Antecedent (grammar)

About: Antecedent (grammar) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1392 publications have been published within this topic receiving 41824 citations.

Topic-Continuity and Topic-Shift Effects in Spanish Discourse: A Comparative Analysis of Referring Expressions

Abstract: Differences in use among referring expressions are usually explained on the basis of the cognitive accessibility of their antecedents, where antecedent accessibility has been operationalized differently in the literature; i.e. as a grammatical role, as syntactic prominence or as antecedent distance. On these grounds, it has been proposed that personal pronouns prefer topical antecedents whereas demonstratives prefer non-topical antecedents. This paper investigates the referring properties of Spanish demonstratives and direct object personal pronouns with the aim to unveil their differences and similarities. My analysis shows that these two expressions are very similar referentially when a narrow view of discourse context is considered. However, important differences show up when a broader notion of context is thrown into the picture; i.e. contexts that extend beyond the immediate previous sentence and beyond the immediate local topic of discourse. Based on my corpus evidence and on previous research on the pragmatic interpretation of referring expressions, I claim that direct object personal pronouns and demonstrative noun phrases crucially differ in the way they contribute to discourse coherence; the former playing the role of topic continuity markers and the latter focalising referents that reintroduce suspended or declining topics and marking (sub)-topic shifts in the discourse.

Tag questions and ellipsis

Abstract: • main topic: the degree of syntactic isomorphism between an ellipsis site and its antecedent • new empirical generalization: clausal ellipsis defaults to a nonisomorphic ellipsis site containing a short cleft rather than to one that is isomorphic to the ellipsis antecedent. • central data: dependent tag questions that attach to fragment answers • main gist of the analysis: short clefts are the default sources for clausal ellipsis because pronouns and copulas are freely available as ellipsis antecedents in any discourse

Intersubjectification in cognitive grammar: reflecting on english and polish reflexives

Abstract: The paper provides a cognitive grammar analysis of reflexivization phenomena in English and Polish. Three separate although related claims are made: (i) underlying reflexiviza­tion phenomena is the intersubjectification process which involves the so-called refer­ence point relationship; (ii) the intersubjectification process takes place in the Current Discourse Space – CDS (Langacker 2008), whereby the degree of the antecedent’s ac­cessibility for the reflexive pronoun is established; (iii) while in Polish, the antecedent’s accessibility is closely linked to the detransitivization process, in English, it is determined by the accessibility hierarchy in the sense of Kuno (1987).

Numbering System for Antecedents and Outcomes

Abstract: A numbering system for antecedents and outcomes providing a method for numbering antecedents and outcomes that reveals underlying information of relationships. The numbering system for antecedents and outcomes utilizes a mathematical relationship and an antecedent's or outcome's existing characterizing information to assign a unique indexing number identifying each antecedent and outcome. In an antecedent numbering system, the unique indexing number is able to provide information about the contributor line number, the cohort, the combination of the preceding multiple antecedents, and the sequence number of the outcome. In an outcomes numbering system, the unique indexing number provides information about the sequence line number, the cohort, the combination of the antecedents, and the order numberof the outcomes.