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A neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Yan Huang
Yan Huang
Affiliation:
Somerville College, Oxford, OX2 6HD. UK
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Anaphora clearly involves syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. Although it is generally acknowledged that pragmatic factors are predominant in discourse anaphora, it is equally widely held (especially among Government-Binding (GB) theorists) that only syntactic and semantic factors are crucial to intrasentential anaphora. In this article, I shall argue, in the spirit of an ongoing debate about the ‘division of labour’ between grammar and pragmatics regarding anaphora (Reinhart, 1983a, b, 1986; Kempson, 1984a, b, 1988a, b; Levinson, 1987a, b, 1991; Yan Huang, 1987a, 1989), that contrary to this popular but erroneous view, the contribution of pragmatics to anaphora is much more fundamental than has been commonly believed, even at the heart of intrasentential anaphora, at least with respect to languages like Chinese. Such a position, if established, would seem to decrease the plausibility of Chomsky's (1981, 1982, 1986) claim that anaphora, and zero anaphora in particular, have a privileged access to the alleged underlying principles of the innate Universal Grammar (UG), the biologically determined endowment of the human mind.

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Journal of Linguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , September 1991 , pp. 301 - 335
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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