Anaphora

In this book, Yan Huang provides an extensive and accessible overview of the major contemporary issues surrounding anaphora and gives a critical survey of the many and diverse contemporary approaches to it. He also provides by far the fullest cross-linguistic account of anaphora yet published. Anaphora is a central topic in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and to the interfaces between them, and the subject of advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in linguistics and computational linguistics. Dr Huang's survey and analysis are based on a rich collection of data drawn from around 450 of the world's languages. Topics covered include binding and control, null subjects and objects, long distance reflexivisation, logophoricity, bridging-cross reference, switch-reference, and discourse anaphora. Note: Almost any conversation or text understanding depends on the listener or reader recognizing that some words refer to what has already been said or written (his, its, he, there, etc.). This mode of reference, anaphora, involves surprisingly complicated cognitive and syntactic processes, which people usually perform unerringly. But they present formidable problems for the linguist and cognitive scientist trying to explain precisely how comprehension is achieved. Anaphora is thus a central research focus in syntactic and semantic theory, while understanding and modelling its operation in discourse are important targets in computational linguistics and cognitive science.