Interpreting Anaphoric Expressions A Cognitive versus a Pragmatic Approach

Interpreting Anaphoric Expressions: A Cognitive versus a Pragmatic ApproachAuthor(s): Mira ArielReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), pp. 3-42Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176255 .

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J. Linguistics 30 (I994), 3-42. Copyright C) 1994 Cambridge University Press

Interpreting anaphoric expressions: a cognitive versus a pragmatic approach

MIRA ARIEL

Tel Aviv University

(Received 6 August 1992; revised I7 March 1994)

Levinson (I985, i987a & b, I99I) and Ariel (i985a & b, I987, i988a & b, i990oa, 99i) have each proposed to anchor discourse and sentential anaphora within a more general theory of communication. Levinson chose a general, extra-linguistic pragmatic theory. He uses Grice's Quantity maxim to account for the distribution of zeros, reflexives, pronouns and lexical NPs, claiming that coreferent readings are preferred, unless a disjoint reading is implicated (by the revised Gricean maxims he offers). I have proposed a specifically linguistic, cognitive theory, whereby speakers guide addressees' retrievals of mental representations corresponding to all definite NPs (coreferent as well as disjoint) by signalling to them the degree of Accessibility associated with the intended mental entity in their memory. An examination of actual data reveals that Levinson's predictions regarding definite NP interpretations are often not borne out. In addition, his proposals cannot account for many anaphoric patterns actually found in natural discourse. Accessibility theory, it is argued, can account for both types of problematic data.

I. INTRODUCTION

Levinson (I985, published as i987a, i987b, I99I) and Ariel (I985a&b, I987, i988a, i988b, published as i99i, IggOa) share an interest in the mechanisms responsible for anaphoric interpretations performed by addressees, both in discourse and within the sentence. We also share a theoretical framework: the view that extra-linguistic factors can sometimes supply better accounts than the grammar can, and that when it is the grammar that accounts for a linguistic phenomenon it is quite feasible, indeed desirable that a cognitive motivation lie behind it. The 'Avoid Pronoun' principle, claimed to be grammatical by Chomsky (I98I), is one case in point (Ariel I985b, I988a&b, iggoa; Levinson I987a&b). Along with Horn (I985), we have proposed to reduce its status to that of an extra-grammatical principle. Control phenomena (Ariel I987, iggoa; Levinson i985, i987b) and reflexives (Ariel I987; Levinson I99I) are two other linguistic phenomena we have sought to explain in terms of (but not necessarily reduce to) pragmatic accounts.

Moreover, neither of us believes that it is the pragmaticist's primary goal to conquer more and more territory from the grammarian. We see grammar mostly as a grammaticalized functional system of communication, which during the freezing process may have developed quite a few arbitrary and

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MIRA ARIEL

formal distinctions. These, we believe, should be left to the formal grammarians to deal with. We have therefore proceeded along similar lines in recent years, each attempting to provide a non-grammatical account for anaphoric interpretations. In particular, we have also argued that the Binding principles (Chomsky, I98I), regulating both syntactic and semantic properties of NPs are not so different from the principles governing discourse anaphora (Ariel I985a&b, 1987, iggoa, I99I; Levinson 1987b, i99i). Hence, they can be either reduced (the stronger claim, taken by Levinson) to pragmatic considerations or motivated (the weaker version, adopted by me) by cognitive considerations.

It is not surprising that we have chosen to call our respective endeavors to account for the nonlinguistic considerations in anaphoric interpretations by different names. Levinson attempts to account for anaphora interpretation via a (revised) Gricean procedure of implicatures, a classical pragmatic approach. I have argued that the appropriate use of referring expressions depends on a proper evaluation by the speaker of the Accessibility of the intended referents to the addressee. Influenced by numerous psycholinguistic experiments, which have shown beyond doubt that different anaphoric expressions trigger different processing procedures (see especially Sanford & Garrod I98I), I proposed (Ariel 1985a&b and onwards) that referring expressions (anaphoric expressions among them) signal specific (relative) degrees of Accessibility of mental representations.

I would like to argue in this paper that Levinson's pragmatic proposal is insufficient as is, especially when a greater variety of anaphoric expressions are taken into account. While I agree with the spirit of the approach, as well as with many of its insightful conclusions, I think that a complete theory of how referring expressions are interpreted cannot make do with general instructions generating certain implicatures, although these are certainly needed. We need Accessibility theory as a mediator between linguistic forms and pragmatic inferencing for anaphoric interpretations (generated by Relevance considerations).

We will proceed as follows. Section 2 will introduce Levinson's theory. Section 3 will present my arguments against it. Section 4 will be dedicated to my own proposals concerning discourse and sentential anaphora.

2. THE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO ANAPHORA: LEVINSON'S NEO-GRICEAN ANALYSIS

Presenting some puzzling data from Guugu Yimidhirr, which abounds with zero anaphora, Levinson (1987b) first draws our attention to the fact that anaphoric interpretations are not usually marked as such unambiguously. Rather, it is a pragmatic matter for the addressee to determine that coreference was intended by the speaker (as well as what the antecedent is), based on common sense knowledge about probabilities of events and other

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INTERPRETING ANAPHORIC EXPRESSIONS

such considerations (see also Ariel iggoa; Part III). This is certainly far from controversial, although it is not clear how one is to deal with it under Levinson's theory (more below). Levinson's more substantial claims are also more linguistic in nature. In line with Levinson (I987a), which concentrated more on discourse anaphora, Levinson (I987b: 384) attempts to partially reduce grammatical anaphora to pragmatics. He claims that 'the more " minimal" the form, the stronger the preference for a coreferential reading'. He therefore sets up the following scale:

(i) Lexical NP > Pronoun > o (his (5)) This scale predicts that while the forms to the left favor disjoint interpretations with potential antecedents, the forms to the right favor coreference readings.

Pronoun/zero alternations are familiar from Chomsky's (I98I) 'Avoid Pronoun Principle', which states that whenever the language allows a zero form, one is to prefer it - a minimization principle in effect. Indeed, where alternations between zero anaphora (PRO, pro or zero topic) and overt pronouns occur, linguists have judged that native speakers prefer the empty forms. Out of context, this seems to be the case, and (2) below lists two such examples:

(2) (a) Maya1 wants ?for her/herself/PROi to win these elections. (b) birkotai al she+ ?at/o nicaxt ba -

my-congratulations on that you won (in) the bxirot. (Hebrew) elections 'My congratulations to you for having won the elections.'

Levinson attempts to motivate such preferences, as well as those favoring overt pronouns over zeros even though zeros are allowed grammatically. He claims that such pronouns will normally be interpreted as disjoint in reference from their potential linguistic antecedents. Thus, the pronoun in (a) above is unacceptable only under the coreference reading. It is perfectly grammatical, however, on a disjoint reading.

Similarly to Reinhart (I983) with respect to bound anaphora versus free pronouns, Levinson proposes that we need not adopt special principles to account for preferred anaphoric and disjoint readings of reduced NPs (pronouns and zeros). Rather, whenever possible, he rightly argues, one should use general procedures needed in interpretation anyway. Specifically, he refers to Grice's maxim of Quantity (and possibly Manner as well), as motivations for the scale in (I). The maxim of Quantity dictates to speakers to provide as much information as is required for the current purposes of the conversation (Levinson's Q-principle), but not to volunteer too much information (Levinson's I-principle).

For each principle Levinson suggests both a speaker and an addressee- based instruction. The Q-principle instructs the speaker to offer the strongest

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MIRA ARIEL

possible statement she can commit herself to. The addressee, on his part, is to take it that the speaker has indeed conformed to the Q-principle. Therefore, if there is a stronger claim, which the speaker could have made, since it entails the one she actually made (and it uses expressions of equal length and complexity), then the addressee can deduce that the speaker must know that the stronger claim is false. Thus, since the speaker in (3) chose to assert (a) and not (b), which entails it and is more informative, the speaker must be committed also to the truth of (c), which negates (b):1

(3) (a) Some of my best friends are men. (b) All of my best friends are men. (c) Not all of my best friends are men.

Since 'all' entails 'some' and the two expressions are equally long and complex, they form a Horn scale. The Q-principle, then, blocks utterance enrichment, by negating the stronger potential claim, with which the original statement is compatible. With respect to the interpretation of potentially anaphoric expressions, Levinson argues, this means blocking the more informative coreference reading, which the speaker could have achieved using the more specific form, e.g. a reflexive as opposed to a pronoun. The latter induces a disjoint reference reading, since the two form a Horn scale.

The I-principle urges speakers to act in the opposite direction, namely, to produce as little information as necessary. The addressee's corollary, then, instructs him to enrich the speaker's statement by producing licensed inferences. He is to generate a more informative, i.e., more specific interpretation from the speaker's utterance, provided he judges the speaker to have intended it. The mechanism he is intended to use instructs him, among other things, to prefer coreference readings, for one is to avoid interpretations that multiply the entities referred to. This preference, argues Levinson, is in line with his I-principle, since reducing the number of entities referred to in discourse causes the speaker's statements to be compatible with fewer states in the world, hence to be more informative. Noting that very often the quantity of semantic information correlates with linguistic size, Levinson suggests that the scale in (I) above be subsumed under the same minimization principle of the I-principle. I will later argue that this conflation of content quantity with form size is problematic.2

A last set of implicatures (dubbed Q/M-implicatures in Levinson I987b, M-implicatures in Levinson I99i) is proposed to ensure that marked forms yield marked interpretations, i.e. non-stereotypical ones. Thus, while

[i] Examples such as these were presumably first discussed by Horn (1972). They were analyzed in the spirit as above by Gazdar (I979).

[2] Levinson actually admits that he is here using Grice's maxim of Manner rather than quantity, specifically, the instruction to be as (linguistically) brief as possible.

6




unmarked forms urge addressees to generate 1-implicatures (enriching the utterance by adding stereotypical details omitted by the speaker), M implicatures encourage the opposite readings. This would account for the disjoint interpretations of lexical NPs.3 Since these three types of implicatures contradict each other in that one calls for the generation of a more informative reading than the speaker's literal message (the 1-implicature), while the others block such enrichments (Q- and M-implicatures), Levinson suggests we order their application as follows:'

(4) (a) Q-implicatures (blocking a stronger interpretation when the relevant expression forms part of a Horn scale contrast set) take precedence over 1-implicatures.

(b) M implicatures (generating marked interpretations when long/ marked forms are used) take precedence over 1-implicatures.

(c) 1-implicatures (producing stereotypical and specific interpretations) are generated, if a and b are not applicable.5

Thus, when a pronoun is used where a reflexive could have been used, a Q- implicature of disjoint reference is generated. Since the pronoun and the reflexive form a contrast set, and since the speaker chose the weaker (i.e. less informative) form of the two, the addressee is to infer that the stronger reading does not hold. Hence, the following, usually thought of as a purely grammatical judgment, turns out to be pragmatically motivated:

(5) Ginati likes her*i,j/herself.

However, when a pronoun is used where a reflexive could not have been used, nothing blocks 1-implicature generation, and coreference is preferred:

(6) Ginati said shei/*herself would come.

