A Cognitive Study Of The Anaphoric Distribution In English Literary Works

Being one of the most fundamental natural language phenomena, anaphora is also regarded as one of the most puzzling central issues. Anaphora is related to syntax, semantics, pragmatics and other fields and hence it touches upon multi-constraints. However, the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic taxonomy which corresponds logically, philosophically and linguistically has its own problematic characters and neglects the anaphoric study at the level of discourse. Discourse anaphora represents the interaction between discourse structure and syntactic anaphora and reflects the macro and micro-constraints from discourse structure in the syntactic and pragmatic areas. There are two central issues in the study of discourse anaphora which are concerned with what might be called the problem of anaphoric distribution and the problem of anaphoric resolution: the former refers to how to account for the choice of a particular referential or anaphoric form at a particular point in discourse and the latter means what enables the addressee to identify the intended referent of that form at a given point in discourse. These two problems, like the two sides of one coin, interact with each other and cannot be separated. The full and satisfactory addressing of one question will contribute a lot to the answer of the other. Comparatively, the problem of anaphoric distribution has been more neglected, which is right our research objective in the current study.In the light of accessibility theory in cognitive linguistics and the combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology, we take a tentative analysis about the anaphoric distribution in English literary works, by focusing on three research questions. These three questions are how anaphoric expressions are distributed in discourse? What are the factors influencing the distribution of anaphoric expressions? What is the dynamic and dominant principle underlying the distribution of anaphoric expressions? Centering on the three questions, we are looking forward to supplying a new perspective to anaphoric study.Accessibility also named retrievability, is a psycholinguistic term borrowed from psychology, which refers to the relative ease or convenience of retrieving a linguistic or memory unit from the structure of memory in man's brain. Ariel holds the view that the degree of accessibility of a discourse entity's mental representation corresponds with its activation in man's memory structure and that the reason why varying referring expressions are used lies in different accessibility marked to the listener. Owing to the marking function, referring expressions can be called accessibility markers. Based on the different amount of information, rigidity and attenuation, varying referring expressions compose a universal marking scale whose accessibility is from low to high. Accessibility conveyed by referring expressions refers to the activation of some entity in the speaker's memory through the choice of those markers in the accessibility marking scale. In this connection, a referring expression in essence indicates the mental representation of a discourse entity or abbreviated as discourse representation. Ariel summarizes four factors affecting the accessibility of discourse representation as distance, saliency, competition and unity. Afterwards, she classifies distance and unity as the connectivity between the antecedent and the anaphor and competition and saliency as the antecedent's prominence. Taking discourse structure into account, we can enumerate factors affecting accessibility in discourse as the three: distance, salience and unity. Distance refers to the linear or hierarchical space between an anaphor and its antecedent, measured by the semantic units the pair crosses; saliency the degree of the antecedent's prominence, depending on whether the antecedent is a topic or not; unity indicates the degree of connection between the unit containing the anaphor and the unit containing its antecedent, resting on whether the antecedent and the anaphor are within the same frame, world or point of view.We borrow two terms from transformational generative grammar: surface structure and deep structure and categorize clause, sentence, paragraph and chapter into surface structure which are semantic units comprising discourse. It is these units that measure the distance between the antecedent and the anaphor. In regard to deep structure, we put saliency and unity into it. Through the breakdown and analysis about the anaphoric distribution in each structure with the aid of English literary works, we come to the conclusion that if the bigger unit a pair of anaphoric expressions crosses, the more possibly a low accessibility marker is used; if the antecedent is the topic of the semantic unit, the more accessible the anaphor is and the more likely a high accessibility marker appears; if the topic is switched, the accessibility of the anaphor will lower; the influence on anaphoric distribution from point of view and frame designates the same trend as from topic. The final choice of anaphoric forms is the resultant of many factors and sometime it is difficult for us to make sure which factor is superior. At any rate, there is a dominant and dynamic principle working that our choice of anaphoric forms reflects the degree of accessibility, which corresponds to different statuses within memory.The thesis which consists of five chapters can be divided into three parts: the introductory part (from Chapter One to Three), the body (Chapter Four) and the concluding part (Chapter Five).The aim of Chapter One is to limit anaphora and discourse anaphora and present out current research questions. Chapter Two is a literature review, focusing on binding theory, Neo-Gricean theory and some expositions about the anaphoric studies in the cognitive approach and finally we choose the more powerful one, accessibility theory. Chapter Three is our theoretical framework, making an overall introduction to accessibility theory. Chapter Four examines the anaphoric distribution in English literary works. Chapter Five, as the concluding part, summarizes the major findings and the limitations of the present study as well as the prospect of the future study.