a phrase is truncated, and another to indicate that a word is truncated, come from Du Bois et al. (1994). All of the conventions used are listed below: // (.) : :: — == ? , (( ))
caps
point at which the current utterance is overlapped by that transcribed below pause — potentially signiªcant but short lengthened syllables longer lengthened syllables glottal stop self editing marker; also indicates that a word is truncated (Du Bois et al. 1994) indicates that a phrase is truncated (Du Bois et al. 1994) latched utterances with no gap rising pitch/intonation indicates maintained (‘continuing’) intonation contour used to specify ‘some phenomenon that the transcriber does not want to wrestle with’ (e.g. uncertain passages of the script), or some non-vocal action, e.g. ((doorbell rings)) words or syllables stressed by amplitude, pitch or duration
Additional conventions used in examples include: ¿…? used to indicate questions in Spanish regardless of intonation contour (he) English third-person pronouns in parentheses represent third-person null pronouns (zeros) in Spanish.
286 The Pragmatics of Spanish NP Anaphora
[]
Expressions in brackets in the English translations are some of the elements not represented linguistically in the Spanish discourse. I include them in the English translations in order to better convey the meaning of the corresponding Spanish utterance. ?? indicates that the coreference relation marked in italics sounds unacceptable italics used to signify coreference in examples where indices are not used to mark coreference relations; an asterisk indicates that the coreference relation marked in italics is not acceptable. # indicates that the interpretation of coreference is pragmatically inappropriate or unlikely.
Author index
A Ariel, M. 11, 33–35, 47, 64–65, 70–71, 79– 83, 133–134, 237, 261–262, 269 Atlas, J. D. and Levinson, S. C. 23, 27, 133 B Bateson, G. 40 Bello, A. 87 Bentivoglio, P. 77–79 Blackwell, S. E. 18–19, 31, 44, 46–47, 81, 104, 143, 252 Bolinger, D. 36–37, 232, 236, 262 Bosch, P. 69, 193, 207, 268 Breheny, R. 83–84 Broadbent, D. E. 33, 80 Brucart, J. M. 86, 87, 88–89, 172, 265, 269– 270 C Cameron, R. 133–134, 267 Carter, D. 44, 162–163, 182 Chafe, W. L. 57–58, 60–61, 67, 84–86, 176, 177, 263, 269 Charniak. E. 27 Chomsky, N. 11, 23–24, 38, 88, 180, 261 Clancy, P. M. 61, 63–64, 264 Clark, H. H. and Carlson, T. B. 42, 269 Clark, H. H. and Haviland, S. E. 27, 62, 70, 159, 267 Clark, H. H. and Marshall, C. R. 42, 70–71, 125, 195, 202, 263, 266, 269 Clark, H. H. and Sengul, C. J. 65 Cornish, F. 43, 62, 63, 145, 236, 267 Cowan, J. R. 94
D Dalbor, J. 268 D’Introno, F. 31 Dowty, D. R. 11 Du Bois, J. W. 61, 270 Du Bois, J. W., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., and Paolino, D. 102, 179 E Erkü, F. and Gundel, J. K. 61, 267 F Farmer, A. K. and Harnish, R. M. 20 Fernández Ramírez, S. 87 Fillmore, C. J. 40 Foley, W. A. and Van Valin, R. D. 81 Fox, B. 237–238 Fretheim, T. and Gundel J. K. 11 G Garrod, S. C. and Sanford, A. J. 165 Gazdar, G. 16 Geis, M. L. and Zwicky, A. M. 27 Geluykens, R. 3, 8, 11, 21, 176, 263 Gili Gaya, S. 87 Givón, T. 67, 71, 74 Goffman, E. 40 Green, G. M. 2–3, 21, 36 Grice, H. P. 12–21, 28 Grosz, B. J. 65, 70 Gumperz, J. J. 100–101 Gundel, J. K. 61–62, 264 Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N., and Zacharski, R. 11, 62, 66–68, 115, 121, 128, 137, 161, 197, 203, 214, 226, 237, 247, 258, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270
288 Implicatures in Discourse
