1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910741149403321

Autore

Liu Donghong

Titolo

Abstract Entity Anaphora in Argumentative Texts : Pragmatic Features and Referent Interpretation / / by Donghong Liu

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Singapore : , : Springer Nature Singapore : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2023

ISBN

981-9946-30-1

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (171 pages)

Disciplina

401.45

Soggetti

Pragmatics

Linguistics

Grammar, Comparative and general - Morphology

Sociolinguistics

Intercultural communication

Theoretical Linguistics / Grammar

Morphology

Intercultural Communication

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Pragmatic Features of Abstract Entity Anaphora -- Chapter 3. Discourse Structure and Discourse Anaphora -- Chapter 4. SDRT and Abstract Entity Anaphora -- Chapter 5. Inadequacies of SDRT and Suggested Solutions -- Chapter 6. Processing of Reference Ambiguity and Long-distance Anaphora -- Chapter 7. Conclusion -- Bibliography.

Sommario/riassunto

This book focuses on abstract entity anaphora in argumentative texts with Asher’s (1993) Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) as the theoretical framework, investigating its pragmatic features and exploring its referent interpretation. The data sources include more than 160,000-word argumentative texts (80,000-word English texts and 80,000-word Chinese ones) selected from newspapers, journals, and books in China and America. At first, a comparative study was done between Chinese and English argumentative texts so as to compare the pragmatic features of abstract entity anaphora in the two languages. Then, referent



interpretation is explored within the SDRT framework. Although SDRT can account for most of the instances of abstract entity anaphora, it appears incompetent in dealing with some phenomena in the data of our study. Seven problems in SDRT were found, and corresponding solutions were proposed in an attempt to improve this theory. In general, this book has three aspects of significance. Firstly, it establishes abstract entity anaphora as an independent and a special kind of anaphora. Secondly, the research methods are the combination of empirical study and theoretical hypotheses as well as the coalescent of dynamic study and static study. Thirdly, the book is not limited to the application of SDRT to Mandarin Chinese and backward anaphora. Instead, based on the linguistic phenomena in the data, it challenges and improves the theory, and it even negates some aspects and meanwhile brings forward new solutions.