Accessibility & Mental Spaces: A Cognitive Interpretation Of "the"

The study of the in English has a long tradition in various disciplines, including linguistics, philosophy, logic and psychology. It has been explored from a variety of theoretical perspectives—logical semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, to mention just a few. Theoretical differences notwithstanding, most of these analyses are remarkably similar in that they have consistently focused on the "referential function" of the article, that is, the use of a noun phrase with the to pick out an individual. The research into the meaning of the can be clustered under two main headings: theories that analyze the in terms of familiarity and those that analyze the in terms of unique identifiability. However, much evidence shows that neither of the two main approaches to the, familiarity or unique identifiability, provides necessary or sufficient conditions for its use.Thus this thesis makes an attempt to interpret the from a cognitive perspective, which is based on the theoretical framework drawn from the Accessibility theory of Ariel and the mental spaces theory of Fauconnier, each of which consider grammatical elements in general to be discourse processing instructions. What needs to be pointed out here is that the interpretation of the in the present study is based on the discussion of definite descriptions in which the occurs (i.e. NPs with the), since the can not be used absolutely in most cases, and only in combination with the NP following it, can the functions of the be fulfilled.In this thesis, we propose that the basic meaning of the is to signal a low degree of accessibility of a discourse referent, more specifically, the availability of an access path through a configuration of mental spaces, or cognitive domains. The access paths are underspecified by the grammar, so in addition to picking out or distinguishing a discourse referent that the speaker assumes to be familiar or uniquely identifiable to the addressee, the is compatible with a range of functions in discourse: discourse prominence, role status, and point-of-view shift.By discourse prominence, we mean the use of the to trigger the interpretation that a discourse entity is highly prominent (i.e. that the entity plays an important part in the broader discourse context). Moreover, there is another kind of prominence involving the, namely, "stressed" or "emphatic" the. In these cases, the is employed to indicate that the speaker construes a referent as an especially important member of some category.Besides, the is frequently used to refer to a role which represents a fixed property instead of a particular individual. The individual who fulfills the role (known as the "value" of the role) may vary when contextual parameters such as the time, place, situation, etc. are changed. Definite descriptions in predicate nominal position are frequently used to refer to a role of which the subject NP represents a value. However, the subject is not necessarily the only entity in the given context to which the property may be ascribed. There may exist over one value instantiating a single role in the same situation. And it is especially noteworthy that the roles designated by NPs with the do not have to constitute previously shared knowledge. Speakers commonly employ the to bring roles into existence. Furthermore, speakers often set up metaphorical roles with the in order to achieve rhetorical goals.Another important function of the is to contribute to shifts in point of view. In the default case, all language is understood as reflecting the point of view of the speaker or writer. However, NPs with the may indicate that a discourse referent is accessible from the noncanonical point of view of a third person, either a fictional narrator or a discourse protagonist. Of course, the needn't be the only indication of a noncanonical point of view. Several lexical and grammatical items including the may all contribute to establishing a particular perspective.The exact interpretation of the, whether the in combination with the NP designates a uniquely identifiable referent, or one that is discourse prominent, or a role, or shift in point-of-view, or some combinations of these, is not specified by the grammar but must rather be determined in context.The interpretation of the in this thesis is supported by a range of empirical evidence gleaned from an examination of naturally occurring discourse, which covers from literary to journalistic, and from written to spoken English (though with a much smaller number of cases listed in spoken English than that in written genres). The study presented in this thesis thus holds the promise of providing a more comprehensive and dynamic interpretation of the.