LINGUIST List 28.4457
Thu Oct 26 2017
Diss: Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax: Todd N. Snider: ''Anaphoric Reference to Propositions''
Editor for this issue: Sarah Robinson <srobinsonlinguistlist.org>
Date: 24-Oct-2017
From: Todd Snider <todd.snider
gmail.com>
Subject: Anaphoric Reference to Propositions
E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Cornell University
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2017
Author: Todd N Snider
Dissertation Title: Anaphoric Reference to Propositions
Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
Semantics
Syntax
Dissertation Director:
John B Whitman
Sarah E Murray
Mats Rooth
Will B Starr
Dissertation Abstract:
Just as pronouns like she and he make anaphoric reference to individuals, English words like that and so can be used to refer anaphorically to a proposition introduced in a discourse: That’s true; She told me so. Much has been written about individual anaphora, but less attention has been paid to propositional anaphora. This dissertation is a comprehensive examination of propositional anaphora, which I argue behaves like anaphora
in other domains, is conditioned by semantic factors, and is not conditioned by purely syntactic factors nor by the at-issue status of a proposition.
I begin by introducing the concepts of anaphora and propositions, and then I discuss the various words of English which can have this function: this, that, it, which, so, as, and the null complement anaphor. I then compare anaphora to propositions with anaphora in other domains, including individual, temporal, and modal anaphora. I show that the same features which are characteristic of these other domains are exhibited by propositional anaphora as well.
I then present data on a wide variety of syntactic constructions—including subclausal, monoclausal, multiclausal, and multisentential constructions—noting which license anaphoric reference to propositions. On the basis of this expanded empirical domain, I argue that anaphoric reference to a proposition is licensed not by any syntactic category or movement but rather by the operators which take propositions as arguments.
With this generalization in hand, I turn to how such facts can be formally modeled: I review existing systems which track anaphora and/or which make use of propositional variables, and then introduce a new formalism which incorporates insights from these existing systems.
Finally, I turn to the interaction between a proposition’s availability for anaphoric reference and its discourse status (in particular, its at-issue status). Contrary to the prevailing assumption in the literature, I argue that there is no tight linking between these two properties, and that one of the tests frequently used to diagnose at-issueness in fact diagnoses only anaphoric availability. I argue that propositional anaphora and at-issueness are distinct, showing that at-issueness is neither necessary nor sufficient to determine a proposition’s anaphoric potential.
Page Updated: 26-Oct-2017