Titel: The syntax of prominence
Wann: 11. Dezember 2024 um 14:15
Wo: Merangasse 70/1, 1. Stock, UR 33.1.224, oder https://uni-graz.zoom.us/j/8350892237?pwd=dFpEUGVlVTJCQU05UVlUMFJseUhFZz09&omn=61123827492 (Meeting ID: 835 089 2237, Passcode: 390253)
Abstract:
The standard view on discourse pronoun resolution is that determining the antecedents of discourse pronouns is typically a function of extra-linguistic reasoning. In contrast, Stojnić (2021) argues that pronoun resolution, and resolution of context-sensitive expressions in general, can and should receive a purely linguistic account. In the article I will present, we offer what we take to be a friendly amendement to the technical aspects of Stojnić's proposal.
Our point of departure is with our idea that prominence is not determined by the position of the candidate antecedent within a dedicated prominence ranking structure (the so-called stack), but rather by its position within standard syntactic tree structures, extended to include discourse-level trees. Our proposal leans on the notion of p-scope, a proof-theoretic accessibility relation among tree nodes which we developed in Ludlow and Živanović (2022), and the notion of closeness built on standard accounts of syntactic locality. One key idea is that a pronoun's antecedent resolves to its closest p-scoper; specifically, p-scope determines the potential antecedents, and the closeness relation orders these by prominence. The other key assumption is that coherence relations, which Stojnić assumes explicitly modify the prominence ranking as part of their conventional meaning, are in fact nothing but syntactic heads, and can be thus seen as affecting accessibility and prominence indirectly, in virtue of their position in LF, established independently by cartographic and other syntactic research.