Gundel, J. K. and Mulkern, A. E. 11, 52 H Haegeman, L. 34, 180 Halliday, M. A. K. 263 Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. 44, 182 Harnish, R. M. 27 Hawkins, J. 267 Himmelmann, N. P. 229, 237, 270 Hobbs, J. R. 64 Horn, L. R. 22–24 Huang, Y. 11, 21, 24, 31, 39–49, 59, 71, 74, 81, 90–91, 106, 122, 125, 189, 190, 194, 202, 208, 209, 235, 247, 251, 263, 265, 269 Hymes, D. 40 J Jaeggli, O. A. 90–91, 265 Johnstone, B. 265 K Karttunen, L. and Peters, S. 263 Kempson, R. 11–12 King, L. D. and Suñer, M. 90, 266, 268 Kuno, S. 58, 70, 88, 269 L Langacker, R. 5–6 Lasnik, H. 6 Leech, G. N. 22 Levinson, S. C. 12–15, 24–31, 43, 53–55, 59–60, 75–77, 81, 90, 97, 99, 104, 133, 135, 142, 157, 160, 164, 165, 168, 171, 173, 188, 190, 200, 203, 208, 224, 225, 235, 246, 251, 252, 253, 256–257, 261, 264, 265, 267, 268, 271 Li, C. N. and Thompson, S. A. 80 Lichtenberk, F. 229 Linde, C. 65–66, 68, 226, 268 Lindo, E. 37 Luján, M. 91–94, 190, 209, 218, 247, 262, 265 Lust, B. 2, 17
M Marslen-Wilson, W., Levy, E., and Komisarjevsky-Tyler, L. 52, 59–60, 63, 72–73, 263–264, 268 Matsui, T. 11, 159, 164 McCray, A. T. 6, 261 Minsky, M. L. 40 Mittwoch, A. 11, 241–243, 245–246, 248, 269 Montalbetti, M. M. 89–90, 144, 269 Mulkern, A. 11 P Petrovitz, W. 271 Prince, E. F. 52, 58–61, 69–70, 138, 164, 267 R Reichman, R. 65, 268 Reinhart, T. 3–5, 11, 67, 243, 271 Rigau, G. 87, 94 Rumelhart, D. E. 40 S Sacks, H. 97, 142, 168, 265, Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E. A. 42–43, 97, 52–55, 135, 170, 257 Schank, R. C. and Abelson, R. P. 40 Schegloff, E. A. 42–43, 97, 98, 263 Schiffrin, D. 98, 99, 100 Smith, N. V. 98 Smith, S. W. and Jucker, A. H. 57 Solan, L. 94, 184, 190, 209, 218 Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 11, 22, 24 Suñer, M. 90–91, 108, 138, 153–154, 261, 265 T Takami, K. 38 Tannen, D. 40–41, 117, 232, 266 Terasaki, A. 97, 136, 168, 267, Terrell, T. D. and Salgués de Cargill, M. 266, 268 Thráinsson, H. 262
Author index 289
V van Dijk, T. A. and Kintsch, W. 65, 264, 268 van Hoek, K. 5 Verschueren, J. 13 W Ward, G. 62 Ward, G., Sproat, R., and McCoon, G. 62– 63 Wasow, T. 3, 6
Webber, B. L. 62, 162–163, 198, 265, 267, 269 Whitley, M. S. 68, 163 Wright, R. A. 28–29 Y Yule, G. 64 Z Zipf, G. K. 22, 24
Subject index
A aboutness 45–47, 67, 69, 72–73, 80, 193, 207, 254, 268 accessibility 74–75, 79–80, 134, 237 accessibility marking scale 81–82 Accessibility Theory 79–81, 133–134 activated in short-term memory 68, 121, 131, 161, 197, 214, 223, 247, 258, 266– 267, 269, 270 adjacency pair 156 agreement 76, 77–78, 80, 106, 117, 123, 145, 147, 150, 169, 182, 185, 210–225, 251, 253 ambiguity 80, 112, 134–135, 188, 206, 208, 215–216, 222, 225, 249 avoidance, see avoid ambiguity anaphor 2, 245 indirect 61, 267 one- 162–163,198, 267, 269 anaphora 2 backward 5–6, 17, 241–246, 248, 266, 269, 271 discourse 3, 265, 266, 267 identity of sense 162–163, 198, 267, 269 see also anaphor (one-) outbound 62–63 sentential 3 antecedent 2, 33, 244, 245, 247 implicit 61–63, 145, 148, 150, 152, 154, 157, 159, 160, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172, 255, 256 potential 123, 183, 189, 201, 206, 211, 226, 227, 254, 255 split 133–134 word-internal 62–63 antecedent saliency 45–47, 66, 69, 73, 79–
80, 104–105, 108, 110–111, 115, 117, 119, 121, 122–123, 125, 130, 138, 141, 150, 180–186, 188, 192, 194, 200, 205, 207, 210–211, 219–222, 224–225, 239, 241, 247, 254, 268 see also aboutness hierarchy of 46, 69, 122, 184–185, 189, 191, 194, 201, 208, 227, 247, 253– 254, 263, 269, 271 arbitrary reference 90–91, 110, 124, 138, 140, 148, 150, 152–153, 235, 256, 261, 265, 267 see also impersonal reference, impersonal se construction, proARB assertion 243, 245–246 avoid ambiguity 38, 61, 64, 87, 108, 135, 170, 183, 208, 215–216, 222, 248 Avoid Ambiguity Constraint 38 Avoid Pronoun Principle 23–24, 38, 88 B background assumptions, see bridging assumptions background knowledge 40–41, 42, 71–74, 123, 125, 127, 138, 145, 148, 150, 153– 155, 160, 164, 167, 169, 170, 173, 184, 196, 201, 206, 218–219, 256–257 see also cultural knowledge, mutual knowledge, shared knowledge, world knowledge backward anaphora, see anaphora basic pattern of anaphora 30–31, 39, 76, 87, 103–104, 106–107, 126, 128, 138, 156, 161, 170, 183, 225, 246, 248, 253– 254, 264
292 Implicatures in Discourse
