ANAPHOR RESOLUTION

An anaphor is a piece of language which refers back to a previously mentioned entity, action or idea. Examples are: personal or demonstrative pronouns (she, that), pro-verbs (did so), adverbs (there) and expressions like the latter. Anaphor resolution is the process that occurs when a listener or reader interprets an anaphor by linking it to its antecedent.

Anaphor resolution appears to be an automatic on-line process, but one that can slow down reading– especially where there is uncertainty as to what the antecedent is. Experiments using ambiguous anaphors provide insights into how an antecedent is chosen. Factors include:

Parallel position. A pronoun in subject position is taken to refer to an antecedent that is in subject position. Example: John phoned Bill. He said he was ill.

Current topic. A pronoun is taken to refer to a topic that has been thematised in the preceding sentence or is in current focus. Example: As for children, they don’t like them. Maybe they frighten them.

Proximity. A pronoun is taken to refer back to the most recent noun phrase. Example: He held some bread over the fire with a fork. It grew hot.

Sometimes these criteria (e.g. parallel position and proximity) may be in conflict. Further factors appear to be world knowledge, animacy and the thematic roles associated with a verb. The first of these accounts for the different resolutions of they in:

They bought the apples because they were cheap.

 They bought the apples because they were hungry.

 There has been much discussion of the kind of representation that an anaphor accesses. This is especially an issue in listening, where there is no opportunity to look back to check understanding. The listener has to carry forward a mental representation in which current topics are marked as likely subjects for anaphoric reference. One account represents items in the current mental representation as activated to various degrees, thus enabling an anaphoric link to be made to the most salient.

 Those who include definite nouns within the class of anaphors point out that definiteness entails two different retrieval processes. With some noun phrases, the antecedent will be in explicit focus (see c. below), while with others it will not (see d.).

 c. Erica unlocked the door with difficulty. The door tended to stick.

d. Erica unlocked the door with difficulty. The key tended to stick.

An important distinction is also made between surface anaphors which require an antecedent that is linguistically present and deep (or conceptual) anaphors which do not, as in:

e. The car needs washing. Don’t make promises– just do it.

 In e, the listener/reader has to interpret the anaphor do it by reference to the entire meaning representation rather than to a specific entity held in focus within it.

Children learning to read find anaphor resolution problematic and the ability to resolve anaphors has been shown to be an important factor distinguishing skilled from less-skilled readers. The distance between antecedent and anaphor is an important factor: resolution appears to become more difficult as the memory load increases. However, this effect is observed to some degree in all young readers. What especially marks out the less-skilled reader seems to be a tendency to link anaphors to the nearest possible antecedent rather than to a developing mental representation of the whole text. They may even make links to real world phenomena outside the text (e.g. assuming that now refers to the moment of reading, not that of writing).

 Language acquisition researchers working in the Chomskyan tradition have concerned themselves particularly with cataphora (sometimes termed backwards anaphora), where a pronoun refers forward to an entity which has not yet been mentioned. At a surprisingly early age, children are capable of correctly attributing a referent to the pronoun he in sentences such as While he was dancing, the Ninja Turtle ate pizza. They also distinguish this type of sentence from one such as He was dancing while the Ninja Turtle ate pizza, where he does not refer to an entity within the sentence. Another area of research has been the processing of reflexive pronouns. At an early age, children are much more successful in interpreting a sentence containing a reflexive (Cinderella’s sister points to herself) than a similar sentence containing an ordinary pronoun (Cinderella’s sister points to her).

See also: Syntactic parsing

Further reading: Garrod and Sanford (1994); Singer (1990); van den Broek (1994); Yuill and Oakhill (1992: Chap. 4)

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

المجمع العلمي للقرآن الكريم يصدر الكتاب الثاني من سلسلة يخشى

قسم الشعائر يكرّم أصحاب المواكب المشاركة في إحياء ذكرى شهادة السيدة الزهراء (عليها السلام)

جامعة العميد تستقبل طلبة المراحل الأولى المقبولين ضمن كلياتها للعام الدراسي الجديد

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرّم طلبة حفظ القرآن الكريم المتفوّقين ويؤكّد دور التدبّر في الهداية والتكامل

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

طبيب يكشف تأثير برودة الشتاء على النوم

دون أن تعلم.. 10 عادات يومية تسرع شيخوخة جسمك

تقرير: النيكوتين خطر على القلب مهما كانت الطريقة

أيهما أفضل لصحتك.. زبدة الفول السوداني أم النوتيلا؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

السعودية تدشن أكبر نظام لتخزين الكهرباء بالبطاريات في العالم !

بأمر تنفيذي.. ترامب يؤكد هدف عودة الأميركيين إلى القمر في عام 2028

بعيدا عن البشر.. "قتال جوي في الفضاء" بين أميركا والصين

كشف مذهل في قاع "برمودا" !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas