Understanding demonstrative reference in text: a new taxonomy based on a new corpus
Maes,Alfons Krahmer,Emiel Peeters,David
Maes,Alfons
Krahmer,Emiel
Peeters,David
Abstract
Endophoric demonstratives such as this and that are among the most frequently used words in written texts. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how exactly they should be subdivided and classified in terms of their different types of use. Here, we develop a new taxonomy of endophoric demonstratives based on a large-scale corpus including three written genres: news items, encyclopedic texts, and book reviews. The taxonomy enables analysts to reliably code endophoric demonstratives based on objectively applicable criteria, while at the same time making them aware of many subtle borderline cases. We consider the taxonomy as a theoretical foundation for future theoretical and empirical work into endophoric demonstratives, and as an analytical tool allowing researchers to unify and compare the results of studies on endophoric demonstratives coming from different genres and languages.
Description
Funding Information: D.P. was supported by a Veni grant (275-89-037) awarded by De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, the Dutch Research Council). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.
Date
2022-06-28
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Keywords
Demonstratives, Endophoric reference, Discourse genre, Referential communication, Referent accessibility, Corpus linguistics, Pragmatics, Noun Phrase, Deixis, Language, Anaphora, Form
Citation
Maes, A, Krahmer, E & Peeters, D 2022, 'Understanding demonstrative reference in text : a new taxonomy based on a new corpus', Language and Cognition, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 185-207. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2021.28