[Lingtyp] Term for “non-pronominal anaphora"

Thu Jun 3 10:11:34 UTC 2021

Personally, I see the term “endophoric” very regularly (I’ve been working on demonstratives and classifiers lately). Instead of spending energy on developing a new term, why not simply use the existing one that does not raise any problem ? The simple facts that people on this list (especially those publishing typological papers) use it would very likely enhance its use.

I am in general a bit resistant about any type of committee (or discussion list) that would decide what everyone else has to do. But this kind of inclination towards prescriptivism or active linguistic policy is actually funny to observe among linguists!

De : Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> De la part de Martin Haspelmath
Envoyé : jeudi 3 juin 2021 11:49
À : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] Term for “non-pronominal anaphora"

Thanks to Randy LaPolla, Volker Gast and Christian Lehmann for pointing to Halliday & Hasan's term "endophoric"!

Unfortunately, this term has not caught on in general, and in practice, the term "anaphoric" is widely used as a cover term for "cataphoric" and "epanaphoric" (e.g. in Huang's 2000 overview book "Anaphora"). I did a Twitter poll which confimed my hunch:

"What's the best cover term for "anaphoric" (backward-looking) and "cataphoric" (forward-looking)?

(A) phoric (35%)
(B) endophoric (22%)
(C) anaphoric (taken broadly) (43%)"

(See https://twitter.com/haspelmath/status/1400034485941460994)

Thus, "endophoric" is preferred only by a minority, and most people think that "anaphoric" can be used as a cover term for both – hence it seems best to use a new term ("epanaphoric") for the complement of "cataphoric".

Best,
Martin
Am 01.06.21 um 20:31 schrieb Volker Gast:

Hi Martin,
I'm not sure if we need a standardization committee here. Our students grow up with the terminology established by M.A.K Halliday, who distinguishes between 'endophoric' and 'exophoric' reference. 'Endophoric' reference can be 'anaphoric' or 'cataphoric'. I'm not aware of the use of 'anaphoric' as 'forward-looking' (as this would be 'cataphoric' imho). And I agree with everyone who thinks that anaphor(a) do(es) not have to imply pronouns (that would be a matter of 'substitution', in Halliday's terms). What's wrong with the taxonomy

exophoric vs. (endophoric (anaphoric vs. cataphoric ))

?

(And wouldn't 'ep(i)-ana-phoric' be redundant in this context? Isn't 'anaphoric' originally '[carry] up[stream]', hence 'backward'?)

Best,
Volker

On 31/05/2021 10:56, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
Paolo's mention of the term pair "anaphora/cataphora" brings up a frequent issue in terminology: When a new and relatively short term (like "cataphora") is coined to refer to a special case, then it is not clear whether the old term (here "anaphora") refers to the general case or to the complement of the special case.

Unfortunately, "anaphora" has thus become ambiguous: (i) it refers to backward-looking and forward-looking discourse reference relations; (ii) it refers only to backward-looking relations.

It would be good to have a standardization committee that resolves this problem, because it seems that the discipline will otherwise be stuck with ambiguity of a key term. (Personally, I would prefer to use "anaphora" in the general sense, and to have a new term, e.g. "epanaphora", for backward-looking relations; cf. Greek κάτω 'down', επάνω 'up'. But this would be for a committee to decide.)

Best,
Martin

Am 30.05.21 um 19:37 schrieb paolo Ramat:
I agree with Bill: "anaphora" does not refer only to "pronouns" or "pro-forms". In a sentence such as The jury found him guilty and the verdict shocked him deeply  'the verdict' refers anaphorically (= looking backwards)  to what has been said  in the first coordinated sentence. On the contrary, The verdict of the jury was: he is guilty . 'the verdict' is in cataphoric (=looking forwards) position.
I think that if we consider anaphora and cataphora together, we can get a better understanding of both.

Paolo

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Il giorno dom 30 mag 2021 alle ore 15:48 William Croft <wcroft at unm.edu<mailto:wcroft at unm.edu>> ha scritto:
Dear all,

   I find the definition of "anaphora" implied in Ian's post to presuppose a theory of anaphora that not everyone, certainly not myself, agrees with. Namely, that anaphora only happens across sentences, and/or the only strategy for anaphora are "pronouns" or "pro-forms". Both of these assumptions have been debated, and there are different theories; see Croft (2013) and references cited therein. I think "anaphora" as a comparative concept should be defined more broadly -- as I think it generally is -- to accommodate different theories about the possible form of anaphoric expressions, and their possible distribution.

Bill

Croft, William. 2013. “Agreement as anaphora, anaphora as coreference.” Languages across boundaries: studies in memory of Anna Siewierska, ed. Dik Bakker and Martin Haspelmath, 107-29. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk<mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>>
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2021 1:54 AM
To: LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Term for “non-pronominal anaphora"

  [EXTERNAL]
Dear all,

thank you for your guidance.
I think the closest form is “lexical/nominal anaphora” but given the examples I’ve read so far, it seems that they are different from the lexical repetition within a clause.
For example, in the following sentence, “the guy” refers to John, but it’s not in the same clause as “John”:
“I know John_i. The guy_i has a dog.”
But in the following Korean, the two occurences of “John” are within the same clause:
“John_i-kwa John_i-uy kay" (lit. John_i and John_i’s dog)
So I think the the within-clause repetition and cross-clause repetition must be distinguished.
Also I agree with Martin’s initial suggestion that this Korean case shouldn’t be termed as “anaphora” because it really isn’t anaphoric reference. It’s just the repeated occurrence of the same lexeme where you would expect anaphora in an European language, so to call it anaphora might be a little Euro-centric.

From Hong Kong,
Ian
On 27 May 2021, 11:41 PM +0800, Christian Chiarcos <christian.chiarcos at web.de<mailto:christian.chiarcos at web.de>>, wrote:

Depends on the context, I guess. In the area of *anaphor resolution* and *linguistic annotation*, "nominal anaphora" is much more established. "Lexical anaphora" is potentially ambiguous, because it would also cover or at least overlap with "verbal anaphora", a term occasionally used for "do so" constructions and/or verb repetitions.

Best,
Christian

Am Fr., 21. Mai 2021 um 08:00 Uhr schrieb JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk<mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>>:
Dear all,

is there a term for “non-pronominal anaphora”, i. e. using personal names or titles for anaphoric reference?
Example:
Hyeng-kwa hyeng-uy chinkwu
older.brother-COM older.brother-GEN friend
`Older brother and his (lit. older brother’s) friend’ (Korean)
I tried to search it in Google, but since I don’t know what this phenomenon is called, I don’t know what to search for.
I would appreciate your help.

Regards,
ian
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