Francis Cornish

Université de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France · Laboratoire CLLE-ERSS

RÉSUMÉ Deux manifestations d’anaphoriques fonctionnant « sans antécédent » (l’exophore et l’anaphore indirecte) sont analysées afin de mettre en évidence le fonctionnement véritable de l’anaphore. Nous verrons ainsi la manière dont ceux-ci réalisent une référence dépendante, non par le biais d’un élément particulier de leur co-texte (un « antécéden...

This was a different man, said Mr Welbecker. "Listen! This man was called Hamlet and his uncle had killed his father because he wanted to marry his mother." "What did he want to marry his mother for?" said William. "I've never heard of anyone wanting to marry their mother."* In almost any conversation the meaning of what is said depends on the list...

The majority of functional models of language, which purport to account for text, do not recognize the distinct dimension corresponding to “discourse”, as conceived here. Instead, the various semantic-pragmatic aspects of the use of indexical expressions, in particular, tend to be conceived uniquely in terms of the textual environment of the marker...

The majority of functional models of language, which purport to account for text, do not recognize the distinct dimension corresponding to “discourse”, as conceived here. Instead, the various semantic-pragmatic aspects of the use of indexical expressions, in particular, tend to be conceived uniquely interms of the textual environment of the markers...

The article is an introduction to the special issue of the journal *Langue Française" n° 210 (June 2021) devoted to "Anaphora revisited", for which I acted as guest editor. It provides a historical outline of two major traditions regarding the conception of anaphora and deixis, followed by a brief presentation of my own. It is completed by a set of...

Coherence, which is an interpretative principle utilized by cooperative speakers/writers and hearers/readers, should not be confused with cohesion. Cohesion markers are not strictly necessary for the achievement of a coherent interpretation of a fragment of text, relative to some context, and overt incohesion does not necessarily point to an incohe...

The notion and term ‘pro-form’ are widely used in current Linguistics, in particular in studies of anaphora. They represent a generalisation based on the etymology of the term ‘pronoun’, extended thereby to ‘pro-verbs’, ‘pro-VPs’, ‘pro-NPs’, ‘pro-APs’ and ‘pro-sentences’. The conception underlying such a usage is evidently that of the substitution...

A critical review of T. Givon, *The Story of Zero* (John Benjamins, 2017). After an overall presentation of the scope and content of the book, the review critically discusses the author's conceptions of text, anaphora and cataphora, suggesting that there are more types of zero markers than the micro-linguistic or discourse ones recognised by the au...

Reseña de:T. Givón (2017): The Story of Zero, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins [414 pp.]. ISBN: 978-90-272-1239-9.

Andrea Nagy, Des pronoms au texte: études de linguistique textuelle. (Studia Romanica de Debrecen, Series Linguistica, 12.) Debrecen: Debrecen University Press, 2017, 114 pp. 978 963 318 667 1 (softcover) - Volume 29 Issue 3 - Francis Cornish

The article is a critical examination of the raw material of work in Linguistics, namely the examples presented for analysis. The discussion will enable us to point up the linguist’s attitude towards language(s) underlying his or her choice of examples and the way in which s/he treats them. Two main types of examples are contrasted: those invented...

By “anadeixis” (a termed first coined by Ehlich, 1982) is meant, prototypically, the indexical functioning of certain context-bound expressions to target discourse entities which are either not yet topical, or whose erstwhile topical status has faded. It is the discourse-structuring function of anadeictic indexicals that will be the particular focu...

By “anadeixis” (a termed first coined by Ehlich, 1982) is meant, prototypically, the indexical functioning of certain context-bound expressions to target discourse entities which are either not yet topical, or have had their erstwhile topical status superseded by more recent topical objects of discourse. Thus “anadeictic” references combine anapho...

This chapter deals with L2 learners’ critical awareness of how indexicals function in extended English texts in terms of analysis and production. Its goal is to encourage L2 English teachers to raise learners’ “metadiscursive awareness” levels, by engaging them in text- and discourse-structuring activities in which these expressions assume the majo...

The goal of this article is to uncover the system underlying three types of English relative clauses, and to characterise their distinctive uses in discourse: NP-integrated ones, namely restrictive and ‘a-restrictive’ relative clauses, and non-integrated ones, represented by non-restrictive relatives. The area at issue is central, since understandi...

RÉSUMÉ L'article vise à démontrer que l'emploi des démonstratifs marqués pour la distinction déictique ‘proximal’ vs. ‘distal’ en français et en anglais (ainsi que dans bien d'autres langues encore) ne se laisse pas analyser de manière satisfaisante en fonction du degré de proximité ou de distance du référent visé par rapport au locuteur (ou à l'al...

