The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse

Philip Harold Miller (1)

1 CLILLAC-ARP (EA_3967) - Centre de Linguistique Inter-langues, de Lexicologie, de Linguistique Anglaise et de Corpus

This paper investigates the conditions of choice in discourse between various verbal anaphors in English, namely Post-Auxiliary Ellipsis with auxiliary do; do so; and do it/this/that. On the basis of an extensive corpus survey, the following factors are shown to be relevant: (i) register, (ii) the presence or absence of an accessible polar alternative, (iii) whether the sentence containing the anaphor refers to the same state of affairs as that which contains the antecedent, (iv) the presence of a non contrastive adjunct, (v) the identity of the subject and its antecedent, (vi) the saliency of the antecedent.

Keywords: Anaphora; Verb Phrase Ellipsis; do so; do it; do this; do that; discourse; accessibility; saliency; register verbal anaphors; verbal antecedent accessibility

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Linguistics

Philip Harold Miller. The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse. DAARC 2011, Oct 2011, Faro, Portugal. pp.82-95. ⟨hal-01235245⟩