Parameters of antecedent – possessive postcopular anaphor correlation: the case of definiteness effect

Dolmatova Olesya Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-2287-3561 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Experimental Linguistics and Intercultural Competence, Pyatigorsk State University 357500, Russia, Stavropol Territory, Pyatigorsk, Kalinin Avenue, 9, room 225 olena.dolmatova2012@mail.ru Akselrood Dina Aronovna ORCID: 0000-0001-8353-7070 PhD in Philology Professor, Department of Experimental Linguistics and Intercultural Competence, Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'Pyatigorsk State University' 357500, Russia, Stavropol Territory, Pyatigorsk, Kalinin Avenue, 9, room 225 deaxel@mail.ru

Brodskaya Mariya Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0002-1478-3451 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Oriental Languages and Cultures, Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education 'Pyatigorsk State University' 357500, Russia, Stavropol Territory, Pyatigorsk, Kalinin Avenue, 9, room 302 mashuchok@gmail.com

Introduction

         The paper assumes the establishment of a remote parameter of the textual connection of a possessive post-popular anaphore with its antecedent under the conditions of the certainty effect. The concept of the "certainty effect" was introduced by G. Milzark in a 1977 paper and represents a restriction on the appearance of certain determinants in post-popular nominal groups, namely the definite article, universal quantifiers "all, every, each", quantifier "most", possessive and demonstrative pronouns that are considered definite (hence the name of the phenomenon – the effect certainty) ^[1]. The following examples are a standard illustration, where options 1a and 1b are acceptable, and options 2 are questionable:

1.  a. There was a man.

     b. There are some/several/many/three policemen.

2. a. There was the man.

  b. There is my uncle.

c. There is every man.

  d. There are all pencils.

The semantic criterion of differentiation was the possibility (or impossibility) to convey the value of the size of the set indicated by the noun. According to this criterion, determinants were conditionally divided into "weak" and "strong" (respectively allowed and prohibited in this position). Almost immediately, descriptions of exceptions appeared, for example, ^{[2, 3, 4]}, concentrated mainly on a certain article, respectively, issues of certainty-uncertainty came to the fore, the main provisions are contained, in particular, in ^{[5, 6, 7]}. The effect of certainty has an extensive history of study, reviews of previous ones regularly appear works, for example, in ^{[8, 9]}. Currently, the effect of certainty is found by researchers on the material of other constructions, in particular, possessive sentences ^[10], as well as other languages other than English, for example, ^[11-18]. In addition, the focus of attention gradually shifts from a certain article to the conditions for admitting other determinants into the specified construction: quantifiers “all, every” ^{[19, 20]}, possessive pronouns ^[21].

The article examines the distance between an anaphore in the possessive post-popular nominal group of English existential sentences and its antecedent. The conditions for the admission of possessive determinants, taking into account the semantic-pragmatic interface, are described in detail in ^[21], where the authors establish the following mandatory characteristics: the existence of a default object, enumeration, indication of location, deixis. Since the distance factor is noted as significant in the referential choice (see, for example, ^{[22, 23]}), an attempt was made to use it to identify a possible pattern between some distance from the possessive anaphore to its antecedent and the actual admission of the possessive nominal group into the post-popular position of English existential sentences.

Methods and material

The material is represented by the BNC case. Of the family of large buildings at Brigham Young University, this is the most conservative and small-numbered building, it is precisely because of these characteristics that it was chosen in this case – it is not burdened with daily occurrences of new information, it does not welcome World Englishes options (since it is unknown how stable they will turn out to be over time). Examples of contexts with possessive post–popular nominal groups in existential constructions are selected - a total of 405 cases. The methods of corpus, syntactic, and contextual analysis were used to establish the types and locations of antecedents. All examples are presented in the corpus in written form, with punctuation, sentence boundaries, which allows you to determine the linear distance where possible in terms of sentences, clauses or individual words. 

Results and their discussion

The results of the study were distributed as follows.

The first group, the largest of the available sample (254), includes examples with an explicitly unnamed antecedent. These include the following types of options:

3. a) See! There’s my licence!

    b) There’s your mother there, look!

  c) Ooh! There's my rain cover.

  d) I’ve got your two polo necks, there’s your hat, your gloves, your socks, your glasses.

In such cases, the first mention of an object takes place, often with an indication of this object, while there is no actual verbal antecedent, it is neither a separate word, nor a clause, nor a sentence, nor a text. This is a real object to which the speaker either attracts the attention of the interlocutor (There's your mother there, look!), or talks to himself, commenting on what is happening, for example, a purposeful search for some thing or a random find (Ooh! There's my rain cover). This object has not been entered before. We can say that there is no distance between the anaphore and the antecedent, the principle "I see an object – I pronounce a word, I establish its status" applies.

In the following series of examples, the antecedent is also not indicated, neither by a word, nor by a short phrase, nor by a broader context, and besides, there is no indication of a specific object as in the previous case:

4. a) There’s my three brothers and their spouses and one of the nephews.

  b) Well there’s my business plan, that's what I intend to do, there’s my profit, and all the rest of it, plus accounts.

    c) There’s your tractor to do, there’s my motorbike to do… .

 d) I have a brother who's an apprentice electrician, and then there’s my ma.