This article argues that it is not the indexical expression in and of itself (whether a 3rd person pronoun, etc.) which fulfils the indexical referring function, whether it is deixis, “anadeixis” or anaphora; but rather the indexical procedure chosen by the speaker/writer as such. It is this procedure which is realised by the indexical in question,...

The notion and term ‘pro-form’ are widely used in current Linguistics, in particular in studies of anaphora. They represent a generalisation based on the etymology of the term ‘pronoun’, extended thereby to ‘pro-verbs’, ‘pro-VPs’, ‘pro-NPs’, ‘pro-APs’ and ‘pro-sentences’. The conception underlying such a usage is evidently that of the substitution...

Agreement is a central phenomenon for grammatical theory, its description bringing into play a number of different components and levels of analysis. This chapter's goal is to show how, taking French as the example language, stating certain agreement facts requires reference to each of the levels and components available within the Functional Disco...

Version révisée et remaniée de la communication du même titre présentée lors du colloque sur l'anaphore tenu à l'université de Neuchâtel, Suisse, les 4 et 5 avril 2012.

The Functional Discourse Grammar model has a twofold objective: on the one hand, to provide a descriptively, psychologically and pragmatically adequate account of the forms made available by a typologically diverse range of languages; and on the other, to provide a model of language which is set up to reflect, at one remove, certain of the stages t...

Adopting Berrendonner’s (1990, 2002) and Berrendonner et al.’s (forthcoming) distinction between “micro-syntax” and “macro-syntax”, as well as the orthogonal dichotomy between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse segments (cf. Khalil 2005), this paper aims to examine certain “non-canonical” interactions amongst these domains. In particular, it a...

Taking English as the example language, the article begins by presenting a Scale of indexicality characterizing context-bound expression types, ranging from those signalling pure deixis at one pole, to ones expressing pure anaphora at the other. On the basis of this Scale, the article attempts to determine the specific way in which demonstratives (...

The traditional definition of anaphora in purely co-textual terms as a relation between two co-occurring expressions is in wide currency in theoretical and descriptive studies of the phenomenon. Indeed, it is currently adopted in on-line psycholinguistic experiments on the interpretation of anaphors, and is the basis for all computational approache...

AdamJean-Michel and HeidemannUte (eds), Sciences du texte et analyse de discours. Enjeux d'une interdisciplinarité. Genève: Slatkine Érudition, 2005, 274 pp. 2-05-101988-6 - Volume 20 Issue 2 - Francis Cornish

This article aims to provide analyses of the discourse associated with the texts of four extracts from guided or free recorded conversations, all taken from the Projet sur la Phonologie du Français Contemporain (PFC). These extracts include several types of indexical expressions, which reveal the existence as well as the discourse-cognitive status...

Adopting Berrendonner’s (1990; fc.) distinction between “micro-syntax” and “macro-syntax”, as well as the orthogonal one between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse segments (cf. Khalil, 2005), this paper aims to examine certain “non-canonical” interactions amongst these domains. In particular, I shall be looking at instances where a potential...

Hobbs [Hobbs, J.R., 1979. Coherence and coreference. Cognitive Science 3, 67–90] claims that the interpretation of inter-sentential anaphors ‘falls out’ as a ‘by-product’ of using a particular coherence relation to integrate two discourse units. The article argues that this is only partly true. Taking the reader’s perspective, I suggest that there...

c1 Adresse pour correspondance: Francis Cornish, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, Département Études du Monde Anglophone, 5, Allée Antonio-Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex 09, France email: cornish@univ-tlse2.fr

Pour Hobbs (1979), l'interprétation des anaphoriques inter-phrastiques ‘découle’ (‘falls out’) en tant qu'effet secondaire de l'emploi d'une relation de cohérence pour intégrer deux unités de discours. En essayant de mettre au clair la nature des interactions entre relations de cohérence et fonctionnement des anaphores dans la compréhension de text...

Pour Hobbs (1979), l'interprétation des anaphoriques inter-phrastiques 'découle' ('falls out') en tant qu'effet secondaire de l'emploi d'une relation de cohérence pour intégrer deux unités de discours. En essayant de mettre au clair la nature des interactions entre relations de cohérence et fonctionnement des anaphores dans la compréhension de text...

This paper takes as its starting point the ground-breaking claims of Sir John Lyons in his work on deixis and anaphora in the 1970s and early 1980s, developing the pioneering work of Karl Bühler: in particular, the basic insight that deixis is the source of reference. Flowing from this are the claims that anaphora is derivative upon deixis, and tha...

In recent proposals for the crucial internal structure of the framing Contextual Component within Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2006, 2008) — for example by Rijkhoff (2008:88-97) and Connolly (2007) —, what is here called text is considered as equivalent to discourse within an account of the NP (Rijkhoff) or of context (Connol...

