Procedural Information of Anaphoric Expressions : Pronouns, Ellipses and Metarepresentations

Abstract

This article examines computational processes of anaphoric expressions (i.e. pronouns and elliptical expressions) through a relevance-theoretic framework. Anaphora resolution regarding pronouns and elliptical expressions undergoes a process of saturation: an instruction on referent identifi cation by way of linguistic clues (i.e. pronouns and ellipses themselves). I propose that computational processes of anaphoric processes are based on ‘metarepresentation’ (i.e. interpreted thought or utterance) (Wilson (2000); Noh (2000)) involving a pragmatic enrichment of the incomplete logical form of anaphoric expressions. Anaphora resolution relies heavily on the hearer’s metarepresentational abilities in the sense that the referents of anaphoric expressions are accessible in the mental representations of the hearer who interprets the utterance in which those expressions are included. In other words, anaphoric expressions, phonologically realized or not, encode a procedure instructing the hearer to access their referent within the metarepresentations in order to reach the intended interpretation of the utterance in which they occur.