Cognitive Communicative Principle and the Interpretation of Bridging Anaphora.docVIP

Cognitive Communicative Principle and the Interpretation of Bridging Anaphora 　　Abstract 　　Bridging anaphora， a usual phenomenon in daily communication， is characterized by the anaphoric expressions which are definite noun phrases. This process can be interpreted as the search for relevance by communicators. Cognitive Principle claims that humans intuitively concentrate their minds on relevance and Communicative Principle provides bases for identifying the referents. Bridging anaphora can be expounded cognitively under the framework of Relevance Theory. 　　Key words： Bridging anaphora； Cognitive and communicative principle； Relevance 　　INTRODUCTION 　　As one of the categories of indirect anaphora， bridging anaphora， focusing on the cases in which the anaphors are only definite noun phrases， cannot be resolved solely on the basis of the propositional form （what is said） of the statement， but requires the hearer to “bridge” the gap between the anaphor and the antecedent and using cognitive inferences to acquire the truly conveyed meaning （what is implied）， which can be said as one of the most challenging jobs in indirect anaphoric resolution. That is to say， interpreting bridging anaphora involves more than identifying the information clearly expressed， it covers providing the more relevant assumptions to those that have already been processed. Relevance Theory includes the cognitive theories as well as the features for utterances in communication and it argues that humans are relevance-oriented in communication. As bridging anaphora is an active phenomenon in daily communication， it is more reasonable to be interpreted within the framework of Relevance Theory. 　　1. BRIDGING ANAPHORA 　　The term “bridging” was introduced by the psycholinguist H. H. Clark in 1977 （he terms this kind of phenomenon as bridging reference） to describe the process “by which the existence of a referent which has not itself been explicitly mentioned is inferred from something which is exp