My goal in this article is to compare the behavior of a variety of non-clause-bound types of indexical expression in English across three texts from different genres, spoken as well as written. A key distinction is the one claimed to exist between the dimensions of text and discourse, and the comparison of the indexical types demonstrates its relev...

This chapter deals with zero or implicit internal arguments of predicates which may take one or two internal arguments, realizable syntactically. It begins by distinguishing implicit (internal) arguments in terms of a predicate's semantic valency in relation to the syntactic valency of the verb or adjective corresponding to that predicate (§2), and...

This volume contains a careful selection of papers concerned with actual research questions on anaphoric reference, a subject of current interest with various linguistic subdisciplines. This is reflected in this book as it methodically covers broadly invested approaches from cognitive, neurolinguistic, formal and computational perspectives, each co...

This article aims to arrive at an effective means of distinguishing between three main uses of demonstrative expressions (whether adverbs, pronouns or NPs with a demonstrative determiner; here I shall mainly be examining the latter two types): the deictic, the “anadeictic”, and the discourse-deictic uses, respectively. In particular, my major goal...

Spoken discourse is the ongoing, situated interpretation of a speaker’s communicative intentions, of which the addressee’s expected and actual reactions are an integral part. The creation of discourse is thus a joint endeavor, involving the active cooperation of all the participants. The textual record on which this constructive activity is based,...

The article deals mainly with the criteria and heuristic cues for a subset of coherence (or discourse) relations, in terms of a selection of short attested English and French texts - often without explicit connectives. The issue of the nature and types of discourse units involved in the integration via given coherence relations, and of their point...

Coherence relations and anaphora in an inter-sentential context: a perfect symbiosis The various types of semantic and pragma-semantic relations obtaining between either two or three successive or separated text sentences within a discourse are not without effect on the interpretation and the discourse functioning of anaphors occurring in the secon...

** Dans leur interprétation référentielle-anaphorique, les compléments nuls de verbes, d'adjectifs et de prépositions transitifs en anglais sont très contraints. Nous examinons ce phénomène dans le contexte d'autres valeurs que la seule valeur anaphorique, en comparant ces formes nulles aux pronoms manifestes. Il est montré que ce sont des facteurs...

Numéro spécial de CORELA, revue en ligne ; numéro coordonné par D. Legallois : " Organisation des textes et cohérence des discours ". http://edel.univ-poitiers.fr/corela/document.php?id=1280, novembre 2006.

Francis Cornish : Cohérence relations and anaphora in an inter-sentential context : a perfect symbiosis The various types of semantic and pragma-semantic relations obtaining between either two or three successive or separated text sentences within a discourse are not without effect on the interpretation and the discourse functioning of anaphors occ...

Dans cet article, nous proposons une analyse des structures de discours dans un recueil de descriptions d'itinéraires produites dans quatre conditions distinctes. La structure de ces discours est appréhendée à travers l'étude des adverbiaux spatiaux détachés en tête de phrase et une attention particulière est portée à la forme des expressions référ...

There is disagreement within both linguistics and psycholinguistics concerning the use of unaccented third person pronouns to refer to implicit referents. Some researchers (e.g., Erkü & Gundel, 1987) argue that it is impossible or highly marked, while others (e.g., Yule, 1982) maintain that it is not only acceptable but commonly used in normal disc...

The theme of this chapter is the possible existence, and if so, interpretation, of zero or null complements of predicates which may take one or two internal arguments (i.e. either an A2 or an A2 and an A3), realizable syntactically. It aims to show how this phenomenon may receive a satisfactory treatment within Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). I...

In this chapter, I aim to show that so-called"indirect" anaphora, when realized via unaccented pronouns, is less of a marked discourse phenomenon than previously claimed. After a definition of indirect anaphora, which is distinguished from 'exophora',in particular, the chapter tries to delimit the threshold of discourse-cognitive activation or sali...

This chapter's goal is to isolate the internal syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic properties of the "locative inversion" construction in six languages, representing three constituent order types: English, French, Italian, European Portuguese, Turkish (rigid SOV) and Arabic (flexible VSO). The descriptive framework adopted is that of Functi...

The four Topic statuses recognized in FG ("Given", "Sub", "Resumed" and "New") appear to subsume the distinction in Columbia School linguistics (CS) between "Focus" (a two-level set of instructions to the addressee to treat the content of the constituent so-marked as needing or as already assuming a high(er) or a low(er) degree of attention concent...

The aim of this article is to demonstrate, using two attested texts (newspaper articles), how the reader creates discourse on the basis of the many and varied types of textual cues supplied by the writer, in terms of a relevant context. It also aims to show how the different distributions ofanaphor types in given texts correlate with the discourse...