The use of a pronoun where zero could have occurred (a below), or the use of a lexical NP where a pronoun could have occurred (b) is considered a marked use. They therefore induce an M implicature, and the preferred reading is of noncoreference:

(7) (a) Iddoi would like him11i//o to win these elections. (b) Mayai came early and the child,i,/she began to play.

[3] Lexical NPs and even pronouns count as marked where pronouns and zeros could have been used respectively. Markedness is therefore sensitive to the context.

[4] But see Horn (I985) for an attempt to draw a division of labour between them, I- enrichments occurring only with regard to stereotypic inferences.

[5] Levinson presents the order somewhat differently in his I987b paper (statement 46), claiming that the I-principle applies if the Q-principle fails to apply, unless the Q/M- principle is applicable. I find the formulation in (4) above clearer. He does not say anything definite about the relation between Q-implicatures and M-implicatures (see his I99I paper, note 8), but it seems to me they are unordered. Thus, a marked form can perhaps generate a Q-implicature in addition to its generating an M-implicature.

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MIRA ARIEL

Note that this explanation can only work if one knows 'ahead' where reflexives can occur, for pronouns' distribution is complementary to that of reflexives. Indeed, Levinson proposes to adopt Condition A of Binding as is, namely:

(8) Anaphors must be bound in their Governing Category.

Presumably, pronouns occur everywhere else. However, in addition, Levinson adopts Reinhart's (I983) optional Co-indexing rule, which permits a grammatical Co-indexing of two NPs when a pronoun is c-commanded by an NP outside its minimal Governing Category (in addition to the Co- indexing of anaphors). Levinson has to have this additional grammatical rule, for, as Reinhart (I983) has shown, where bound anaphora (as in (a) below) could have been used but was not (as in (b)), addressees interpret non- coreference:

(9) (a) Bound Anaphora: Near heri Maya1 saw Iddo.

(b) Free Pronoun: Near Maya1 she*i,/ saw Iddo.

Note that had Levinson not added Reinhart's comparison between bound anaphora and free pronouns' coreference, he would not have been able to account for the non-coreference in (9b). Consider the pronoun she. When compared with a reflexive (for the possible generation of a Q-implicature of disjoint reference), the result is that since a reflexive is inappropriate in this context, a pronoun can be used to induce a coreference reading (according to the I-principle). This is obviously a wrong prediction, since (9b) necessarily implies a disjoint reading of the NPs. However, once the addressee is to compare (b) with (a), its potential semantic equivalent, noting that the speaker must have avoided the bound anaphora in (a), he infers that non- coreference is intended. Note that the fact that the proper name is c- commanded by the pronoun within the S domain, a violation of Condition C, cannot explain the ban on coreference in the (b) case, for Reinhart (I983),

and Levinson following her, argues for the elimination of Condition C from the grammar.

This adoption of Reinhart's Co-indexing rule actually means that Levinson includes Condition B effects within the grammar, and I cannot see how he claims to have eliminated Condition B (in English, at least).6 Reinhart herself (p.c.), on whom Levinson relies here, does not claim to have eliminated Condition B from the grammar. Note also that once one is required to compare between a potentially bound pronoun and a free pronoun in order to generate Q-implicatures of disjoint references, Horn's scale looks a bit less

[6] But I have no reason to doubt his analysis of Guugu Yimidhirr, which does not seem to require Condition B.

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familiar. Bound pronouns are not formally distinct from free pronouns (in most languages). Instead of listing in order of informativeness items equally lexicalized, it must now contain the syntactic structures needed in order to recognize c-command relations and minimal Governing Categories. Note, moreover, that the constraint on equal complexity of the forms compared must also be lifted, since backwards anaphora (the favored form in (9)) is by all psycholinguistic criteria more complex than forwards anaphora (see Ariel i985b).

While in his I987b paper Levinson attempts to derive condition B and C patterns (of pronouns and lexical NPs respectively) from a grammatical Condition A (on reflexives), Levinson (I99I) demonstrates that at least for some languages, a different division of labour exists between the grammar and pragmatics. As often noted in the literature, many languages either do not have special reflexive forms (i.e., used as bound pronouns within a minimal Governing category), or else, their reflexives and pronouns are not in complementary distribution, as Binding Conditions dictate. Hence, they seem to lack Condition A.

Since one condition at least is to be specified by the grammar, Levinson suggests that some languages are B-first, rather than A-first. That is, their grammar specifies Condition B of Binding, rather than Condition A. In order to generate coreference readings with reflexives, reflexives are now (rightly) considered marked forms. Following Faltz (I977, I985) and Farmer & Harnish (I987), Levinson claims that in the unmarked case, arguments of one predicate are assumed to be disjoint. Hence, once coreference is sought, it has to be marked by a marked form (Ariel (I987) offered quite a similar analysis). Indeed, most reflexives are longer and more complex forms as compared with regular pronouns. Many continue to fulfil emphatic functions in addition to reflexivity.

Condition A patterns are therefore now generated via M implicatures, which urge addressees to choose a nonstereotypic interpretation, coreference in this case. Also, once a lexical NP is used, where a pronoun could be used (i.e. in the same S, but not as an argument of the same predicate as the antecedent), the addressee is again instructed to generate an M implicature, this time of non-coreference, since a pronoun would have I-implicated coreference (see (7b) again). Levinson then suggests that it is highly likely that many A-first languages emerged out of historically B-first languages. I find this quite convincing.

Once we assume that coreference between co-arguments of the same predicate is marked, we no longer need the Q-implicature in A-first languages. It is not clear to me why Levinson wants to retain the Horn scale of reflexives > pronouns after he himself has argued that reflexives are marked forms, generating M implicatures. He does need it for B-first languages with long distance anaphors (reflexives whose antecedents are not found within the clause). For there, argues Levinson, the contrast between a

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MIRA ARIEL

regular pronoun and a reflexive is not necessarily in the markedness of having coreferent clause-mates, but rather, of presenting a marked point of view (so-called logophoricity). Since the difference between pronouns and reflexives need not be referentiality, the two forms are not semantically equivalent, and hence, the use of a reflexive may be justified on the basis of the marked point of view. A pronoun in the same environment may indicate an unmarked point of view while pointing to the same antecedent.

This change from an A-first to a B-first analysis of the Binding conditions does not affect my criticism of Levinson's pragmatic theory of anaphora. Both analyses assume a complementary distribution between referring expressions. Both assume that the main question to be resolved by the addressee with respect to potentially anaphoric expressions is whether the speaker intended a coreference or disjoint reading. Both analyses assume that the only crucial contextual factors are those captured by the grammarians, and that addressees can trivially identify what the intended antecedent is. In the next section I will argue against these assumptions. I will have nothing further to say about Levinson's failure to replace Condition B, for I myself am not endorsing such a step. I will suggest that the three Binding Conditions, although grammatical in the sense that they are formally defined, are the reflection of the cognitive Accessibility theory to be outlined in section 4. The main bulk of this paper will be dedicated to discourse anaphora.

3. ARGUING AGAINST THE PRAGMATIC APPROACH

I will first try to show that Levinson's assumptions on how potentially anaphoric expressions are actually interpreted in discourse miss a whole range of facts actually manifested in natural language (section 3.I). I will then discuss a few weaknesses and inconsistencies in the theory he has offered (3.2).

3. I The interpretation of potentially anaphoric expressions

It is certainly true that given any pair of NPs, one potentially constituting an antecedent, the other potentially anaphorically related to it, an unequivocal decision can and should be made by the addressee on whether the two are to be read coreferentially or disjointly. However, I claim that many more considerations are involved in such decisions than Levinson admits, even if we limit ourselves to linguistic antecedents, which is what I will do for the most part. First, it is not trivially established which potential referent will be checked as to coreference/disjointness. I claim that one must assess certain relevant features about it (in addition to grammatical ones), before a decision can be made whether this is the intended antecedent. Second, one needs to weigh subtle contextual factors which determine the relation between the

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potential antecedent (or the unit in which it occurs in) and the potential anaphoric expression (or the unit it is in). Third, one should take into account the specific potentially anaphoric expressions chosen, for these do not all trigger identical preferential patterns of coreference/disjoint readings.

Levinson has ignored the nature of the antecedent (the first issue), he has not fully appreciated the importance of the variety of contexts (the second issue), nor the great variety in anaphoric devices routinely manipulated by the speakers (the third issue). The relevant contexts for him are the c- command domain and the S domain (assuming he has not eliminated Condition B). The expressions he analyzes are full NPs, pronouns, reflexives and zeros. In what follows I will show that interpreting potentially anaphoric expressions requires the addressee to take into consideration the nature of the potential antecedent (3.1.I ), other contexts than the ones Levinson discusses (3. I.2), and additional types of anaphoric expressions than those he lists (3.I.3). Hence, if I am correct, the Levinson addressee will not be able to make the correct interpretation in all cases, for his theory does not require him to weigh enough relevant factors.

3.I.I The nature of the antecedent

It seems that Levinson's addressees are required to know ahead of time what the one and only one potential linguistic antecedent is, and then, all they have to do is establish whether the potentially anaphoric expression at hand is coreferent or disjoint from it. Consider, however, the following (originally from Broadbent (1973)):

(io) The feedpipe lubricates the chain, and it should be adjusted to leave a gap half an inch between itself and the sprocket.

In discourse, I argue, many, if not most interpretations of anaphoric expressions occur in contexts such as (io), i.e., where there is more than one antecedent compatible with the grammatical specifications of the anaphoric expression. Levinson's theory cannot explain to us how one decides among various potential antecedents. Note, however, that this decision affects the later decision about the anaphoric expression being coreferent or disjoint. In the examples he quotes, Levinson seems to pick the most accessible antecedent (by my criteria, see below), the feedpipe in this case, and then he can argue that pronouns such as in (io) generate an 1-implicature of coreference.7 But what happens when we pick chain as a potential antecedent? The same it is then disjoint in reference. However, I do not see how either a

[7] Note that Levinson does not actually discuss the above example. See his 1985 article (p. 40), where he actually uses the following premise, correct in itself, in order to ensure that we pick the right antecedent: 'We've just been talking about Douglas'. Shouldn't this consideration form part of the theory of reference interpretation? I believe it should (see section 4 below).

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Q- or an M-implicature of disjointness could be generated, since neither zero nor a reflexive could have occurred instead. Levinson would then need to supply a principle by which choices are made among equally possible coreference readings. He has offered none so far.

Another relevant example is stressed pronouns. Stressed pronouns should be classified as marked on Levinson's markedness scale. As such, they should generate an M implicature of disjointness. This is indeed true when the most accessible antecedent is considered (in most cases, the topic).8 However, stressed pronouns are used anaphorically quite often, although they pick a less obvious candidate as antecedent:

(II) Maya1 kissed Ginatj, and then SHE*i/i went home.

Thus, Levinson's ignoring the question of choosing the antecedent makes him assume that by some chance the right antecedent for his theory is chosen (in (io) for coreference and in (II) for disjointness), but he ignores other possible choices, which in (io) would give a wrong prediction of coreference (with chain) and in (I I), a correct coreference prediction, despite the marked form, which is supposed to generate a disjoint reading according to him.

