Paragraphs, & anaphora

Abstract

Whereas pronouns (in European languages) are generally obligatory if a unique antecedent is available, a paragraph boundary is a general barrier to anaphora. In particular, a pronoun cannot find an antecedent embedded in a previous paragraph. Apparent counterexamples can be characterized, and appear to take the topics of preceding paragraphs as antecedents. In explaining why anaphora is blocked, we can arrive at a notion of what a paragraph is, and the role it plays in understanding. This account then explains in turn a number of informal but indisputable facts about paragraphing, such as the effects of paragraphs that are too long or too short, why they support but do not match the logical structure of a discourse, and what the mechanism behind the perception of cohesion is. This account of paragraphing also places the paragraph as an upper limit on integrative semantic theories, theories in which the meaning of a sentence and the words in it are a function of the context that precedes it. The superficial counterexamples, however, appear to provide a first step toward a formal theory of rhetoric above the paragraph.