Bridging Reference In Chinese Discourse: A Pragmatic Approach

Bridging reference (henceforth BR), which permeates verbal communication, refers to the relationship between a bridging expression and its intended referent not explicitly expressed in context (including preceding and subsequent discourse), but can be inferred via the addition of contextual assumptions. As a semantic concept, BR has been extensively researched in the literature and significant insights have been gained through various approaches. However, no single model is capable of handling all the cases of BR interpretation due to the fact that each model approaches the problem either from a different perspective or with a different goal.This dissertation, drawing on current insights and empirical data from various resources (e.g. academic journals, newspapers, novels, daily conversation, etc.) in the Chinese language, proposes a practical model that incorporates the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels in the interpretation of BR. It points out, from a pragmatic point of view, that past studies do not do justice to the way different knowledge resources interact, arguing that the recognition and interpretation of BR is a necessary but not sufficient communicative process in our daily communication. It claims that the rhetorical connections between the propositions introduced in the discourse are crucial in the interpretation of BR. But the work concerned in this dissertation is different from previous studies in that the author demonstrates how this source of information interacts with the usual syntactic and semantic analysis in a pragmatic context. Hence such a language phenomenon is approached from three different levels: the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. Focusing on internal preferences to these levels, the interpretation of BR is subject to different mechanisms. The observed focusing preferences at each of these levels are modeled syntactically, semantically and pragmatically, along the lines suggested in relevance theory (henceforth RT). Thus it provides a new perspective for research in verbal communication. These are some of the basic propositions of the present research: 1) BR refers to the relationship between bridging expressions and the referents incontext. It is used in actual discourse to represent what is implicitly expressed, functioning as an explanation or supplement to what is explicitly expressed. It enriches the dynamic study of discourses and serves as an aid to the success of human communication.2) BR is a form of existence that enables people to handle properly different relationships such as the one between bridging expressions and referents in verbal communication. It is also a medium of transmission.3) BR can be considered as a way of getting to know the world (both physical and mental), or a paradigm derived from reflections upon a concrete method of approaching discourses. Hence it becomes consciously or unconsciously a tool for forming a world view.The theoretical framework of the dissertation consists of various factors (e.g. communication needs, interaction between the propositions introduced in discourse, context, etc.) that influence the establishment and interpretation of BR. As a point of departure, this dissertation distinguishes BR from other types of reference. Then it discusses such a relationship from three different levels, followed by a unified account, and focuses on issues such as the linguistic components of a discourse, the distribution of information, syntactic structure, meaning relations and truth conditions, context and relevance, etc. It tries to demonstrate how the interpretation of sentence meaning, bridging inference of contextual assumptions and encyclopedic knowledge, constrains the interpretation of BR. These and some other arguments, together with the research findings and their contribution to other branches of sciences, will be briefly discussed below:The syntactic level: Issues such as linguistic elements and their functions in discourse, logical operators, information structure of discourse (including the giv...