Bridging and RelevanceJohn Benjamins Publishing, 2000 - 247 pages While it has long been taken for granted that context or background information plays a crucial role in reference assignment, there have been very few serious attempts to investigate exactly how they are used. This study provides an answer to the question through an extensive analysis of cases of bridging. The book demonstrates that when encountering a referring expression, the hearer is able to choose a set of contextual assumptions intended by the speaker in a principled way, out of all the assumptions possibly available to him. It claims more specifically that the use of context, as well as the assignment of referent, is governed by a single pragmatic principle, namely, the principle of relevance (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995), which is also a single principle governing overall utterance interpretation. The explanatory power of the criterion based on the principle of relevance is tested against the two major, current alternatives truth-based criteria and coherence-based criteria using data elicited in a battery of referent assignment questionnaires. The results show clearly that the relevance-based criterion has more predictive power to handle a wider range of examples than any other existing criterion. As such, this work adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the insights of relevance theory. The work has been awarded the 2001 Ichikawa Award for the best achievement in English Linguistics by a young scholar in Japan. |
Table des matières
A Brief Survey of Past Studies | 3 |
Main Issues | 10 |
Overview of the Book | 22 |
Relevance theory and alternative views of communication | 34 |
Utterance Interpretation | 40 |
Summary | 48 |
Topicfocusbased accounts and bridging reference | 73 |
The principle of relevance and bridging reference assignment | 81 |
Summary | 128 |
Clark and Sanford Garrod | 146 |
A RelevanceTheoretic Account of Acceptability Judgements | 159 |
Focusbased and Coherencebased | 167 |
A RelevanceTheoretic Account of Acceptability Judgements | 179 |
Summary | 195 |
Conclusions | 197 |
Appendix | 211 |
Summary | 91 |
The Scenariobased Account | 99 |
The Principle of Relevance and Selection Construction | 115 |
Notes | 231 |
245 | |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Expressions et termes fréquents
acceptability accessibility of candidate accessibility of contextual achieve Amsterdam/Philadelphia anaphoric antecedent appropriate Australia bridging assumptions bridging implicature bridging reference assignment Brixton candidate referents causal chapter choice of referent choose claim Clark clause coherence relation coherence-based concept contextual assumptions criterion of consistency discourse entities discuss Earl's Court Edinburgh England Erku & Gundel existing assumptions expected focus explain factors affecting following example Garrod & Sanford hearer highly accessible implicit focus inference intended referent Italy Jane moved John John Major judgements linguistic loves the warm Margaret Thatcher notion of plausibility noun phrase optimal relevance pasta pragmatic prediction preferred interpretation principle of relevance processing effort pronoun propositional form question Questionnaire referring expression relevance theory restaurant resulting interpretation resulting overall interpretation role sandy beaches Sanford & Garrod scenario scenario-based account second sentence semantic Sidner's account slot snowy winters speaker Sperber & Wilson stylistic infelicity subjects suggest tion topic verb warm winters