A Cognitive Analysis Of Deep Anaphora

Anaphora is traditionally regarded as a syntactically controlled co-referential relationship on the surface level of language. It is dominated by the agreement of person, gender, number as well as other syntactic rules. This thesis takes a cognitive point of view, in which anaphor is used to refer to a psychologically prominent entity out of the surface level of language. Under this viewpoint, and based on figure/ground segregation, notion of frame and principle of proximity within cognitive linguistics, this thesis suggests three ways of analyzing pronominal deep anaphora, namely, "topic" analysis, "activation" analysis and "distance" analysis.In "topic" analysis, the topic of a discourse tends to be construed as the antecedent of a pronoun in deep anaphora because of its prominence in the interlocutors' mental representation, as determined by figure/ground segregation. There are two factors that will affect the felicity of the topicalisation of referent in deep anaphora, namely, the prominence of the referent in the interlocutors' mental representation and the shift of topic in discourse.In "activation" analysis, the antecedent of a pronoun in deep anaphora can be a salient entity in the interlocutors' mental representation, which is activated by the discourse (or a word in the discourse) in line with notion of frame. There are two factors that will affect the accessibility of entities in "activation" analysis, namely, the existence of an "antecedent-trigger" and sufficient contextual information.In "distance" analysis, a pronoun tends to refer to the nearest entity according to the principle of proximity in psychological gestalt. Yet the linear distance in the discourse between a pronoun and its antecedent is a relatively weak factor. The pronoun is not always used to refer to the nearest entity in a discourse. There is another factor that will affect "distance" analysis of deep anaphora. That is semantic-logical analysis.The three ways of analyzing deep anaphora suggested in this thesis are not separated from one another. They should be considered as a whole. While analyzing deep anaphora, the three ways should be used alternately. The common basis of the three ways is the prominence of the referent in the interlocutors' mental representation built in line with discourse.