breaching 112, 157, 160, 164, 196, 202, 203, 211, 227–228, 236, 238, 240 bridging assumptions 159, 160, 164, 168, 169, 170, 201 inference 62, 267 but 242 C calculability 20 cancelability16, 17–19, 39 see also defeasibility Castilian Spanish 178, 268, 270 c-command 5–7, 90, 251, 271 Chinese 35, 39, 45, 80, 81 clausal Quantity implicature 16, 271 cognitive status 66, 237, 254, 255, 269 cohesion between clauses 35 common ground 42, 57, 256–257, 263 community membership mutual knowledge, see mutual knowledge Condition on Arbitrary Pronominals 91 conjunction, see but, pero (‘but’) consciousness (of the hearer/addressee) 60–61, 63, 65 consistency constraints 39–47, 81, 209, 210, 219, 246–247, 251, 252, 258 constructed dialogue 117–120, 155–156, 164, 191–192 continuity of reference 76–78 contrast in reference 38, 76, 78, 84–86, 87– 88, 90–91, 115, 119, 133, 141–142, 154, 172, 208, 222, 223, 227, 228–229, 232– 235, 252, 254 contrastive focus 85–86, 88, 172, 214, 231, 269 see also stress (contrastive) conventional implicatures 14 conversation 97–99, 102 conversation analysis 8, 97–101, 176, 255, 257 conversational implicature 11–21, 39 generalized 14 particularized 14
cooperative principle 13 coordinate clause 242, 244, 245 coreference 2–5, 246–247, 271 obligatory (grammatically stipulated) 4, 103 optional (free) 4 intended (pragmatic) 3–5, 251 cultural event, see stereotypical event cultural knowledge 145, 148, 154, 157, 255 see also background knowledge, mutual knowledge, shared knowledge culturally-prescribed roles, see stereotypical roles D default principles 251 defeasibility 16, 17–19, 39 see also cancelability definite descriptions 35, 64–65, 82–83, 127 definite determiner 258 degree of cohesion 35 deictic reference 108, 110, 123, 129, 133, 138, 232, 266 deletability 58–59 see also predictability, recoverability demonstrative 37, 64–65, 255, 270, 258 determiner 128, 130, 137, 258, 269, 270 NP 20, 37, 121, 127, 128, 130, 137, 197–198, 205, 228–229, 232, 236– 238, 247, 258, 269, 270 pronoun 121, 130–131, 137, 141–142, 161, 210–211, 266–267, 270 direct object, see object discourse analysis 8, 176 discourse context 71, 74, 140, 153, 164, 170, 206, 257, 268 see also mutual knowledge (based on previous discourse) discourse structural unit 237–238 discourse structure 237–238, 241, 245, 248 disjoint reference 34–35, 76, 92, 264 Division of Pragmatic Labor 23–24, 29
Subject index 293
duplication 166, 266, 268 E economy of informativeness 52–57, 75, 88, 97, 142, 171, 256 see also informativeness, Speaker’s Economy, social principle of informativeness ellipsis 61, 63–64 see also null pronoun, zero emphasis 38, 87, 191–192, 208, 214, 232, 233–234, 237, 248, 269 encyclopedic knowledge 40 epithets 20, 36–37, 262 event sequence 237–238 see also scene evoked 61, 138, 160, 165 see also inferrable exhaustive listing interpretation 88, 269– 270 expectations 156, 257 see also stereotypical assumptions explicit antecedent absence of, see antecedent (implicit) extralinguistic context 267 F familiar 82–83, 128, 130, 137, 197, 237, 258, 264 flouting 13 focal contrast, see contrastive focus focus of attention 65–66, 69, 70, 109–110, 116, 117, 119, 129, 181–183, 186, 192, 194, 199, 201, 206, 207, 214, 224, 225, 230, 231, 234 see also foregrounded, in focus focus strategy 72–73 foregrounded 46, 65, 105, 115, 118, 185, 206, 214, 253, 268, 271 see also in focus formal variables 89–90, 144 frame 40 French 15, 43–44, 267
G general pattern of anaphora, see basic pattern of anaphora given knowledge, see mutual knowledge, shared knowledge givenness 46, 57–74 givenness hierarchy 66 given-new distinction 58, 70, 84 grammatical constraints 118, 182, 186, 246, 251, 266 grammatical function 217–218, 221, 247, 253–254 see also parallel function strategy,subject, object gustar 68, 77 Guugu Yimidhirr 76 H Hebrew 35 hedge 206, 226 Horn’s Q- and R-principles 22–24 human/non-human referents 78, 182,192, 193, 203, 204, 206, 212–213, 221, 226– 227, 257 hyponymy 235–236, 239 see also semantic entailment I Iconicity Principle 75 identifiability 203, 258 I-implicature 27, 104, 106, 109, 119, 154– 155, 161, 188, 198, 203, 209, 216, 217, 233, 236, 240, 257 impersonal reference 108, 140, 148, 152, 256, 267 see also arbitrary reference, impersonal se construction, pro-ARB impersonal se construction 90–91, 153–154 implicit focus 165–166 see also antecedent (implicit), in focus inanimate entities 118, 266 see also human/non-human referents inference 27, 72, 98, 125, 130, 167, 199, 205, 206, 207, 222, 248, 255, 256
