LINGUIST List 11.2498

Sat Nov 18 2000

Qs: Quantifiers/Slavic Lang, "Garden Path Anaphora"

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Giuliana Giusti, quantifiers in slavic languages
2. Josef Meyer, examples of "garden path anaphora"

I am interested in the topic of the syntax of quantity expressions in
slavic languages.

I am particularly interested in what has been produced in the last 10 years
and in particular if anybody has already approached the field from a
minimalist perspective.

I will be obliged of any help I can get in my search

best,

giuliana giusti
Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari
Europei e Postcoloniali
Palazzo Cosulich
Zattere, Dorsoduro 1405
30125 Venezia
tel. +39 - 041 - 2577816
http://helios.unive.it/~lingdida/giusti.html

Hello,

My apologies to those of you who end up receiving more than one copy
of this message.

I am currently looking at what I will refer to as "garden path
anaphora". I am using this term to refer to cases in which the
reader/hearer will tend to have a strong preference for resolving an
anaphoric expression in one way, and then be forced to an alternative
interpretation on encountering a subsequent utterance. The following
is a slightly contrived example to illustrate what I mean:

 1. Robert gave Steven a paper last week. He thought that it provided
 a good method for dealing with indirect anaphora. Steven disagreed.

 2. Robert gave Steven a paper last week. He thought that it provided
 a good method for dealing with indirect anaphora. Robert had
 actually given Steven the paper for another reason entirely.

I would argue that the interpretation in example (1) is the default,
where "he" fairly clearly refers to "Robert". By my reading, example
(2) shows that this initial preference can be overturned. What I am
looking for is a set of examples of cases where something like this
occurs in real texts. I am not expecting this sort of thing to be
very common. The few people I have asked seem to think that they have
seen examples of this, but can't remember where. I'll post a summary
of any results I receive.

Thanks,

- jo

- 

Josef Meyer

| Division of Information and | http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/~jmeyer |
| Communication Sciences, | jmeyerics.mq.edu.au |
| Macquarie University, NSW | Phone: +61 2 9850 6344 |
| 2109, Australia | Fax: +61 2 9850 9529 |