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Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects
Edited by Georgia Fotiadou and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 18] 2023
► pp. 94–116

Beyond explicit references

| University of Maine, Farmington

The present study explores the use of zero anaphor in discourse from a cognitive-functional perspective. Although zero anaphora is commonly considered to be a dividing parameter of linguistic typology between languages like Chinese and English, the study argues that it is a discourse phenomenon that manifests highest degree of cognitive accessibility and figures prominently in coding topicality and signaling maximum coherence in discourse processing. The study proposes a general zero-anaphor principle and demonstrates that, using text data from Chinese and English, zero anaphora is indeed a function of topicality and thematic coherence, and its use in discourse is remarkably similar between these two languages that are considered typologically very different.

Keywords: cognitive-functional approach, working memory, zero anaphora, cognitive accessibility, topicality, discourse structure, thematic coherence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cognitive and functional aspects of reference tracking
  • 3.A general zero anaphor principle and its application
    • 3.1Thematic coherence
    • 3.2Major and minor thematic discontinuity
  • 4.A ‘Fill-in-the-blanks’ study
    • 4.1Stimulus material
    • 4.2Method and procedure
    • 4.3Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.18.04pu
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