294 Implicatures in Discourse
inference to stereotype 27, 133, 224–225 inferrable 61–62, 138, 154, 164, 165, 264, 267 see also antecedent (implicit), evoked, anaphor (indirect) in focus 46, 65–69, 74, 115, 181, 186–187, 189, 193, 208, 221, 224, 233, 247, 254, 258, 268, 269 see also focus of attention, foregrounded, implicit focus informativeness 82, 135, 142, 170, 173, 208, 222, 248, 256–257, 267, 268 see also I-principle, economy of information, social principle of informativeness inner speech 192, 232 see also constructed dialogue interclausal semantic connectivity, see semantic connectivity between clauses interference 63–64 intonation 156, 179 I-principle 23, 26–30, 52–55, 82, 104, 110– 111, 117, 121, 126, 168, 173, 249, 253–257 breaching 184, 185, 186, 227–228, 233, 234, 238, 246 Maxim of Minimization 26–27, 35, 75–76, 83, 111, 112, 114–115, 119, 121, 135, 142, 145, 152, 160, 163, 165, 169, 171, 172–173, 183, 185, 191, 194, 200, 205, 213, 215, 219, 222, 239, 246, 255, 267 Recipient’s Corollary 26–28, 165, 188, 224, 268 J Japanese 38, 61, 63, 264 L left-dislocation 230 lexical specificity 59–60 linguistic context, see discourse context linguistic co-presence mutual knowledge, see mutual knowledge (based on previous discourse)
M main point 121, 206–207, 242, 243, 246 Manner maxim 13, 16–17, 21, 243 marked form 30, 32–33, 76, 83, 131, 133, 141, 170, 190, 211, 215, 218, 222, 224, 225–241, 246, 247, 248, 253, 254–255, 257, 258, 264 see also markedness, unmarked form markedness 23, 30, 83, 135, 257 see also marked form, unmarked form maxims of conversation 13–17 Maxim of Minimization, see I-Principle M-contrast in reference 81, 227, 258 see also M-implicatures meaning-nn 28–29, 41–42, 71, 157 M-implicature 29–30, 32, 39, 105, 106, 108, 110–111, 115, 119, 127, 131, 169, 182–183, 190, 203, 206, 209, 218, 230, 246, 257 see also M-contrast in reference, Mprinciple minimal form 80, 115, 127, 130, 134–135, 152, 168, 172, 194, 198, 207, 213, 219, 246, 247, 248, 253, 254–255, 268 minimization 24–26, 35, 52–57, 64, 77, 82, 83, 97, 111, 112, 119, 121, 126–127, 136, 138, 143, 159, 164, 168, 171, 172, 191, 194, 198, 207, 211, 217, 222, 224, 236, 238, 240, 246–247, 253, 255, 256–257, 268 see also I-principle, minimal form M-principle 29–30, 33–34, 38, 78, 106, 108, 110, 115, 117, 126–128, 135, 183, 190– 192, 194, 207, 208, 216, 222, 225, 227, 230, 231, 233–234, 235, 240, 246, 248, 253–254, 257–258, 262 see also M-contrast in reference, Mimplicatures breaching 184, 231, 238–239, 246, 258 revised prediction 34, 85, 128, 198, 209 mutual knowledge 41–43, 70–71, 74, 97– 98, 112, 114, 117, 119, 121, 125–128, 130, 138, 143, 150, 152, 154, 157, 160,
Subject index 295
164, 168, 173, 195–196, 210–211, 235, 247–248, 255–258, 266, 267, 268 based on preceding discourse 128, 130–131, 133, 134, 140, 141–142, 152, 156, 170, 188–189, 194–196, 198, 199–200, 203–209, 211, 213, 216, 218–224, 240–241, 248, 258, 266 based on community membership 42, 71, 202, 269 see also background knowledge, common ground, cultural knowledge, shared knowledge N names 36–37, 56, 64–65, 82–83, 106, 111, 127–128, 168, 169, 257, 262 see also NP, NP type narrative discourse 172–173 negativity 242, 245 new information 172, 214, 242, 243, 246, 269–270 nominal substitution 163 non-complementarity of NP expressions 36–38 non-conventionality 20–21 non-coreference 30, 33–35, 39, 105, 106, 127 obligatory (grammatically stipulated) 4, 18–19, 25–26 see also contrast in reference, disjoint reference, M-implicature, marked form, switch reference non-detachability 19–20 NP definite 36–37, 203, 207–208, 247 demonstrative, see demonstrative full (lexicalized)103–104, 106, 110, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122–123, 127, 182–183, 207–208, 218, 226–227, 230, 231, 232–234, 235, 237, 238– 241, 246, 248, 254, 257 indefinite 119, 130, 181–182 NP type 74–76, 81–82