3.I.2 The nature of the relation between the antecedent (unit) and the anaphor (unit)

The only relations between antecedents and potential anaphors recognized by Levinson are a c-command relation within the minimal Governing Category (reflexives demanding it, pronouns and lexical NPs forbidding it), and a c-command relation outside the minimal Governing Category (which enables the coindexing of pronouns). However, as we shall see below, many more aspects of the relation between the antecedent clause and the anaphoric expression clause play an important role in decisions regarding coreference/ disjointness Qf potential anaphoric expressions. Indeed, some, if not many, of Levinson's would-be disjoint readings are coreferent after all. This discrepancy results from his failure to consider the potential variety of relations which may hold between antecedents and anaphoric expressions,

[8] An anonymous referee has rightly argued against my assumption that topicality is the only relevant factor is assigning stressed pronouns their antecedents, by presenting the following examples, where unlike my claim above, it is the stressed pronoun which refers to the topic (Maya, in (i)) while the unstressed pronoun refers to the nontopic (Ginat, in (ii)):

(i) Mayai kissed Ginat1 and then Iddo kissed HERj/*;J (ii) Mayai kissed Ginat; and then Iddo kissed her*i/i.

The reader is, of course, right. The true generalization about what antecedent is chosen by stressed pronouns is not topicality, but rather, salience. High salience, in its turn, can be established in virtue of quite a few factors. One of them is topicality, another (as in the examples here) is expectations due to the preference of parallel readings in conjoined sentences, where one candidate is more plausible than another in a certain role (more on this in Ariel (iggoa: I83-4)).

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above those specified by the grammar. Roughly, when the relation between the two clauses is not highly cohesive, what Levinson predicts to be a disjoint anaphoric expression turns out to be interpreted as coreferent.

Consider the following minimal pair, offered by Haegeman (I984: (ia) & (2a)):

(I2) (a) Johni did all the housework while John's,i wife was ill. (b) Johni will study Linguistics, while John'siij father used to teach

literature.

Note that while Levinson can account for the ungrammaticality of the coreference in (a), since a pronoun is appropriate here, he cannot account for the possible coreference in (b), where again, a pronoun is allowed.

Another pair of contexts which are indistinguishable either by the grammar or by Levinson's theory are presented below. Li & Thompson (1979) quote the following example from Chinese:

(I 3) (a) This Wang-Mian was gifted. (b) o (= he) was not more than twenty years of age. (c) o(= he) had already mastered everything in astronomy,

geography, and classics. (d) However, he had a different personality. (e) Not only did o (= he) not seek officialdom...

Note that in Chinese, references to highly accessible entities, as 'Wang-Mian' above must be, are preferably made by zeros. This happens in three of the four non-initial references above, and a pronoun in any of them would have indeed favoured a disjoint reading.9 Still, this effect is not felt in clause (d). The pronoun is interpreted as coreferent. Now, syntactically, there is no difference between the antecedent-anaphor relationship in (d) as opposed to (b, c, e): the antecedent occurs in an independent preceding clause. Li & Thompson, however, suggest that clause (in)dependency is not a syntactic matter only. It is also pragmatic in nature, and pragmatic cohesion plays a role in anaphoric interpretations. According to Li & Thompson, the degree of conjoinability between clauses prefaced by a semantic connective such as however, is lower. Hence the preference for a pronoun in such contexts. Levinson has no way of accounting for such differences.

Hebrew is also a pro drop language to a large extent. It therefore poses the same and other problems for Levinson's analysis. As in Chinese, a Hebrew speaker should have no reason to use an overt pronoun when coreference is intended, for zero is usually allowed. However, overt coreferent pronouns occur quite often, their popularity depending on the genre (much more so in spoken than in written discourse). The following pair of sentences, differing only with respect to the occurrence (b) or nonoccurrence (a) of the semantic

[9] See Henry (I986) too for discussion of such judgments in Chinese.

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connective laxen 'therefore' was presented in Ariel (iggoa) (along with others):

(I4) (a) ??Noga dibra im shimon yafe, ve + o yaazor Noga spoke with Simon nicely, and will-help

la li + sxov et ha + mizvada. her to carry ACC the suitcase

(b) Noga dibra im shimon yafe, ve + laxen Noga spoke with Simon nicely, and therefore o yaazor la li + sxov et ha + mizvada.

will-help her to carry ACC the suitcase

In the same spirit as the Li & Thompson's proposal, I have accounted for such preferences by reference to the nature of the relationship between the antecedent and the anaphor. While in both (a) and (b) above, the clauses containing the antecedent and the anaphor respectively are conjoined, only in (b) is there a semantic connective which draws our attention to a semantic relation between them. Hence the ability to use zero.

Hebrew present tense does not usually permit zero options (which can be explained by Accessibility theory - see Ariel (i99oa, I99I) - though not by Levinson). However, the informal spoken register then has another type of minimal pair: full pronouns as opposed to cliticized pronouns. Note that whereas Levinson's theory would predict that cliticized forms should be preferred when coreference is sought by the speaker, the following has two full pronouns (in c and d), both interpreted as coreferent, although cliticized forms are of course acceptable, and indeed occur (in b and c). The example was first quoted in Ariel (i99oa: (6I)-(62), where sources are listed):

(I5) (a) Established discourse topic:10 the press, referred to by the full pronoun they or its stressed version, for a number of clauses preceding (b) below.

(b) h + mociim [-hem mociim] et ze kaxa... they publish ACC this like-this

(c) aval hem madgishim . .. h + notnim [= hem notnim] kama ... but they emphasize ... they give a-few

(d) od davar she+ hem asu... another thing that they did

Note that again, where the speaker chose to switch to the full pronoun is not arbitrary. (c) introduces a contrast, i.e. a shift from the previous unit, (d)

[io] An anonymous referee has commented on my nonchalant identification of topics. Since the definition of topic is not at issue in this paper, I think we can make do with my intuitive identification of topics. Discourse topics were counted as such if they could have been so classified by Reinhart's (I98I) criterion, and provided they were repeatedly used as sentence topics. Readers can verify this for themselves in (I 5). Where I do not specify a long enough stretch of discourse (as in the Alice Walker story examples in (i 6)), readers will have to trust me, or else consult the original text.

I4




introduces an aside.1' Levinson can offer no explanation for this pattern of distribution. He would wrongly predict a disjoint reading for the full pronouns.

A similar problem arises with respect to first person pronouns. Since Hebrew verbs mark first person in their inflection, there should never be a context which calls for the employment of an overt pronoun. After all, when following another first person reference, there is no possible 'disjoint' reference here (assuming the same speaker). Although Levinson can correctly predict that coreference will be deduced despite the overt pronoun which could be substituted by zero, he cannot motivate speakers' preference (in certain contexts but not others) to use full pronouns anyway (because of the speaker's Q-principle). The following is a minimal pair from literary Hebrew, a style notorious for its preference for zeros (see Ariel Iggoa for precise statistics):

(i 6) (a) ze haya davar shel ma bexax bishvil yalda o it was nothing for (a) girl or isha le+heanes. ani acmi neenasti, kshe- o (a) woman to-get-raped. I myself was-raped, when [I] hayiti bat-shtem-esre. ima af paam lo yadaa, u- was twelve-years-old. Mama never (not) knew, and o meolam lo siparti le+ ish. [I] never (not) told to- anybody (Walker I985: 30)

(b) hu pashut himshix le + nasot le + alec oti la + cet he just kept trying to make me to- go ito, ve+ lifamim, mi-tox hergel, ani xoshevet, with-him, and sometimes, out or habit, I guess, o halaxti ito. gufi asa ma she + [I] went with-him. my-body did what (that) [it] shulam she+ yaase. ve- ima meta. ve- ani was-being-paid to do. and Mother died. and I haragti et buba. killed ACC Bubba. (Walker I985: 3')

Note that while both final clauses unambiguously refer to the narrator (recall that Hebrew morphology makes that clear), only the (b) example contains an overt pronoun. I have suggested that the choice is dictated by the nature of the shift back to the discourse topic (the narrator). Although the mother is the previous sentence topic in both examples, the break from the story line is far more drastic in (b) (the mother's death). Hence the use of the fuller form, which has no connection to coreferentiality or disjointness.

[i i] Similarly, Fox (I987) distinguishes between sequences closed down, that is fully processed, calling for a full NP as an anaphoric device, and sequences not yet closed down, calling for the use of a pronoun instead.

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We thus see that any theory which attempts a simple prediction about coreference or disjointness, without taking into account subtle differences in the nature of the relation between the antecedent and the potentially anaphoric expression, will not do. We have seen above that within the same contexts (as they are defined by Levinson) the very same expressions (Chinese and Hebrew pronouns) trigger coreference sometimes, but disjointness on other occasions. Also, minimal anaphoric expressions will not be used sometimes (e.g. o in (I4a) and (i6b)), although the context, as it is defined by Levinson, is appropriate for their use.

3.1.3 The type of anaphoric expression

While Levinson can draw an infinite number of distinctions among potentially anaphoric expressions, depending on both relative brevity and degree of informativity, he cannot actually use these distinctions to predict the different distributional patterns of these expressions. Since only reflexives and grammatically coindexed pronouns have distinct contexts, all the others are necessarily defined as occurring in the same contexts. In other words, since free pronouns, definite descriptions, proper names and other expression types to be mentioned below, can all occur in environments where the antecedent does not c-command the anaphoric expression, Levinson predicts that: a. all expressions other than pronouns, which are more informative/marked (e.g. definite descriptions, proper names) should trigger disjoint readings, and that b. there is no expectation to find differences in the interpretation and actual distribution of such expressions. After all, the only decision is whether a given potentially anaphoric expression triggers a coreference or a disjoint reading. Once it is decided that they all trigger a disjoint reading, Levinson's addressee has no further instructions on what to do in order to interpret that expression. In what follows, I will show that these two expectations are not borne out by the data: Many, if not most definite descriptions and proper names are interpreted by reference to linguistic antecedents on the one hand, and on the other, their textual distributions are significantly different from each other.

Findings from naturally occurring texts show that depending on the discourse genre, (Hebrew) definite descriptions are interpreted as coreferent with some previously mentioned linguistic antecedent between 56.25 % and 8I.4% of the time (see Ariel Iggoa). Taken together, the various sources employ coreferent definite descriptions in 66.2 % of the cases. They are used to retrieve nonlinguistic antecedents (as 'disjoint') only in 33.8 % of the time.12 Moreover, a division of definite descriptions into short ones (up to

[12] See Ariel (iggoa: 35) for exact breakdown and list of references cited. Actually, it is not so much that the discourse genre dictates the nature of the use of definite descriptions. Rather, it is the nature of the genre which guides the speaker on what can be assumed by her without first introducing it into the discourse. Hence, in news items anaphoric uses are

i6




two content words) as opposed to long ones (three content words and above) reveals that the short ones refer the addressee outside the text only in 2I.8 % of the cases. It is quite conceivable that once we count the nonlinguistic antecedents of those definite descriptions mentioned by Levinson, i.e. ones containing only one content words, results would have been even more drastic. Thavenius (I982), who checked a naturally occurring conversation, found that only 10.7 % of the references (no matter what referring expressions) were exophoric. This marginality in exophoric references applies even to deictics, presumably the prototypical expressions for extra-linguistic references. Halliday & Hasan (1976), who examined two chapters of Alice in Wonderland, found that only 20% of the deictics referred the reader to the physical surroundings.

