A Study Of Construal Mechanism Of Indirect Anaphora Within RS Model

Discourse anaphora is divided into direct anaphora and indirect anaphora.Indirect anaphora is a relatively special one which indicates the non co-referentrelationship between the antecedent and the anaphor. Its interpretation relies more onthe speaker’s inference.Numerous linguists at home and abroad have conducted many studies on thesubject of anaphora and achieved fruitful results. But the study of indirect anaphorastill lies in a primary stage, fragmentary and stuffless. Up to now an unsatisfactorymodel can be found to fully interpret the interpretation process of indirect anaphora.Based on this situation, this paper will employ the qualitative approach to studyindirect anaphora from the cognitive and pragmatic perspective. This mechanism willintegrate the cognitive reference-point model with stereotypical relation theory tointerpret indirect anaphora. It is well established that cognitive reference point modelcount for much more for many linguistic phenomena whereas it fails to account forindirect anaphora alone. Stereotypical relation theory can be a good supplement tocognitive reference point in that it provides situational knowledge, encyclopediaknowledge to make up for CRM’s deficiency. In the course of reference pointreaching the target, stereotypical relation theory can play an important role indetermining the selection of potential target. On the other hand, it is feasible toresolve the situation of more than one reference point with the help of stereotypicalrelation theory for the listener/reader. Therefore, the construal mechanism of RSmodel can be interpreted like this. The antecedent first serves as reference point (R1)by which a correspondent dominion (D1) is activated. Within this dominion, manypotential targets (T123) reside in the listener/reader’s mind. When the anaphor emerges,the attention is directed to the new target which functions as a new reference point (R2)by the conceptualizer.According to different forms of indirect anaphor, indirect anaphora is dividedinto three categories which include nominal indirect anaphora, demonstrative indirect anaphora and pronoun indirect anaphora. This construal mechanism is exploited toanalyze these three phenomena respectively in real discourse. The analysis shows thatthis integrated RS model has an advantage over other theories to some extent. Inregard to nominal IA, when there exist more than one antecedent in prior sentence,semantic relation and encyclopedia knowledge of stereotypical relation theory countfor much more in the interpretation of IA. Concerning pronoun indirect anaphora anddemonstrative indirect anaphora, cognitive experience and shared situationalknowledge play a more important role for the choice of reference point. In somecircumstances, contemporary relation that depends on discourse knowledge isestablished to accomplish the referents of indirect anaphora.