Reference

de Jeanette K. Gundel, Nancy Hedberg

"The articles in this volume are concerned with some of the central themes and challenges in research on reference within the cognitive sciencesphilosophy (including philosophy of language and mind, logic, and formal semantics), theoretical and computational linguistics, and cognitive psychology. The discussions address four basic questions: What is reference? What is the appropriate analysis of different referring forms, such as definite descriptions? How is reference resolved? and How do speakers/writers select appropriate referring forms, such as pronouns versus full noun phrases, demonstrative versus personal pronouns, and overt versus null/zero pronominal forms? Some of the papers assume and build on existing theories, such as Centering Theory and the Givenness Hierarchy framework; others propose their own models of reference understanding or production." "The essays examine reference from a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, informed by different research traditions and employing different methodologies. While the contributors to the volume were primarily trained in one of the four represented disciplines-computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology, and use methodologies typical of that discipline, each of them bridges more than one discipline in their methodology and/or their approach."--book jacket.