Rimandi anaforici e coesione testuale: il caso dell’ellissi

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This paper discusses various anaphoric expressions and the textual dependency and cohesion that they convey, with a special focus on the anaphoric ellipsis. On the basis of a classification model distinguishing between anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric “reference valency”, anaphoric NPs, pro-forms and ellipses are compared with NPs that establish an exophoric reference parallel to, but not depending on, that of an anteceding NP, i.e. cases which should not be termed anaphoric. The paper examines the co-textual restrictions linked to the different expressions investigated (including null forms) and distinguishes between four co-textual dependencies: thematic, referential, lexical, and structural. Unlike the other anaphoric expressions, the ellipsis exhibits all four dependencies and is therefore defined as the strongest cohesion marker of the ones investigated.