Bridging Reference And Discourse Coherence

The present thesis is going to explore two complicated linguistic phenomena: bridging reference and discourse coherence, in order to work out the interactional relationship of the two, that is, on the one hand, discourse coherence provide an environment for the realization and assignment of bridging reference; on the other hand, as part of discourse coherence component, bridging reference has great explanatory power for discourse coherence. Coherence was originally a concept of rhetoric, where coherence was an important prerequisite of discourse unity. Research on discourse coherence enjoys a long history, during which the linguistic circle has had intense debate mainly surrounding this topic. Halliday is among the earliest scholars who studied coherence through his analysis of cohesive devices available in the English language. But many scholars in the linguistic circle hold different views to his idea. There are diverse opinions such that there is not a unified understanding and interpretation of coherence even up till now. In the present thesis, the author is going to summarize findings in this field before she explores the possibility of elaborating discourse coherence from the perspective of bridging reference.Bridging reference (hereafter BR), which permeates all kinds of writings, refers to the relationship between a linguistic expression and its intended referent not explicitly expressed in the previous context. The interpretation of BR relies on the correct identification of an assumption which introduces the intended referent. The linguistic expression is named bridging NP, and the assumption is named bridging assumption. Those linguistic expressions (noun, verb, adjective, etc) which help form bridging assumptions are called bridging triggers. BR has been extensively researched in the literature and different theories have been employed to account for this phenomenon. Although significant insights have been gained through various approaches, limitations of each approach in explaining BR still exist. Despite the variety of approaches, our focus in this thesis is coherence-based theory by Hobbs (1979). He approaches bridging from the angle of coherence and argues that the hearer should accept the first interpretive hypothesis which makes the utterance coherent. Coherence-base approach offers a framework to contain advantages of different approaches. It has strong explanatory power in interpreting BR. This thesis, absorbing advantages of other approaches, from semantic, cognitive and pragmatic angle, aims to propose a coherence-theoretical interpretation strategy of BR.The present thesis will first give a brief introduction to some basic issues concerning the concept of bridging reference and discourse coherence. The literature on the studies of bridging reference and discourse coherence is then reviewed, which aims to point out the inefficiency within them. Through elaborating the coherence-based approach to bridging reference and the explanatory power of bridging reference to discourse coherence respectively, the author reveals the interactional relationship between the two linguistic phenomena.