null/overt pronoun contrast 2, 35, 38, 80– 81, 86–94 see also contrast in reference, null pronoun, null subject, overt pronoun, subject pronoun null pronoun 23–24, 38, 90–91, 117, 138, 140 see also null subject null subject 2, 20, 38, 68, 77–78, 86–87, 90, 91–94, 108, 111, 117, 119, 124–125, 127, 128–129, 144, 145–148, 152–154, 160– 164, 169, 171, 194, 196, 203, 238, 244, 245, 247, 255, 256 see also ellipsis, null pronoun, zero O object 122–123, 141, 186, 230, 247, 253, 254, 271 object pronoun 119, 127, 194, 246 overt pronoun 2, 35, 38, 39, 45, 86–87, 89– 90, 104, 110, 111, 115, 117, 119, 128– 129, 133, 165, 172, 184–185, 191–192, 208–209, 213, 214–216, 232, 235, 248, 254, 255, 266 see also subject pronoun, stressed pronoun Overt Pronoun Constraint 89 P parallel function strategy 94, 104, 165, 184, 190, 194, 209, 218, 221, 247, 253–254 pear film 176–178 pero (‘but’) 141–142, 206–207, 244–246, 269 point of view 129, 192, 212 possessive pronoun 119, 240, 270 pragmatic checking strategy 71–73 pragmatic subordination 206–207, 242, 243, 245–246 precedence 5, 92–93, 241–242 see also anaphora (backward) predictability 58–59, 74–75, 77 see also recoverability preferred interpretations 18, 30–31, 190, 253
296 Implicatures in Discourse
prepositional phrase 118, 123, 227, 247, 266 previous discourse, see mutual knowledge of previous discourse Principle of Least Effort 22 Principle of Pronominal Lexicalization 89, 172, 214, 269–270 prior mention 61, 63, 258 pro-ARB 6, 90–91, 261 see also arbitrary reference, impersonal reference, impersonal se construction pro-drop 86–87, 90–91 pronoun 36, 80, 82, 84–85, 244, 252, 255 see also null pronoun, object pronoun, overt pronoun, stressed pronoun, subject pronoun, unstressed pronoun Q Q-implicature 24, 31, 252–253 Q-principle 25–26, 52–55, 121–122, 135, 207–208, 249, 252–253, 262 Quality maxim 13 Quantity maxims 13, 15–16, 21–24, 57, 249 R recency 63–65, 67, 72–73, 78, 79, 80, 122, 192, 211, 224–225 recipient design 42, 52–57, 64, 83, 135, 159, 170, 173, 257, 263 recognition 208, 257 recognitional 52–54, 237, 263 recoverability 58–59, 242 see also predictability reflexive 25–26, 31–32, 80, 103, 252–253, 262, 270, 271 non-clitic (strong) 31–32, 252–253, 271 reiteration 44, 182 see also semantic entailment relevance 24–25 Relevance maxim 13 repetition as confirmation 231
of NPs 36–37, 230, 231 of names 36–37, 38 reported speech, see constructed dialogue request for clarification 230–231, 248 S saliency 60, 63, 65, 77, 209, 212, 216, 226, 230, 231, 232–233, 236, 239, 241, 247, 248, 253–254 see also antecedent saliency scalar Quantity implicature 15–16, 271 scale of grammatical coding devices 75–76 scene 40, 237–238 schema 40, 264 script 40, 138, 255 semantic constraints 160, 182, 187, 224, 226, 263 see also semantic entailment semantic connectivity between clauses 80– 81 see also semantic links semantic entailment 43–45, 105, 182, 190– 191, 202, 235–236, 239–241, 248, 257– 258, 271 semantic links 161 shared knowledge 69–71, 112, 150, 237, 256 see also background knowledge, common ground, cultural knowledge, mutual knowledge social principle of informativeness 173, 255–257 see also economy of informativeness, informativeness, Speaker’s Economy social relationship 157, 171, 256 Speaker’s Economy 22 split antecedent, see antecedent (split) stereotypical assumptions 133, 138, 152, 156, 165, 202, 205, 209, 211, 213, 224, 247, 253, 257 see also bridging, expectations, inference to stereotype stereotypical event 143, 148, 224, 255 see also script
Subject index 297