In these examples, the location of the antecedent is determined directly in a communicative situation, the interlocutors understand which real-life objects they are talking about, uniquely identify them due to their common background knowledge.

5. All around the house was a wide open piece of land; and around that was a fence, two metres high, with no doors or openings, and too strong to pull down easily. As soon as Ben Gunn saw the English flag flying over the house, he said, “There are your friends”. “More likely to be the pirates”, I answered.

In Example 5, the reality of the object for the antecedent is not established. There is a description of the situation here, from which certain conclusions follow: after seeing the English flag, Ben Gunn is sure that there are people in the house (after all, someone should have hung this flag) and these people are friends of his companion, which he doubts. The nominal group "y our friends" reflects not so much real-life objects as the speaker's idea of it, his conclusions based on common sense, previous life experience, and any kind of background knowledge. The distance between such an unnamed antecedent and an anaphore can again be called minimal, since in the speaker's mind the existence of some people in the house and attribution of a certain status to them occurs almost immediately. It can be assumed that at the moment of speech there is both a reference to the antecedent and a mention of the anaphore. The types of antecedents of this group can be defined as the visible antecedent known to the speaker and the antecedent implied by the speaker. Both of these types of antecedents have no verbal expression, be it a word, phrase, or descriptive situation. The location of such an antecedent is the general communicative situation shared by the interlocutors.

The second group includes cases with a verbally presented antecedent (151 cases).

6. Here’s Alison (pause), there’s my good lad.

7. We got drunk together the night before Boris left. He got the cross out and showed it to me. He kissed it. 'There’s mybeauty'.

In these examples, the antecedent is in the nearest sentence to the left of the anaphore. In example 6, the antecedent is expressed by a proper name. In example 7, a certain object (antecedent) is precisely named (cross), then supported twice by the pronoun it (which is also an anaphore), eventually this object is classified as some kind of value for the speaker (my beauty). In this case, the main antecedent is not in the immediate vicinity of the possessive anaphore, they are separated from each other at a distance of two sentences. The connection of the antecedent with the possessive anaphore is not so much fully ensured as it is reinforced by the pronoun it, which leaves no doubt about the referential choice.

In example 8, the antecedent is expressed through the pronoun you, is determined through its kinship with the speaker (Daddy'll wash his hands), and also describes the situation according to which he is called a smart girl (Oh, you're brushing your teeth). Based on these data, the reader understands that we are talking about the speaker's son, the boy deserves praise for his correct actions. The antecedent is in the same sentence as the anaphore.

8. Oh right there we are close the window. Yeah. Eh eh eh eh  Daddy'll wash his hands. Just wait there. Oh, you're brushing your teeth. There’s my clever boy.

In Example 9, as an antecedent, there is a combination of naming a class of objects and describing a situation in which a separate object is isolated.

9. There are many different buildings in my usual day. I pass a great variety of them on the way to school and I myself actually live, work and play in some of them. For a start there is myhouse.

The distance between the antecedent and the anaphore is thus also minimal, as in the previous group, but in this case it can really be fixed as the distance from and to specific words, relatively speaking, from a specific point A to point B.

         In the next block of examples, the antecedent is a description of the situation (in terms of Melnik O.G., a complex discursive unit ^[24]), and a possessive anaphore is a kind of summation of what was said earlier.

10. a) Then mark this, Master Harry: if you won't take Sam here on at fishing, you'll not have me as a wife. You either win me in fair competition, or you don't have me at all, and there’s my last word.

b) Now, Alison and Jack were away, gone to Amsterdam. Or rather, they would now be on their way back, since they had decided (Franca could imagine the little conversation, she thought of it as a' little' conversation) to stay away only one night, instead of the three nights originally planned. Franca was sorry about the change of plan. She had said to herself, thinking of that absence, there’s my chance!

The distance between the antecedent in the form of such a complex discursive unit and the possessive anaphore is minimal, the summing anaphore is either in the adjacent sentence or in the last sentence of the complex discursive unit.

Conclusion

         The article considers the variants of the distance between the antecedent and the possessive anaphore in the post-popular position of English existential sentences. The types of antecedents are defined. The variants of the established antecedents are grouped according to the criterion of the degree of their explicit expression. Accordingly, two enlarged types of antecedents are distinguished: verbally expressed in various ways and implied or inferential, derived from the background knowledge of communication participants. For both groups, the minimum distance between the antecedent and the anaphore is fixed. One can call this, in fact, the lack of distance between the antecedent and the anaphore a characteristic feature of these contexts and another condition for the admission of possessive nominal groups into the post-popular position of English existential sentences. The question of the existence of such a criterion for admission to the post-popular nominal group of other determinants cannot be resolved without appropriate research. The continuation of the work is also seen in checking the results obtained on a larger data set.