(3) Anaphora: It is a general property of natural languages that they possess
anaphoric devices – i.e. devices for referring to entities mentioned
elsewhere in the same sentence or discourse.
(88) A: What do you think of Fred?
B: I can’t stand the bastard.
=> The noun ‘the bastard’ is an anaphoric expression whose antecedent is
Fred.
Natural languages typically possess the type of anaphor termed anaphoric pronouns in
traditional grammar. In (89), the anaphoric pronoun is him whose antecedent is Fred.
(89) A: What do you think of Fred?
B: I can’t stand him.
However, the antecedent of the anaphoric pronoun ‘him’ can be other noun phrase in
(90)
as well as noun like ‘Fred’.
(90) A: What do you think of the man next door?
B: I can’t stand him.
Because the antecedent of him in (90) is the man next door, it would be more
appropriate to describe him as a pro-Noun Phrase (=pro-NP) rather than as a
pro-Noun (=pro-N).
In (91b), the pronoun her can be replaced to the whole Noun Phrase the woman
in the blue hat, but not the Noun woman.
(91) (a) I like the woman in the blue hat.
(b) I like her
(c) *I like the her in the blue hat.
Words like him, her, etc. are more accurately described as pro-NPs, since they
occur
in NP-positions in a sentence, and generally have NPs as their antecedents.
Not all pro-constituents are pro-NPs, the word there in (92) is a pro-PP (pro-
Prepositional Phrase).
(92) A: Have you ever been to Paris?
B: No, I have never been there.
# Any adequate description of pro-constituents (or proforms) will have to be con-
cerned
with both the syntax and semantics of them.
The syntactic status of proforms represents the sentence-position of the
anaphoric
preforms. The semantic status of proforms represents the antecedent of a
given
proform in meaning.
# Discussion of proform ‘it’
① Syntactic ‘it’
‘It’ can occupy the same range of sentence-position as a typical Noun Phrase
like the book on the table as in (93). Syntactically, ‘it’ has the same
distribution as a typical Noun Phrase: syntactically, it functions like a pro-NP.
② Semantic ‘it’
All the italicized noun phrase in (94) can be interpreted as possible
antecedents for ‘it’. Thus, the obvious generalization about the semantics
of it is that it can be interpreted as having an NP as its antecedent.
But it would appear that not only an NP, but also an S can be interpreted as
the antecedent of the preform it.
③ Conclusion of proform ‘it’
In (93) and (94), the proform ‘it’ can occur in the NP-positions. However,
‘it’ cannot occur in S-position as in (95).
Syntactically, it occurs only in NP-positions, whereas semantically, it can
have as its antecedent either an NP or an S.
(4) Omissibility
Under certain discourse-conditions, it is possible in English to omit some sentence-
fragment identical to one which occurs elsewhere in the same sentence or dis-
course.
(97) A: John won’t wash the dishes.
B: I bet he will wash the dishes if you’re nice to him.
(98) John won’t help me with the dishes, but Paul will
help me with the dishes.
(100) (a) *John won’t put the car in the garage, but Paul will put the car in the garage.
(b) *John won’t put the car in the garage, but Paul will put the car in the garage.
(c) *John won’t put the car in the garage, but Paul will put the car in the garage.
(d) *John won’t put the car in the garage, but Paul will put the car in the garage.
(101) John won’t put the car in the garage, but Paul will put the car in the garage.
The second sentence in (101) ‘Paul will put the car in the garage’ can be structured as in (102).
The omitted category is VP.
(103) Only Verb Phrases(VP) can be
omitted, if they are identical
to some other VP in the same
discourse.