stereotypical roles 143–145, 147–148, 154, 157, 165, 255 storytelling 102, 265 stress 61, 76, 83–86 contrastive 85, 214, 269 focal 83–84 stressed pronoun 33, 47, 76–78, 93, 172, 184, 214–216, 235, 248 subject 67, 80, 86–88, 182,189, 190, 194, 216, 218, 226, 239, 247, 253, 254, 269, 271 human 182, 193 subject pronoun 119, 133, 165, 184, 208, 214–216, 232, 235, 248, 254, see also overt pronoun, null subject subordinate clause 242, 243 switch reference 76, 78, 106, 108, 115, 116, 117, 119, 127–128 see also contrast in reference, disjoint reference, M-implicature, noncoreference synonymy 235–236 see also semantic entailment syntactic constraints 118, 243, 271 see also grammatical constraints syntactic position 118, 123 T tense 150, 154, 242, 270 thematic prominence 229
To’aba’ita 229 topic 45–46, 67, 69, 78, 80, 122, 144, 182, 247, 253, 254, 271 topicalization 186 topic continuity 74–75, 77 see also continuity of reference tracking use of demonstratives 229, 270 transcription 100, 102, 179–180, 285–286 U uncertainty 245–246 unmarked form 23, 30, 32, 254 unstressed pronoun 67–69, 76, 77–78, 80– 81, 93, 115, 247 V verb tense, see tense W world knowledge 40, 73–74, 112, 160, 182, 213, 247–248 see also background knowledge, mutual knowledge Z zero 2, 20, 38, 61, 63–64, 67–69, 76, 77, 80– 81, 90, 110, 115, 169, 190, 194, 264, 266 see also ellipsis, minimization, null pronoun, null subject
In the PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1. WALTER, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre: An Ethnographic Study of What it Means to Those who Use it. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1988. 2. BARTON, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents: A Theory of Grammatical Structure and Pragmatic Interpretation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 3. OLEKSY, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 4. RAFFLER-ENGEL, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor-Patient Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 5. THELIN, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 6. VERSCHUEREN, Jef (ed.): Selected Papers from the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference. Vol. I: Pragmatics at Issue. Vol. II: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Vol. III: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (ed. with Jan Blommaert). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 7. LINDENFELD, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Market Places. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 8. YOUNG, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code: A Study of Academic English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 9. LUKE, Kang-Kwong: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 10. MURRAY, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 11. LUONG, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 12. ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 13. NUYTS, Jan, A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN and Co VET (eds): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory: A functional view. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 14. SCHWARTZ, Ursula: Young Children’s Dyadic Pretend Play. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 15. KOMTER, Martha: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 16. MANN, William C. and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-Raising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 17. PIÉRAUT-LE BONNIEC, Gilberte and Marlene DOLITSKY (eds): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 18. JOHNSTONE, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 19. BAKER, Carolyn D. and Allan LUKE (eds): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 20. NUYTS, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 21. SEARLE, John R. et al.: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992.
