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Anaphoric Reference to Propositions

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dc.contributor.authorSnider, Todd Nathaniel
dc.contributor.chairRooth, Mats
dc.contributor.committeeMemberWhitman, John
dc.contributor.committeeMemberStarr, William B.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberMurray, Sarah E.
dc.date.accessioned2018-10-03T19:27:55Z
dc.date.available2018-10-03T19:27:55Z
dc.date.issued2017-12-30
dc.description.abstractJust as pronouns like she and he make anaphoric reference to individuals, English words like that and so can be used to refer anaphorically to a proposition introduced in a discourse: That’s true; She told me so. Much has been written about individual anaphora, but less attention has been paid to propositional anaphora. This dissertation is a com- prehensive examination of propositional anaphora, which I argue behaves like anaphora in other domains, is conditioned by semantic factors, and is not conditioned by purely syntactic factors nor by the at-issue status of a proposition. I begin by introducing the concepts of anaphora and propositions, and then I discuss the various words of English which can have this function: this, that, it, which, so, as, and the null complement anaphor. I then compare anaphora to propositions with anaphora in other domains, including individual, temporal, and modal anaphora. I show that the same features which are characteristic of these other domains are exhibited by proposi- tional anaphora as well. I then present data on a wide variety of syntactic constructions—including sub- clausal, monoclausal, multiclausal, and multisentential constructions—noting which li- cense anaphoric reference to propositions. On the basis of this expanded empirical do- main, I argue that anaphoric reference to a proposition is licensed not by any syntactic category or movement but rather by the operators which take propositions as arguments. With this generalization in hand, I turn to how such facts can be formally modeled: I review existing systems which track anaphora and/or which make use of propositional variables, and then introduce a new formalism which incorporates insights from these existing systems. Finally, I turn to the interaction between a proposition’s availability for anaphoric ref- erence and its discourse status (in particular, its at-issue status). Contrary to the prevail- ing assumption in the literature, I argue that there is no tight linking between these two properties, and that one of the tests frequently used to diagnose at-issueness in fact di- agnoses only anaphoric availability. I argue that propositional anaphora and at-issueness are distinct, showing that at-issueness is neither necessary nor sufficient to determine a proposition’s anaphoric potential.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.7298/X4C24TNB
dc.identifier.otherSnider_cornellgrad_0058F_10575
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:10575
dc.identifier.otherbibid: 10474223
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59120
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/*
dc.subjectanaphora
dc.subjectat-issueness
dc.subjectdiscourse referents
dc.subjectpropositional anaphora
dc.subjectpropositions
dc.subjectLinguistics
dc.titleAnaphoric Reference to Propositions
dc.typedissertation or thesis
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
thesis.degree.disciplineLinguistics
thesis.degree.grantorCornell University
thesis.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy
thesis.degree.namePh. D., Linguistics

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