Accessibility Of Anaphora In English: A Cognitive-metonymic Perspective

Anaphora is traditionally regarded as a syntactically controlled co-referential relationship on the surface level of language. From the cognitive point of view, it is used to refer to a psychologically prominent entity out of the surface level of language. Hankamer and Sag (1976) classify anaphora into two types: surface and deep anaphora. Qin Hongwu (2001) advances this classification and divides deep anaphora into antecedentless, zero-pronoun and ambiguous anaphora. Ariel's Accessibility Theory puts forth a systematic scale of accessibility maker which studies anaphora from the cognitive perspective. This scale applies to surface anaphora but not deep anaphora.Metonymy now is viewed as part of our everyday way of thinking. Consequently, it is probable to account for anaphora from cognitive-metonymic approach, This thesis then proposes a model to analyze anaphoric phenomena and account for the cognitive process of assigning the referent in both surface and deep anaphora. The proposed model reflects that the more steps of cognitive reasoning the addressee makes within ICMs, the more difficult is to assign anaphora, which causes the referent is assumed to be less accessible. This idea then explains why the accessibility of the referent in deep anaphora cannot be contained in the range of Ariel's scale. Eventually, the author finds out the assumption to establish a scale of accessibility marker which applies to all types of anaphora is not realistic because the complicated and ever-changing cognitive reasoning cannot be ordered.This thesis consists of five chapters. They are organized as follows:Chapter One is an introductory chapter which provides some preliminaries for the thesis. This chapter deals with purposes of studying the accessibility of anaphora in English from the perspective of cognitive-metonymic model, its related research and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is mainly concerned with previous researches on anaphora, metonymy and accessibility. The first section introduces different points of view of anaphora from various linguistic schools and the representative theories from different angles. Then the classification of anaphora is introduced referring the notion of surface anaphora and deep anaphora. The second section reviews metonymy from two views: traditional view and cognitive view in which the theory of cognitive metonymy is presented in detail. The third section concerns with the notion of accessibility. Ariel's Accessibility Theory is introduced emphatically in this part.Chapter Three and Chapter Four constitute the main body of this study. In Chapter Three, the author aims at providing a cognitive-metonymic model to account for accessibility of anaphora. The first section constitutes two parts: Part One gives definition of ICM and predicts an important role which ICM serves as; Part Two introduces Radden and Kovecses's definition of metonymy and mentions operation of metonymy within an ICM model because metonymy is basically a cognitive phenomenon calculated within the framework of ICM. The second section introduces Al-Sharafil's textual model of metonymy which can supply a solid foundation for us to propose a new model which may explain the cognitive process of accessibility of anaphora. In third section, with the theories of Lakoff (1987), Radden and Kovecses (1999), and Al-Sharafi (2004), the author attempts to propose a cognitive-metonymic model, which is the basic model in this thesis to analyze anaphoric phenomena and account for how the process of accessibility of the referent operates within anaphora. In Chapter Four, the cognitive-metonymic model to account for accessibility in each of the two kinds of anaphora is constructed and anaphoric phenomena are exemplified from the model author proposes. The author proves that Ariel's Accessibility Marking Scale is not applicable in the phenomena of deep anaphora. Eventually, it seems unrealistic to propose a marking scale of accessibility like Ariel's to include all types of anaphora.Chapter Five concludes the thesis by summarizing the key ideas of the thesis and puts forward the limitations of the present study and the directions for future research.Summing up, this thesis broadens the research of accessibility of anaphora into the field Ariel's theory does not concern. It is helpful to determine the assignment of anaphora in comprehending the text. The theoretic importance and practical value will be fulfilled.