Esphoric the N of a(n) N-nominals: Forward bridging to an indefinite reference point

Abstract

In this article I analyze English binominal NPs of the form the N of a(n) N and describe them as instances of esphoric NPs, i.e. NPs involving a forward phoric relation. Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Martin (1992) have put these NPs on a par with definite NPs containing restrictive modifiers (e.g. the party in power, the longest stretch); I argue instead that NPs of the type the N of a(n) N are fundamentally different from the other types examined by Halliday & Hasan and Martin in that they designate two discourse referents rather than only one. I substantiate this claim with evidence retrieved from the COBUILD Bank of English corpus. My proposal is that esphoric NPs represent the cataphoric variant of a phoric relation which had traditionally been defined only in anaphoric terms, namely bridging. I thus analyze esphoric NPs as realizing forward bridging and discuss the types of conceptual relations they code. Finally, I describe these esphoric NPs as a special type of reference-point construction (Langacker 1993) in which the normal dynamics between reference point and target are reversed: it is the first NP which is target and the second NP which is reference point.