Even full proper names (first + last name), the prime examples for referring outside the discourse, co-refer with antecedents previously mentioned in the text 36.2 % of the time.13 Note, however, that when we examine first names (the type of name used by Levinson), the picture changes dramatically, and in the wrong direction for Levinson. In the texts I examined, no first retrieval (necessarily disjoint in interpretation) was performed by a first name, although I believe that other genres, oral discourse for example, would show them as capable of retrieving nonlinguistic antecedents quite easily. The most common contexts for first names in the texts I examined were when the antecedents occurred in the previous S (42.9 %), or further in the same paragraph (40.8 %). These are all, of course, contexts where pronouns are allowed to occur. Still, the implicature to disjointness with a linguistic antecedent fails to be generated. The statistics for last names are somewhat different, but they too are coreferent with an antecedent in the previous S in a substantial number of the cases (39.2 %).

The second problem which results from Levinson's failure to sufficiently distinguish among referring expressions is his inability to predict where his various so-called disjoint-reference markers will occur. And they do occur in highly predictable environment. Thus, definite descriptions, full names, last names, first names, demonstratives etc., are not randomly distributed in texts, when they have a coreferent antecedent. Neither are their distributions identical. The various studies in Givon (I983), Clancy (I980) and others to be quoted below have all shown that subsequent mentions of the same referents are made using specific referring expressions as dictated by various contextual factors. Table i (= Table i.6 in Ariel (iggoa)), shows that the

more common for definite descriptions than in editorials, where the writer assumes the facts and comments on them, thus using definite descriptions more often to retrieve nonlinguistic antecedents from long-term memory.

[I3] Levinson (I985: (63)) thus comments that the reference to the discourse topic 'Buli Buli' as Buli Buli he is strange. However, if one takes into consideration that Buli Buli was not mentioned in the few previous clauses, which had a different local topic (Douglas), one is perhaps less surprised that the full name is used coreferentially. See more below.

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FURTHER IN ACROSS

FORM SAME S LAST S SAME PARAG. PARAG. TOTAL

Full names 2 (3.4)a 12 (20.7) 15 (25.9) 29 (50) 58 (ioo) Last names 0 31 (39.2) 24 (30.4) 24 (30.4) 79 (I00) First names 3 (6.I) 21 (42.9) 20 (40.8) 5 (I0.2) 49 (Ioo)

Table I. The distribution of various name types in context

a Percentages in parentheses.

various names, for example, each occur in slightly different environments, these being measured by the distance from their linguistic antecedent. In the table, the prototypical contexts of each expression type are in bold."4 Thus, full names (first+ last name) tend to occur in the two most distant contexts (over 75 % of them). Last names are almost equally divided between three of the four contexts, none occurring in the most minimal context, whereas first names mostly occur in the two intermediate contexts (over 83 %).

Similar comparative data were found for personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and definite descriptions (Ariel iggoa: Table 0.3), as can be seen in Table 2. Again, emboldened typeface represents prototypical

FURTHER IN ACROSS FORM SAME S LAST S SAME PARAG. PARAG. TOTAL

Pronouns II0 (20.8)a 320 (60.5) 75 (I4.2) 24 (4.5) 529 (Iao) Demonstrative 4 (48) 50 (59.5) 17 (20.2) I3 (I5.5) 84 (I00) pronouns

Definite 4 (2.8) 20 (I4.1) 65 (45.8) 53 (37.3) 142 (I00)

descriptions

Table 2. The distribution of pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and definite

descriptions in discourse a Percentages in parentheses.

environments for the occurrence of each expression: pronouns favor the two minimal distances (over 8I %), demonstrative pronouns the two intermediate distances (almost 8o %), and definite descriptions favor the maximal distances (over 83 %). Such findings have to be accounted for, and I claim

[I4] Distance, however, was not taken as number of syllables separating the two, but rather, as outlined in the table headings above. This is so because clauses and paragraphs are highly relevant units in terms of processing, more so than number of syllables.




they can be accounted for by the very same mechanism which ensures the preference of coreference over disjoint readings, as they are called by Levinson.

Thus, contra to Levinson's claims, most definite descriptions and proper names are interpreted coreferentially, and their occurrence in the text is far from arbitrary. At this point, Levinson may retort that he never denied that other pragmatic factors may play a role in anaphoric interpretations, and that is correct. However, Accessibility theory can incorporate these 'additional' factors as an integral part of the core theory of reference, as we shall later see. In fact, Accessibility theory need not make a dichotomous distinction between coreference and disjointness. It accounts for both the interpretation of so-called referring expressions as well as for that of anaphoric expressions. As will be argued later, natural languages do not draw a sharp line between expressions specialized for direct reference ('disjoint' interpretation according to Levinson) as opposed to anaphora. Hence, Levinson's attempt to insist on a distinction between a coreference and a disjoint reading is mistaken.

3.2 Problems and inconsistencies in Levinson's principles and scales 3.2. I The I-principle

Levinson assumes that when faced with a choice between a coreference and a disjoint reading, addressees opt for the coreference reading. While this may be true (at least in many cases), I do not believe that Levinson convincingly motivates this alleged preference. Levinson argues that a coreference reading is preferred since informativity requires one to try and minimize the number of entities mentioned in discourse. Coreference, argues Levinson, does not require the addressee to introduce an additional discourse entity. Indeed, a preference to minimize the number of textual referents does seem to manifest itself in actual discourse. New entities, i.e. ones not previously mentioned in the discourse (marked indefinite), are a minority among referring expressions. Most NPs in actual discourse are GIVEN (hence, marked definite) rather than BRAND-NEW, to use Prince's I98I terminology (see Ariel I985b). However, Levinson and I do not at all deal with Brand-New referents. We only discuss potentially anaphoric expressions, which necessarily refer to Given entities, although some of their antecedents may have not yet appeared in the specific discourse.

It is not clear to me how Given entities (say from the physical surroundings or from long term memory) can be said to detract from the informativity of the proposition. If informativity is indeed measured by the number of possible worlds reduced, there is no a priori reason to assume that the number of eliminated options is larger when the referent has been mentioned in the specific discourse. In other words, disjointness with a previous linguistic antecedent is no obstacle to informativity, and coreference is not

I9



MIRA ARIEL

guaranteed to increase informativity. Thus, I see no necessary connection between informativity and the preference for coreference.'5 Levinson then does not properly motivate his 1-implicatures calling for coreference.

Similarly, Levinson's effort to change the prediction of I-enrichments from coreference to disjointness in his I99I article is not convincing. Levinson argues that Informativity enrichments are based on stereotypes. Thus, since one normally performs actions on others rather than on oneself (e.g. kissing, hitting are performed on others), a reflexive, which is a marked form, is required for marking the coreference between arguments of the same predicate (such as washing or loving oneself). While I myself have endorsed such a view, I do not see how Levinson can view the stereotypic implicatures (of coreference) as creating more informative readings. If anything, then nonstereotypic interpretations are more informative than stereotypic ones, in that they eliminate from consideration a more deeply engrained belief. In other words, the I-principle cannot both be informativity and stereotypy.

Levinson may then defend his I-enrichment procedures, which supposedly cause preferences for coreference over disjoint readings, by arguing that processing entities stored in long-term memory takes more time, and that is of course true on the whole. It is only common-sensical to assume that highly accessible memory items, as currently mentioned discourse entities must be, are less costly to process than highly inaccessible ones. Indeed, it is these processing procedures, and not informativity, that account for the overwhelmingly anaphoric uses of referring expressions. But then, the argument for the preference for coreference should be based on ease of processing, rather than on informativity. With this I agree, of course, and I too do not view this preference as belonging in a specifically reference-related theory. It follows from Sperber & Wilson's (I986) Relevance theory, which instructs the speaker to take into account the addressee's processing costs. However, I shall argue that processing procedures are more crucially involved in the characterization of referring expressions. Specifically, since speakers may wish to refer not to the most salient potential referent, they should overtly instruct the addressee to search for a less salient antecedent.

3.2.2 The minimization principles

One problem with the minimization scales offered by Levinson is actually acknowledged by Levinson (I987a & b) himself. Levinson conflates (at least) two concepts of minimization, the principle which lies at the heart of his theory. One minimization is semantic. Thus, a pronoun is semantically emptier, i.e. less specific than a full NP, and is to be preferred by the speaker when she judges that the addressee can generate an I-enrichment implicature.

[i5] In fact, Giora (I988) argues that informativity is increased when probabilities decrease. In other words, the less accessible interpretation (disjointness) is actually more informative rather than less informative.

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A second minimization principle also calls the speaker to prefer a pronoun over a full NP, but this time because pronouns are shorter linguistic forms. In other words, minimization is interchangeably used as formal brevity and as semantic non-specificity.

Now, this conflation is not baseless. In the unmarked case, shorter forms are also poorer semantically. Thus, Levinson's scale between: Lexical NP > Pronoun > Zero Anaphor seems to fulfill both the formal and the semantic conditions. As argued in Ariel (i985b, Iggoa), many referring expressions can be distinguished as to the amount of information they contain (Ariel's criterion of Informativity). In addition to the expressions compared on Levinson's scale above, I have discussed differences between zero and pronouns versus full demonstratives (e.g. that book), a bare demonstrative (that) versus a full demonstrative, first and last name versus full name, and in general, any form with as opposed to without a modifier, as well as richer versus poorer modifiers (recall the difference between short versus long definite descriptions). Many of these are, of course, irrelevant to Levinson's research program since he simply classifies them as generating 'disjoint' readings, but we have already seen that this classification misses the general picture of references in natural discourse.

However, these oppositions, which meet both the formal and the semantic criteria, are only the unmarked cases. Natural languages, unfortunately, are known to not always grammaticalize in an 'unmarked' manner. So-called marked occurrences, which are properly and unproblematically comp- rehended by addressees, must be taken into account too. And I will later suggest that they can be incorporated together with the 'unmarked' cases under the same (Accessibility) theory. Consider the proper name Bea, as opposed to she, and U.S. as opposed to The United States. The first pair consists of equally long members, whose semantic richness differs con- siderably. The expressions in the second pair are of different sizes but equal semantic content. Hence, semantic minimization does not necessarily translate into formal minimization.