The article deals with the dynamic, retroactive effects within a clause derivation of various ‘downstream’ specifications (that is, at subsequent levels in the derivation) on the semantic structure and aspectual character of the predicator at the ‘nuclear’, ‘core’ and ‘extended’ predication layers within standard Functional Grammar (Dik 1997a)...

This article is a critical examination of Dik's (1997b: chapter 10) account of discourse anaphora, within the framework of the theory of functional grammar (but it highlights features of anaphora theory that hold more generally). I show first that Dik's definitions of the phenomenon involve two contradictory conceptions of this discourse procedure...

In this article, I examine the ‘modal’ or ‘empathetic’ (Lyons, 1977: 677) use of the distal (or ‘nonproximal’) determiner/pronoun that: namely, where the intended referent may have just been evoked in the immediately prior discourse, but where the distal pronoun that, not the ‘in-focus’ it or the ‘activated’, proximal this is used. The rationale be...

A cross-linguistic study of so-called “locative inversion”: evidence for the Functional Discourse Grammar model Francis Cornish Abstract This chapter’s goal is to isolate the internal syntactic, semantic and discourse-pragmatic properties of the “locative inversion” construction in six languages, representing three constituent order types: Engli...

Schnedecker, Catherine, Nom propre et chaînes de référence. (Recherches Linguistiques, 21). Paris: Klincksieck, 1997, iv + 231 pp. 2 909 49805 0 - - Volume 10 Issue 2 - Francis Cornish

So-called ‘antecedentless’ anaphors have tended to be conceived of as illustrated in examples such as (4.1) (see Hankamer and Sag 1976; Tasmowski-de Ryck and Verluyten 1982): (4.1) [A and B turn a corner on the pavement, and suddenly find themselves face to face with a rather large dog] A to B: Do you think it’s friendly? {adapted from Yule 1979: e...

Chapters 2 and 4, in particular, have demonstrated the need for a conceptual representation of the context-determined sense and, where there is one, referent of a given indexical expression within a mental discourse model. Not only does the indexical expression-where it is not ‘bound’, a type of expression which is outside the purview of this book-...

Discourse anaphors do not operate by ‘pointing’ backwards (or forwards, in the case of ‘cataphors’) to a co-occurring segment of the co-text, and causing its sense and denotation as well as its relevant morphosyntactic features (animacy, gender) to be transferred to them as a result. As we have amply seen in the foregoing, this is not an adequate t...

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Taking a cognitive perspective, and concentrating on instances of exophora (or so-called ‘antecedentless’ anaphora), where by definition there is no co-occurring expression in terms of which a given anaphor might be interpreted (i.e. a potential ‘antecedent’), I aim to show, firstly, that so-called exophora falls within the category of anaphora pro...

. Coherence, which is an interpretative principle utilised by cooperative speakers/writers and hearers/readers, should not be confused with cohesion. Cohesion markers are not strictly necessary for the achievement of a coherent interpretation of a fragment of text, relative to some context, and overt incohesion does not necessarily point to an inco...

This review article is a critical evaluation of Anna Siewierska's (AS) introduction to the current model of Functional Grammar, as expounded chiefly in Simon Dik's (1989) synthesis. It is also a critique of certain aspects of the basic theory itself. The article has seven sections, reflecting the book's essential structure and focus. After a brief...

The article argues that, contrary to a widespread view (e.g. Haiman, 1985; Palmer, 1984), agreement in those languages which exhibit it is not a purely redundant, semantically empty and grammatically predictable phenomenon, but performs several important functions at the level of discourse. Taking French as the example language, I will argue (secti...

The aim of the article is to determine whether so and it fulfil distinct discourse-building roles, in their predicate- and proposition-anaphoric guise. Is the choice between them determined by the syntactic or semantic nature of their ‘antecedent’, or of the context in which the choice between them is to be made? Or do they in fact themselves deter...

This article examines a range of predicate- and proposition-anaphoric phenomena in French, chiefly involving the ‘neuter’ clitic pronouns le, y and en, from the point of view of their discourse motivation. One aim is to characterise the relatively little-studied phenomenon of ‘non-discrete’ reference in discourse. Another is to determine the extent...

The article is a critical review of Fox (1987). After an introduction outlining Fox's essential aims, the scope of her study and her general approach to it, section 2 critically examines Fox's theoretical assumptions, methodology and selection of data, and the ways in which they affect her analyses of discourse anaphora in two genres of written and...

The article consists of a critical review of Reinhart (1983), focussing both on certain methodological questions raised by her study of anaphora and on the theoretical assumptions underlying it. After a short general introduction to the work, the article discusses four aspects of it which relate to the above-mentioned concerns: the scope of Reinhar...