22. AUER, Peter and Aldo Di LUZIO (eds): The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 23. FORTESCUE, Michael, Peter HARDER and Lars KRISTOFFERSEN (eds): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 24. MAYNARD, Senko K.: Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 25. COUPER-KUHLEN, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 26. STYGALL, Gail: Trial Language. A study in differential discourse processing. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1994. 27. SUTER, Hans Jürg: The Wedding Report: A Prototypical Approach to the Study of Traditional Text Types. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 28. VAN DE WALLE, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 29. BARSKY, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse theory and the convention refugee hearing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 30. WORTHAM, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 31. WILDGEN, Wolfgang: Process, Image and Meaning. A realistic model of the meanings of sentences and narrative texts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 32. SHIBATANI, Masayoshi and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 33. GOOSSENS, Louis, Paul PAUWELS, Brygida RUDZKA-OSTYN, Anne-Marie SIMONVANDENBERGEN and Johan VANPARYS: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 34. BARBE, Katharina: Irony in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 35. JUCKER, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 36. CHILTON, Paul, Mikhail V. ILYIN and Jacob MEY: Political Discourse in Transition in Eastern and Western Europe (1989-1991). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 37. CARSTON, Robyn and Seiji UCHIDA (eds): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 38. FRETHEIM, Thorstein and Jeanette K. GUNDEL (eds): Reference and Referent Accessibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 39. HERRING, Susan (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 40. DIAMOND, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a closeknit social network. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 41. VENTOLA, Eija and Anna MAURANEN, (eds): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 42. WODAK, Ruth and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds): Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 43. JANSSEN, Theo A.J.M. and Wim van der WURFF (eds): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996.
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69. NOH, Eun-Ju: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metarepresentation in English. A relevance-theoretic account. 2000. 70. SORJONEN, Marja-Leena: Responding in Conversation. A study of response particles in Finnish. 2001. 71. GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, María Ángeles: The Theme-Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. 72. MARMARIDOU, Sophia S.A.: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. 73. HESTER, Stephen and David FRANCIS (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. 74. TROSBORG, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. 75. PILKINGTON, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. 76. MATSUI, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. 77. VANDERVEKEN, Daniel and Susumu KUBO (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. 2002. 78. SELL, Roger D. : Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. 79. ANDERSEN, Gisle and Thorstein FRETHEIM (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. 80. UNGERER, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. 81. DI LUZIO, Aldo, Susanne GÜNTHNER and Franca ORLETTI (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. 2001. 82. KHALIL, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. 83. MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. 84. ANDERSEN, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. 85. COLLINS, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. 86. IFANTIDOU, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. 2001. 87. MUSHIN, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative retelling. 2001. 88. BAYRAKTAROG LU, ArFn and Maria SIFIANOU (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. The case of Greek and Turkish. 2001. 89. ITAKURA, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. 90. KENESEI, István and Robert M. HARNISH (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. 91. GROSS, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. 92. GARDNER, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. 93. BARON, Bettina and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. 2002 94. McILVENNY, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. 2002. 95. FITZMAURICE, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. 2002. 96. HAVERKATE, Henk: The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood. 2002.
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