Consider now semantic minimization as a sole criterion. There are a number of differences among potentially anaphoric expressions, which Levinson's semantic concept of minimization (= Ariel's informativity criterion) fails to generate. Again recall that although for Levinson these expressions would seem irrelevant, since he dubs them all as generating disjoint references, we are here taking his notion of 'disjoint' as potentially coreferent with a less salient antecedent. Thus, the semantic criterion fails to predict a different referential pattern for the following pairs of expressions: a definite description versus a full demonstrative, proximal versus distal demonstratives, verbal agreement (as in Hebrew) versus cliticized pronouns and versus full pronouns. In each pair, we cannot diagnose one item which is semantically richer. They are equally informative. However, as we have seen above (section 3.1), their distributional patterns in natural discourse are

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MIRA ARIEL

different. Moreover, the semantic/informativity criterion predicts different patterns of distribution for pronouns and demonstratives in languages such as Chinese, Hebrew and English. Whereas Chinese demonstratives are more informative than pronouns, since they combine with noun classifiers, Hebrew pronouns and demonstratives are equally informative (distinct forms distinguish for gender and number in both expression types). English pronouns, on the other hand, are actually more informative than demonstrative pronouns, for only they have distinct forms for the two sexes and another for inanimates. Levinson completely ignores the question of demonstrative pronouns, but invariably, demonstratives corefer with more distant antecedents than pronouns.

Another difficulty with the semantic criterion can be seen in the following scale, which serves as a basis for Q-implicatures: reflexive > pronoun/lexical NP. If it is specificity which is at the basis of Q-implicatures, how come a proper name (a type of lexical NP) is not positioned to the left of the reflexive? Surely the information it conveys is more specific than a reflexive. And how come there is no scale between free pronouns and lexical NPs, positioning lexical NPs in general, to the left of free pronouns, since they are more specific in their content? Just as reflexives point to an antecedent more unequivocally than a pronoun does, so do lexical NPs in general, and proper names in particular.

Next, consider the formal minimization criterion. First, if minimality of form and not of information is crucial to the scale, i.e. to the options compared, it is not clear how Levinson can have addressees compare between bound and free pronouns, which are formally indistinct in terms of formal minimality (recall that he has added that comparison to Q-implicature generation). Moreover, if Levinson insists on a contrast between bound and free pronouns, he must then allow for comparisons between whole structures. This creates other problems. Thus, I see no reason for a Levinson's addressee not to compare (a) and (b) in the following pair, reaching the conclusion that (b) generates a disjoint reading, although it does not:

(I7) (a) Janei promised PROi to leave. (b) Janei promised (that) she*i/j would leave.'6

Unlike the example in (I 7), (i 8) shows that when the constructions are identical, PRO/pronoun choices do generate disjoint readings, as shown by Levinson (I987a) himself:

(i8) Janei wants PROi/herj to leave. Note that Levinson considers VP conjunctions as sentential conjunctions,

with zero anaphor for subject (even in English, see his 1987b: example (i)).

[i6] Levinson may retort that (b) here is longer, which is true, but recall that Levinson's condition for comparison includes equal complexity as well. And at least some of the bound pronouns compared with free pronouns involve backwards anaphora as opposed to forwards anaphora. The former, of course, is considered much more difficult to process.

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In that case, (b) in the following pair should also be interpreted as disjoint in reference, because the zero option is available:

(i9) (a) Ginat woke up for a minute and o went back to sleep. (b) Ginat woke up for a minute and she went back to sleep.

This, of course, is not true. Coreference is far from being dispreferred in (b). We thus see that Levinson's attempt to capture Reinhart's intuition about bound versus free pronouns within his theory would go against his 'equally complex' constraint, as well as introduce problems of interpretation (I 7b and igb).

Secondly, Levinson conflates two distinct concepts in his markedness scale (zero > pronoun > lexical NP), which is used to generate M-implicatures: Markedness and length. Although it is again generally true that popular forms (unmarked in terms of their distribution) do tend to shorten (the, for example, is a derivative of the longer that), this is not always true. Thus, although zero anaphors are acceptable in Hebrew, they are by no means felt to be the unmarked forms (unlike Chinese or Japanese). The same applies to Hebrew cliticized pronouns. Moreover, even English sometimes shows omissions of (at least) first person pronouns. But these zero anaphors are certainly marked, although they are of course shorter than pronouns.

A third problem is Levinson's prediction that marked forms (except for reflexives) trigger disjoint readings, or, as we see it, they are potentially coreferent with less accessible antecedents. English this... versus the..., then pose a problem. This being the phonologically lengthier form (and, moreover, the intuitively more marked form), should point to less salient antecedents than the... The exact opposite is, however, true (see again Table i above). The same applies to this versus that, the former being the marked member of the pair, while it is the latter which refers to less obvious/close by antecedents (see Ariel (iggoa: 51-5) for examples and references for such distinctions in English, French, German, Latin, Spanish and Turkish).

In fact, I think markedness should not form part of the core theory of (co)reference at all. It should be kept for the explanation of truly marked cases, e.g. where languages differ from each other in unpredictable ways. Note that Levinson needs two scales of referring expressions and two sets of implicatures (Q and M), both implicating disjointness, probably because he wants to keep the Horn scale (for Q-implicatures) with its constraint on the items being equally lexicalized. The items on the markedness scale (generating M-implicatures) cannot meet this criterion for obvious reasons. I will later show that if one relaxes this constraint, one Accessibility scale can be formulated, which accounts for both coreference readings as well as for what Levinson calls 'disjoint' references. In fact, the forms on Levinson's markedness scale are not particularly marked (except for reflexives). We have seen the popularity of many of them in coreference readings in the findings above. And even the truly marked forms (stressed pronouns, reflexives)

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behave in an unmarked way with respect to reference, I would argue. So the markedness scale is unnecessary.

3.2.3 Levinson's view on speakers' performance aspects of referential use

Levinson (I985: 45) proposes that speakers in natural discourse operate with the following principle in mind: 'Try letting the I-principle win in the firste instance, i.e. go for minimal forms; if that doesn't work escalate step by step towards a Q-principle solution'. Levinson quotes one piece of telephone conversation which seems to operate according to this mechanism (his example (40)):

(20) A: Hello B: 'lo

Is Shorty there, A: Ooo jest- who? B: Eddy?

Wood//ward? A: Oo jesta minute

But the natural conversation data I have (not to mention the written materials) are far from reflecting such trial and error procedures. Errors, of course, do occur. But they are not uni-directional, as Levinson predicts them to be.'7 In other words, over-specifications also occur, except that they are harder to detect, because conversationalists do not bother to comment on them for they do not cause misunderstandings.

In sum, I mainly argued that Levinson's claims regarding the 'facts' concerning coreference and disjoint interpretations (section 3. I) are far from precise. Briefly, in order to decide on a coreference versus a disjoint reading correctly, the addressee needs to be able to choose the intended antecedent: He has to distinguish between potential antecedents somehow (3.I.I). In order to do that, the addressee must rely on the nature of the potentially anaphoric expression (e.g. informativity, brevity), a step allowed for under Levinson's view only insufficiently so. First, Levinson is unaware of many more distinctions existing among anaphoric expressions (3.I.3), and second, he does not appreciate the role of the relation between the antecedent (clause) and the anaphoric expression (clause) (3. I.2). However, both considerations are relevant in determining anaphoric relations, and in predicting the actual distribution of potentially anaphoric expressions in discourse.

I then argued that Levinson's Q, M and I principles, generating coreference or disjoint readings, suffer from various weaknesses. Specifically, the I principle cannot predict the preference for coreference over disjointness. The

[17] Note that according to this proposal, the speaker should have even tried a pronoun initially, rather than a nickname.

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slogan adopted by Levinson that minimal forms generate the most highly informative interpretations is not justified. Levinson's proposals also conflate semantic and formal minimization, although linguistic expressions do not always meet both criteria simultaneously. The Q principle generates implicatures based on a scale, simultaneously defined over semantic informativity and formal equality, which are not always adhered to. Moreover, the scale offered seems to contradict the criterion of semantic specificity it purports to represent. Finally, the M principle generates implicatures relying on a scale simultaneously based on formal brevity and markedness in use, although these two criteria sometimes conflict each other.

These problems with Levinson's scales stem from the fact that gen- eralizations, such as 'formal minimality is necessarily semantic minimality', 'formal lengthiness always correlates with disjointness (better called coreference with less accessible antecedents) or with markedness', do not always hold, despite the clearly functional motivation behind them. Unfortunately, these discrepancies cannot be incorporated into Levinson's theory, for he has offered us too general a theory, which is not specifically designed to handle reference cases. Since it is a (central) pragmatic proposal, i.e. an extra-linguistic theory, it relies on rational conventions, and has no place for ad-hoc, arbitrary rules or relations."8 This generality seemed to be Levinson's great advantage, for Levinson seemed to require no special mechanism for the resolution of anaphora, but it turns out to also be his great disadvantage.

I suggest that the basic theoretical problems with the principles, aggravated by Levinson's failure to take into consideration the many more intricate facts about the distribution and interpretation of potentially anaphoric expressions, can all be resolved by Accessibility theory, which is actually a more sophisticated version of Levinson's theory. Although Accessibility theory is more specific in that it is linguistic rather than pragmatic, dedicated to reference interpretations rather than to implicature generation in general, it also addresses a question Levinson simply ignores, namely, how the interpretation of so-called disjoint readings is performed. After all, referring expressions pointing to extra-textual referents must get an interpretation too.19 In the following section I will briefly outline Accessibility theory, my suggestion for a cognitive linguistic theory, specialized for reference

[I8] A note on terminology. I distinguish between two types of pragmatic rules. The first are general rules, such as Grice's and Levinson's maxims, Kasher's Rationality principle and Sperber & Wilson's principle of Relevance, which do not refer to specific linguistic forms. These I consider extra-linguistic (central system) pragmatic rules. The second type are (pragmatic) linguistic (module) rules, where specific reference to actual linguistic units has to be made. These are considered grammatical rules, and may be quite arbitrary, although they may very well have a functional motivation. See Ariel (iggob) on the grammar- pragmatics borderline.

[I9] For discussion of the similarity between anaphoric and referential interpretations of NPs see Ariel (to appear).

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interpretation (coreferent, as well as 'disjoint') instead of Levinson's central pragmatic account.20

4. THE COGNITIVE APPROACH TO ANAPHORA: AN ACCESSIBILITY ANALYSIS

While Levinson assumes that the addressee's task upon encountering a potentially anaphoric expression (o, pronoun, reflexive, proper name etc.) is to determine whether that expression carries a coreference or a disjoint reading, Accessibility theory (Ariel I985a & b, I987, i988a, i990a, I99I) posits another task: All potentially anaphoric expressions are to be deciphered, i.e. identified with some mental entity. Hence, so-called disjoint uses are no different from anaphoric uses. In other words, once the addressee has determined that the pronouns in (a) and (b) below have no sentential antecedents, and are thus 'disjoint', he has not at all finished interpreting them:

(21) (a) She will come home. (b) Maryi has now come home, so shej will have to leave.

I claim that the reason that all potentially anaphoric expressions are processed in a similar way is that they are all context retrievers, for they are all marked Given, i.e., non-Brand-New to the addressee. Note that it will not do to interpret as a Brand-New entity every 'disjoint' NP, names included. Opening up a new file (a la Heim I982) for Chomsky, just as for a student and a new theory would not count as a proper procedure:

(22) A student presented a new theory, and Chomsky has changed his mind about Binding theory.

Thus, while 'Chomsky' is 'disjoint' and New in the discourse of (22) in the sense that it is being mentioned for the first time, it is not 'Brand-New' (see Prince I98 I). 'Used' items, such as 'Chomsky' above, are those permanently stored in our long-term memory, although they have not been mentioned in the current discourse. And whoever fails to identify Chomsky with the mental representation of the famous linguist has not interpreted the sentence correctly.

This much may be acceptable to Levinson, who, following common practice, distinguishes between referential and anaphoric uses of NPs. I have argued against this position (see especially Ariel I988a). Note that first, conceptually it is somewhat odd, for the distinctly referential use assumes a direct tie between linguistic (referring) expressions and world entities. I

[20] Actually, I have argued that the same mechanism is operative in any context retrievals of Given information (e.g. presuppositional constructions), but it is not aimed to be as general a mechanism as Levinson's Q, M and I-principles.

26




believe it is more plausible to hypothesize a connection between linguistic expressions and mental entities. Once we do that for referring expressions, the artificial difference between linguistic antecedents (for anaphora) and world object-antecedents (for reference) disappears. In other words, both 'anaphoric' and 'disjoint' NPs need to be identified with mental representations.

Indeed, this leads naturally to my second argument against the artificial distinction between referring and coreferring expressions/uses. I maintain that referring expressions undergo similar processing procedures for their interpretation. In other words, the factors involved in the search for mental antecedents do not distinguish between reference and anaphora as such. Hence, whereas the distinction is relevant for the sentence-grammarian because s/he is only committed to providing linguistic accounts for distributional facts within the S domain, the (linguistic) pragmaticist is not thus constrained. The pragmaticist, who has taken upon herself to provide extra-grammatical accounts need not necessarily adopt the grammarian's division of phenomena into sentential versus nonsentential, and anaphora versus disjointness.

Indeed, once we examine Givenness expressions (i.e. potentially anaphoric expressions), we immediately see that natural languages do not find the reference/coreference distinction a significant one. If they had, we would expect to find the coding system more sensitive to the distinction. We would have had expressions specialized for direct reference as opposed to expressions specialized for anaphoric uses. This is not the case, however. Names, and even deictic expressions, presumably the prototypical referring expressions (i.e. 'disjoint' in reference) are used for reference to linguistically mentioned antecedents, i.e. coreferentially (see (23) below). Pronouns and zeros, supposedly the prototypical anaphoric expressions, can be used to retrieve entities not yet mentioned in the discourse, i.e. 'disjoint' (24):

(23) (b) Only Felixi voted for Felixi. (b) Arafat diber im xuseini ve+ zei hivtiax...

Arafat talked with Hussein and this (one) promised

(24) (a) The butler did it. (the murder) (b) Shake o before using. (on a medicine bottle, from Sadock 1974:

608) I have therefore suggested that natural languages code degrees of Accessibility in memory in their Givenness expressions (see again note 20). Thus, when the speaker wishes to refer to some Given entity, she must choose a linguistic expression which signals that degree of Accessibility with which she judges the addressee to entertain it in his memory, regardless of whether the form is used anaphorically or 'disjointly'.

A variety of factors contribute to the degree of Accessibility with which entities are entertained in one's memory. Relying on relevant psycholinguistic

27



MIRA ARIEL

findings pertaining mainly to linguistic antecedents (Clark & Sengul I979; Garnham & Oakhill I985; Garrod & Sanford I982; Garvey et al. 1974-5;

Marslen-Wilson & Komisarjevsky Tyler I982; Sanford & Garrod I98I), and linguistic findings (Bates et al. I980; Bentivoglio I983; Brown I983; Clancy 1980; Cooreman I983; Du Bois 1980; Eid I983; Fox I983, I987; Gasser 1983; Givon i983a-d; Grosz 1981; Gundel ig80; Hinds i983; Hobbs 1976; Jaggar I983; Levinsohn 1978; Li & Thompson 1979; Linde 1979; Rochester & Martin 1977; Schiffman 1984; Yule 198i), I have isolated two main factors (in addition to other, idiosyncratic ones, not to be discussed here): the prominence of the antecedent and the nature of the relation between the antecedent and the Givenness marker, now dubbed Accessibility marker. Thus, the mental representations of discourse participants (the speaker, the addressee) and certain special discourse entities (humans, entities encoded as topics or subjects) are relatively more salient as potential antecedents than the representations of entities not present, non-topics, non-subjects and non- humans. Competing antecedents, on the other hand, lower each other's Accessibility (see Clancy I980 and Ariel 9ggoa). It is this prominence of the antecedent which dictates the preference of subjects in choosing one antecedent ('the feedpipe') over another ('the chain'), as exemplified in the Broadbent (1973) experiment reported on above. Such claims about preferred antecedents have also been independently offered by proponents of Centering theory (e.g. Brennan et al. I987; Grosz et al. I987), who set out from the question of local coherence rather than from that of reference. Their proposals, however, are very much compatible with Accessibility theory. Similar findings have been reported in Sanford & Garrod (I98I), where reaction time in interpreting anaphoric pronouns and definite descriptions was shorter when the antecedent was the discourse topic.

The relationship between the potential antecedent and the Accessibility marker may also vary. A short distance between the mention of the one and the mention of the other usually implies high Accessibility of the antecedent to the Accessibility marker. Indeed, Tables I and 2 above show that various anaphoric expressions do not randomly occur in the text. Rather, full names take the most distant antecedents, pronouns occur with the closest by antecedents. In between we find definite descriptions, last names, demonstrative pronouns and first names (in this order). The same pattern emerges when we compare anaphoric references (the antecedent is a recently mentioned discourse entity, hence highly accessible, most probably) with direct references ('disjoint' references, where the entity referred to has not yet been mentioned in the current discourse, and hence is of relatively low Accessibility). Again, it is full names which lead in marking low Accessibility entities: They are used for 'direct' references almost twice as much as the definite descriptions. When we check which name types are used for 'direct', disjoint references, again the same scale emerges, with full names constituting over 85 percent of the cases, last names, close to 15 percent and first names

28




none whatsoever (percentages are based on data presented in Ariel (iggoa: 45)). Although, as mentioned above, this nonoccurrence of first names is probably accidental, the relative popularity of the various names remains the same in all texts, I claim.

But a closer tie can also be the result of higher cohesion between the clauses containing the antecedent and the potentially anaphoric expression. Thus, embedding creates a more cohesive link between the clauses than conjoining does, and the same applies, for instance, to restrictive relative clauses (more cohesive with their matrices) versus nonrestrictive relative clauses (see Ariel iggoa, i99I). Thus Hebrew optional resumptive pronouns are significantly less acceptable in restrictive relative clauses (RCs) than in non-restrictive RCs. The tight link between the antecedent (the head) and the anaphoric expression (the resumptive pronoun) in restrictive RCs dis- courages the use of a resumptive pronoun, and zero is preferred:

(25) (a) ha + gvarim ha + yisreelim she + ha + cava sholeax the men the Israelis that the- army sends o/?otam le+ hilaxem hem geza shuvenisti bi + myuxad. them to fight are race chauvinist especially 'The Israeli men that the army sends to fight are an especially chauvinistic lot.'

(b) ha + gvarim ha + yisreelim, she + ha + cava sholeax the men the Israelis that the army sends o/otam le+ hilaxem, hem geza shuvenisti bi + myuxad. them to fight are race chauvinist especially 'The Israeli men, whom the army sends to fight, are an especially chauvinistic lot.'

However, when the relation between the antecedent and the resumptive pronoun in a restrictive RC is less tight, as when the distance between them is relatively large, resumptive pronouns are quite acceptable. (26) shows that while a resumptive pronoun is not favored when the distance between the antecedent and the resumptive pronoun is short (a), it is quite acceptable otherwise (b):

(26) (a) shoshana hi ha + isha she+ nili ohevet o/?ota. Shoshana is the woman that Nilly loves her

(b) shoshana hi ha + isha she+ dani siper she+ moshe Shoshana is the woman that Danny said that Moses rixel she + nili ohevet ?o/ota. gossiped that Nilly loves her

Hence, I have proposed that the speaker must take into account the factors related to the antecedent's saliency, as well as the nature of the relation between the antecedent (clause) and the potentially anaphoric expression (clause). Once she has considered these factors she is in a good position to

29



MIRA ARIEL

assess the overall Accessibility of the specific antecedent at the point when another reference is to be made to it. She then chooses her potentially anaphoric expression accordingly. Referring expressions are arranged on a scale of Accessibility marking, forms to the left signalling relatively higher Accessibility, forms to the right signalling relatively lower Accessibility:2

(27) The Accessibility Marking Scale: zero < reflexives < agreement markers < cliticized pronouns < unstressed pronouns < stressed pronouns < stressed pronouns + gesture < proximal demonstrative ( + NP) < distal demonstrative (+ NP) < proximal demonstrative (+ NP) + modifier < distal demonstrative ( + NP) + modifier < first name < last name < short definite description < long definite description22 < full name < full name + modifier.23

Note that the very same scale is used by speakers in manipulating all the factors mentioned above. Thus, I claim that it is not accidental that distant antecedents, non topic ones, ones in competition with other potential antecedents, ones in a less cohesive relation with the anaphoric expression etc. all favor the use of a relatively low Accessibility marker, and vice versa for near, topical antecedents etc. What all these environments have in common is the degree of Accessibility with which the mental entity is associated in the addressee's memory at the point when the potential anaphoric expression is encountered. Two examples will show that indeed,

[2I] I thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to the careless title (The Accessibility Scale) I have used for the scale in (27). It is, of course, a marking scale, and not a scale grading Accessibility rates. As for the reader's justified request for a true Accessibility scale, I doubt we will ever be able to supply one for discourse references, for the weighting of various Accessibility factors seems to evade a clear-cut formulation (but see Toole (I992) for suggestions concerning such weightings). I have, however, attempted to provide such a scale for grammaticalized anaphoric devices (Reflexives, PROs, etc.) in Ariel (I987).

[221 An anonymous referee has here commented that while there is an approximate correlation between length and relative Accessibility, it all depends on the content of the NP and how it relates to the discourse in question. Now of course, some definite descriptions are much more unequivocal, or rigid, to anticipate my term, regardless of their length (e.g. the sun). Others are better retrievers because the addressee associates one characterization (e.g. 'the teacher') with the referent better than another (e.g. 'my neighbor from the 5th floor'). But all in all, the correlation with length is quite significant, as witnessed by the numbers quoted above regarding disjoint versus anaphoric uses. 'Disjoint' readings are much more common for long definite descriptions, and anaphoric readings are much more common for short definite descriptions.

