Aspects of referentiality

Abstract

Semantic referentiality, pertaining to the semantics of expressions of certain grammatical categories, is defined in terms of pointing to some existent entity in a model of discourse, whereas pragmatic referentiality pertains to language use, and is defined crucially in terms of context-dependency and speaker's intention and cognitive status over and above semantics. A discourse thematic referential expression is regarded to be one high in thematic importance, which pertains to the purpose of performance of the referring function in discourse. While some expressions are generally taken, based on their semantics, as inherently referential or nonreferential semantically, there are no specific linguistic devices, other than preferred encoding types, in English or Chinese to mark the pragmatic referentiality of an expression. On the other hand, English and Chinese are found to be more sensitive to distinction in discourse thematic referentiality. Chinese strongly favors the same grammatical encoding for pragmatic and thematic nonreferentials and referents of low thematic referentiality, irrespective of their semantic referentiality, which provides further empirical evidence for the conceptual link between pragmatic referentiality and discourse thematic referentiality.