[23] The same referee finds it strange that full name +modifier ends the list, following definite descriptions. S/he claims that many definite descriptions, especially ones modified by relative clauses, actually introduce New, unfamiliar referents. But proper names can also be used to introduce unfamiliar referents, especially when adjacent to an RC! In any event, the Accessibility Marking Scale is only meant to give the reader a rough idea about the sort of choices speakers can make. Actual choices take into account the specific discourse, the particular content conveyed, etc. See the coding principles below (informativity, rigidity and attenuation), which guide addressees' choices, especially when variations on basic forms are concerned.

30




these seemingly different factors interact in the decision about what referring expression to use.

Table 2 showed 24 pronominal references to antecedents in the previous paragraph, the most distant context I examined. Although in terms of percentages, this is rather low (4.5 percent), we should still try to account for this use of high Accessibility markers for such distant references. It turns out that these pronouns are justified in light of the prominent antecedents they refer to. An overwhelmingly majority are the discourse topic. Indeed, once we remove those references made to the recurring discourse topic, we are left with 2 such pronominal references (0.4 percent of pronouns). In other words, the combination of great distance and nontopicality contributes to the avoidance of high Accessibility markers (a pronoun in this case) more significantly than each of the factors alone.

Topicalized relative clauses provide a similar example. We have seen above that direct object resumptive pronouns are optional in Hebrew. (28a) below shows that subject resumptive pronouns are, however, ungrammatical (usually), and zero must be used. I claim that this is so due to the fact that subjects normally occur sentence-initially in Hebrew. They are thus positioned almost adjacent to the head, their antecedent. That this ban against the occurrence of topmost S subjects in relative clauses (as resumptive pronouns) derives from Accessibility considerations and not from some arbitrary grammatical constraint can be seen from (b) and (c), which contain topicalized RCs with subject resumptive pronouns. Doron (I982) has claimed that subject resumptive pronouns are allowed in such constructions. But why is that so? And if so, why is (c) only marginally acceptable while (b) and (d) are fully acceptable?:

(28) (a) ha + talmida she + * hilo meaxeret... the student that she is-late 'The student who is late...'

(b) ha+ talmidai she+ et tali hii ohevet... the student that ACC Tal she likes 'The student who likes Tal...'

(c) ?ha+ talmida she+ tamid hi meaxeret... the student that always she is-late 'The student who is always late...'

(d) ha + talmida she + le + xol exad min ha + sheurim the student that to each one of the classes hi meaxeret... she is-late

I have suggested (see Ariel iggoa) that topicalizations minimally increase the distance between the head (antecedent) and the RC subject (pronoun or gap). This is the reason why (b-d) improve on (a). The size of the distance affects the acceptability of the resumptive pronoun, as we see in the contrast

3'



MIRA ARIEL

between (c) and (d). However, the distance is not dramatically different in (b) and (c), but still (c) is significantly less acceptable. This, I suggest, is due to the fact that (b) introduces a competing antecedent ('Tal '), which automatically reduces the high Accessibility of the Head. Thus, in the case of RCs we can see the intricate working of Accessibility theory. The apparent facts are that direct object resumptive pronouns are optional, occurring especially when relatively distant from their heads, subject resumptive pronouns are on the whole ungrammatical, except that they are allowed with topicalizations, provided the topicalized phrase is either long or else it is an NP. Accessibility theory, however, can capture this complex pattern by saying that resumptive pronouns are used whenever the antecedent is judged to be relatively less accessible. I claim this is the only denominator all these environments have in common.

Now, the scale in (27) is by no means arbitrary. In fact, I have claimed that it is essentially universal. The reason for its universality is that natural languages tend to code degrees of Accessibility according to three coding principles: Informativity, rigidity and attenuation, all factors considered also by Levinson. The more (lexically) informative the form is, chances are it will code relatively lower Accessibility. The more rigidly (unambiguously) a form refers (proper names in particular) the lower the Accessibility it marks. Last, the less attenuated the form (i.e. longer or louder, but with no added information) the lower the Accessibility it marks.

Thus, full names are highly informative, highly rigid (easily referring uniquely in our culture) and relatively long phonologically. Zeros, on the other hand, are neither informative, nor rigid and they are maximally attenuated. First names are relatively informative, but are not so rigid (the number of first names is by far smaller than the number of last names). Pronouns are even less rigid, but they encode number and gender (in many languages). Cliticized pronouns are virtually the same as pronouns in terms of informativity and rigidity, but they are more attenuated. Hence, they should mark higher Accessibility. Agreement markers (in highly inflected languages such as Hebrew) are again as informative and rigid as pronouns and cliticized pronouns, but are even more attenuated than cliticized pronouns, and indeed, I have argued that they mark higher Accessibility (for details see Ariel I99oa, I99I).

Note, however, that although the three principles offered do account for most of the hierarchical arrangement in (27), they cannot account for the relative Accessibility associated with all the forms. For example, full demonstratives (e.g. that table) signal higher Accessibility than definite descriptions (the table), although informativity and rigidity cannot distinguish between them, and attenuation would have wrongly predicted that the definite description be associated with a higher degree of Accessibility. The reason is that attenuation is also common for unmarked forms, and the definite article, being as popular as it is, tends to shorten, cliticize or destress

32




in many languages without any connection to the (relatively very low) Accessibility it marks. This is why I claim that a specifically linguistic principle is at work here. Although most of the scale in (27) can be functionally motivated (by the three principles above), some of its orderings have to be stipulated.

Let us now briefly review the distributional facts about Accessibility markers cited both in support of Levinson's theory and as counterexamples to it. I suggest that they can all be accounted for by one and the same theory: Accessibility theory. Examples (I2)-(I6), which were presented as counter- examples to Levinson's proposal, can be accounted for by Accessibility theory by reference to cohesion. In all these examples the degree of cohesion between the antecedent clause and the anaphor clause determines whether a fuller (lower Accessibility) form or a leaner (higher Accessibility) form would be preferred. Examples (I 3) from Chinese and (I 5) from Hebrew show that a potential change of topic (marked by the connective but, or by an aside) causes the change from zero to pronoun in Chinese, from cliticized pronoun to full pronoun in Hebrew. The examples in (I2) show the dependence of the coreference of a first name within an S on whether the relevant clause is more or less cohesive to the antecedent clause. Where the name is unacceptable the while clause does not follow a break, and is more cohesive to the antecedent clause, meaning 'at the same time'. It is acceptable when it follows a break, and is interpreted as a contrastive marker.24 Example (i6) shows that even the Accessibility of the mental representation of the speaker can be judged to be lower after the dramatic change of topic in the previous clause (the death of the mother).

Example I i (from English) points to the importance of the degree of prominence of the potential antecedent. The stressed pronoun, a lower Accessibility marker than a non-stressed pronoun, refers to the less salient candidate, the non-topic, or the less expected referent in the specific role. The same goes for (io) and (23b), where the higher Accessibility marker (pronoun) corefers with the more prominent antecedent, and the lower Accessibility marker (a demonstrative pronoun) corefers with the less prominent antecedent.

The various consistent distributional patterns of Accessibility markers mentioned in section 3. 1, which are unpredictable by Levinson, follow from Accessibility theory quite straightforwardly. While short definite descriptions are discourse anaphoric close to 8o percent of the time, long definite descriptions are discourse anaphoric only in 35 percent of the cases (see Ariel iggoa: 44). More importantly, the distance from their antecedents, because of the relative lower Accessibility they signal to the addressee, is predictably larger than in the case of pronouns and demonstrative pronouns (Table 2).

[24] Haegeman (I984) solves this problem by suggesting that some whiles are S-adverbials, other are E-adverbials.

33 2 LIN 30



MIRA ARIEL

Even full names have discourse antecedents in more than a third of the cases. However, these mostly occur when their antecedents have not been recently mentioned. On the other hand, over 40 percent of the antecedents of first names (the highest Accessibility markers among name types) corefer with entities in the previous S (with additional 6 percent referring to an antecedent within the same S).

The above is only a very brief summary of linguistic findings on both the distribution and interpretation of anaphoric expressions in discourse, all supporting Accessibility theory in that they show that those markers argued to be lower Accessibility markers occur in contexts where the antecedent is relatively less accessible to the addressee. Higher Accessibility markers, on the other hand, tend to occur in contexts which assume a higher degree of Accessibility of the antecedent to the addressee at the point when he has to interpret the Accessibility marker. But see Ariel (I985b, iggoa) for a more extensive exposition of the theory and how it incorporates the many facts about potentially anaphoric expressions discussed by the numerous researchers mentioned above.

As for sentential anaphora, the obligatory intra-sentential examples seem to be by and large subject to the Binding rules.25 These, however, should be viewed as a partial grammaticalization of Accessibility constraints.26 Thus, anaphors are extremely high Accessibility markers, and should have a highly accessible antecedent (a binder in some locally defined domain). Pronouns are relatively lower Accessibility markers than anaphors. No wonder Condition B specifies that if they are bound, it is only in a larger domain (the S), where the antecedent is less accessible. Alternatively, they can be coreferent with antecedents outside the S domain ('free'), where again antecedents are less accessible. Condition C can also be motivated in accordance with Accessibility theory: Lexical NPs, the lowest Accessibility markers, cannot be grammatically bound at all, for the grammatically defined domain is too small, so that the Accessibility of the antecedent must be too high at that point for the use of low Accessibility markers to be appropriate. In other words, I claim that the Binding conditions are

[25] But see Reinhart & Reuland (I993) for a reformulation of Conditions A and B as syntactic and semantic conditions (respectively) on reflexivity (a predicate is reflexive if two of its co- arguments are coindexed). Together with the chain condition, they account for local reflexives (e.g. herself, Dutch zichzelf) including their logophoric uses, for so-called pronominal anaphors (e.g. Dutch zich) and for pronouns. In effect, the scale created (from higher to lower Accessibility marking) is: local reflexives, pronominal anaphors, pronouns.

[26] Zribi-Hertz (I989) argues that Condition A should be reformulated in such a way that the grammatical requirement for a c-commanding antecedent within a given domain fall out of a discourse grammar rule. I should like to leave open the muddy question of the interaction between distinctly formal rules and functional rules. While it is my conviction that a historical and/or typological account of the grammaticalization process of Accessibility theory into (some version of) the Binding rules is feasible, I fully admit that it is a challenge too great for me at this stage to decide how to represent the facts in any one synchronic grammar. I leave that to further research.

34




formulated as they are because there is a non-arbitrary, functional reason for this formulation. Accessibility marking considerations lie behind the specific distribution of each of the markers (anaphor, pronoun, lexical NP), since each of the Binding conditions targets a different degree of antecedent- anaphoric expression relatedness. On the other hand, many counter-examples to the Binding rules seem more natural in an Accessibility framework.27 I will concentrate below on the effect of the nature of the antecedent, arguing that anaphors can be used despite the violation of condition A, provided they are extremely salient.

Logophoric reflexives can find their antecedents in non-local domains because they refer to the entity from whose point of view the information is reported (see Zribi-Hertz I989). Such an entity is bound to be highly accessible. The prominence of the antecedent therefore compensates for the larger distance. In fact, such reflexives do not even require intra-sentential antecedents:

(29) Now Kittyi could see Mauricej, his red pullover the only colour in the gloom. There was no one but themselvesi+j in the huge building. (Brookner I983: 124)

Now although Binding conditions only refer to 3rd person reflexives, Ist and 2nd reflexives are just as obligatory when c-commanded by a local antecedent. However, it is not surprising that just these two, which refer to the prominent entities, the speaker and the addressee, can occur without a linguistic antecedent, as in 30 :28

(30) (a) This masterpiece was written by Maya and myself/*himself. (b) So who's advising Govorshin apart from ourselves/

*themselves? (The Fourth Protocol: a I987 film).

Similarly, colloquial (Philadelphian?) English references to first and second persons can be made using reflexives, but not third person references.

The same applies to each other, another anaphor subject to Condition A. In the following example (from Sportiche I983, who attributes it to Chomsky), each other does not have a linguistic antecedent:

(3I) Lies about each other triggered the fight.

However, I claim that for (3 I) to be acceptable, the setting must be such that two people are actually fighting in front of the speakers. Hence, each other

[27] However, not all counter-examples can be explained via Accessibility theory. Others, such as epithetical lexical anaphors, need to refer to some pragmatic theory in order to be accounted for. See Ariel (iggoa), where I motivate various counter-examples to Accessibility theory using Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson I986). Other interesting examples are discussed by Bolinger (I979) and Toole (1992).

[281 But see Reinhart and Reuland (I993) for additional constraints on such 'free' reflexive forms.

35 2-2



MIRA ARIEL

is occasionally allowed to take a discourse antecedent ('disjoint'), when the antecedent is extremely salient.

That the prominence of the antecedent is crucial for 'grammatically' controlled forms can also be seen in the many languages where subjects are preferred as anaphors' antecedents. Faltz (I985) actually claims that a preference for subjects as antecedents for reflexives can be seen in all languages, but for some languages, subjects are the only potential antecedents for reflexives (e.g. Turkish, Finnish, Malayalam and others). Icelandic sig (a long-distance reflexive form) only takes subject antecedents (Maling I984), and when in an adverbial clause, it must be bound by the matrix subject, presumably the most prominent grammatical subject. English anaphors are not necessarily bound by subjects, but as Chomsky (1985: io8) notes, 'in some structures, anaphors are "subject-oriented" in the sense that only a subject can be the antecedent...':

(32) (a) Theyi told me that pictures of each otheri would be on sale. (b) *1 told themi that pictures of each otheri would be on sale.

Chomsky (I 98 I: 289-290) also notes the following minimal pair, where again the pronoun and the reflexive form part of the PP:

(33) (a) Johni turned the argument against *him/himselfi. (b) Johni turned his friends against him/himselfi.

Note that when the intervening referent is less of a competition since it is inanimate ('the argument') the higher Accessibility marker must be used. When the intervening referent is human ('his friends'), a pronoun can be used as well. I suggest that the latter potential antecedent is more prominent, and therefore constitutes more of a competition to John as antecedent, hence lowering its relative Accessibility and allowing the use of the slightly lower Accessibility marker - a pronoun. This competition is more clearly brought out in the following example, suggested to me by an anonymous referee, where the competing antecedent is both animate and singular :29

(34) Johni turned his friend3 against himi/himself.

Recall that Levinson has accounted for the contrastive distribution of pronouns and reflexives by pointing to the logophoric nature of references by

[29] The same referee is not convinced that his friends really constitutes a competing antecedent more than the argument, since just as the latter is inappropriate because it is inanimate, the former is inappropriate because it is plural (where the anaphoric expression is singular). However, Clancy (I980), who examined referential forms in discourse, counted all intervening NPs as potential competition, and her results showed that this was indeed a contributing factor. The only addition I am making is a distinction between human/ animate vs. inanimate antecedents, claiming the former are preferred (due to our egocentric preference for humans, no doubt). Kuno (I987) has made a similar point, but I admit that this claim needs to be substantiated by empirical data other than the example above.

36




reflexives. We have here seen cases where such contrastive distribution is unrelated to long-distance/logophoric uses. In addition, although I will not argue it here, I also believe that the Accessibility account is superior to Levinson's account because: (a) it does not treat long-distance anaphors as a different phenomenon with a different explanation, as Levinson does (since distance is counterbalanced by a prominent antecedent), and (b) it does not assume that long-distance reflexives are necessarily marked. It remains to be seen whether all long-distance reflexives indeed signal a marked point of view. It is certainly the case that many languages which have two sets of reflexive forms use their short, unmarked ones for long distances and their derived, marked forms for the more restricted contexts of binding within a minimal Governing Category (e.g. Dutch and Norwegian, Faltz I977, inter alia).

Up until now I have tried to argue that Accessibility theory is a better theory than Levinson's for both discourse and sentential anaphora, for it better accounts for actual data, and it does so in a more unified manner, not relying on markedness to account for supposedly exceptional behaviors. The last advantage of Accessibility theory over the Neo-Gricean pragmatic proposal by Levinson (and recently also by Huang i99i) to be mentioned is actually on the face of it a theoretical weakness. Note that in Levinson's theory a potentially anaphoric expression in a given sentence is either coreferent or disjoint. This is a clear prediction. Accessibility theory, on the other hand, does not always make such sharp judgments. It merely determines the speaker's assessment of the degree of Accessibility associated with the entity in the addressee's memory. Hence, within the same context, two relatively similar Accessibility markers (e.g. full versus cliticized pronouns, cliticized pronouns versus agreement markers) may not always be in complementary distribution. Although one always aspires to a theory which shows all forms to be in complementary distribution, this is not the case in the use natural language makes of its referring expressions. I therefore maintain that Accessibility, a graded psychological notion, is indeed the suitable explanation for these linguistic facts (Gundel et al. (I993) also believe that a range of referring expressions may be appropriate in any given context). Any elegant account, which forces an either or decision on the use and interpretation of what I term Accessibility markers will not be able to account for the rich data found in natural language.30

I will mention just one example. Ariel (I985b: 29) quotes the pattern of initial references to the (very same, continuing) discourse topic in all the paragraphs of three articles. Out of 53 relevant paragraphs which mentioned the discourse topic in the first sentence of the new paragraph 75.5 percent

[30] But note that when Levinson judges a pair of NPs to be coreferent rather than disjoint, he himself claims that it is only so 'all things being equal'. Since circumstances are not always unmarked, Levinson too admits (a different type of) noncomplementarity of forms.

37



MIRA ARIEL

used a relatively low Accessibility marker. This tendency is well motivated by Accessibility theory, since a paragraph break signals a potential change in discourse topic, hence the lowering of the Accessibility of the previous discourse topic. However, the 24.5 percent cases, where the reference to the topic was made using a high Accessibility marker are equally explainable by the fact that continuing discourse topics are extremely salient. In other words, although Accessibility theory can explain why shifts to lower Accessibility markers for reference to discourse topics are discouraged within the paragraph, while they are more popular outside the paragraph scope, I believe it cannot predict each time such cross-paragraph lowering of Accessibility markers will occur for discourse topics. And this, I claim, is how speakers operate. In other words, there is some free variation among referring expressions, over and above individual, ad-hoc Accessibility considerations, which obviously play some role in determining Accessibility degrees, though we made no mention of them here. Any theory which prefers to eliminate this messy fact in order to achieve a more elegant theory misrepresents the use of Accessibility markers in natural discourse.

In sum, I believe that Accessibility theory is the theory closer to accounting for actual uses and interpretations of anaphora. It explains real decisions taken by speakers and addressees, namely, how to appropriately choose a referring expression (the speaker's task) and how to identify the intended mental representation corresponding to it (the addressee's task). Levinson, instead, develops a whole apparatus which is to decide between coreference and disjoint readings of potentially anaphoric expressions, a distinction I have argued to be a mere epiphenomenon in the coding system of Givenness expressions. In addition, although Levinson's theory has the advantage of simplicity, since it dictates that forms be in complementary distribution, and of generality, since it employs general pragmatic procedures, presumably needed in any case, these turn out to be shortcomings after all.

First, natural languages do not distinguish for each of their Accessibility markers (= potentially anaphoric expressions) a unique context. They only manifest obvious preferential tendencies, which do not manifest a perfect complementary distribution between forms. These, I have argued, point to the crucial role that assessments of degree of Accessibility in memory play in the interpretation of context-retrieving expressions. Since it is obvious that speakers cannot accurately assess the degree of Accessibility associated with each mental representation in their addressee's memory, all they can do is guess it approximately. Hence, some free variation remains in the use and interpretation of Accessibility markers. The difference between coreference and disjointness, on the other hand, is clear-cut (once the antecedent is established), and hence, there is no place for any grey area usage in a theory that believes this to be the primary question.

Second, the general principles offered by Levinson (following Grice I975; Horn 1985) do not always yield the required linguistic convention used by

38




speakers and addressees in the employment of anaphoric expressions. Although natural languages tend to grammaticalize according to extra- linguistic forces (be they cognitive or pragmatic), other factors invariably intervene and the convention is not completely transparent to its motivation. Thus, relatively short (or attenuated) forms do generally comply with the pragmatic/common-sensical principle that they express less semantic content and hence are less specific in reference. However, Accessibility markers come in such a great variety that many are equally informative/specific, although their distributional patterns differ (pronouns, cliticized pronouns and rich agreement markers), while others are equally long yet their preferred contexts are different (e.g. definite descriptions and full demonstratives). Since Accessibility theory is specifically a linguistic theory, it can more easily accommodate ad-hoc grammaticalizations. The scale in (27) is thus only partially motivated by the three coding principles proposed above (informativity, rigidity and attenuation). A Gricean-pragmatic theory, on the other hand, leaves all decisions to the inferencing power of the addressee, thus assigning no role to use conventions less than perfectly transparent to the functional principles lying behind them. Under such a theory, each speaker's use/addressee's interpretation must be directly motivated by the general principles, leaving no place for distinctions one is unable to draw from them (e.g. definite descriptions versus full demonstratives). Scale (27), however, is allowed to do just that. It does draw distinctions which cannot be directly derived from the functional considerations behind reference use and interpretation.

Last, although Accessibility theory is less general a theory, it is nonetheless much more comprehensive, in that it accounts for both referential and anaphoric uses, and more crucially, it encompasses a much larger variety of linguistic expressions (Levinson discusses only zeros, reflexives, pronouns and lexical NPs, not distinguishing between the many sub-types that appear in most world's languages - see the list in (27), which is not complete itself). Accessibility theory purports to account for all Accessibility markers. Thus, according to Accessibility theory, only purely inferential processes which have not been frozen into linguistic use conventions are performed via pragmatic implicatures. Indeed, all counter-examples to Accessibility theory must be justified by special, intended implicatures generated by the addressee specifically because Accessibility conventions have been violated.3' Ariel (iggoa: chapter 9) is dedicated to such special uses.

[3i] However, I believe that no linguistic interpretation, reference and anaphora included, has been completed before it has been checked, disambiguated and/or completed by inferences generated by our central system pragmatics.

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MIRA ARIEL

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E-mail: [email protected]

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Interpreting Anaphoric Expressions A Cognitive versus a Pragmatic Approach