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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125933
Description
Title
Frame anaphora: The definite article in discourse
Author(s)
Yontz, Ruth Ann
Issue Date
1988
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Moses, Rae
Gundlach, Robert
Department of Study
Linguistics
Discipline
Teaching English as a Second Language
Degree Granting Institution
Northwestern University
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Teaching English as Second Language
Language
eng
Abstract
The definite article is a problematic feature of language for many nonnative speakers of English. This study investigates one use of the definite article in the written discourse of native and nonnative speakers. This use, which I term frame anaphora, is illustrated in the following example: 'The disease is usually harmless, but the symptoms are dramatic. The use of the definite article presumes a shared knowledge that diseases have symptoms, a kind of shared generic knowledge which has been characterized using the notion of frame (Minsky, 1975; Fillmore, 1975, 1976; DuBois, 1980).
A theory of frame anaphora, which is a modified version of Hawkins• (1978) theory of the definite article, is developed and used to analyze essays written by university students in response to a writing task assigned in rhetoric and English as a Second Language classes.
The specific objectives of the analysis are to investigate how frame anaphora functions in discourse, what aspects of frame anaphora are problematic for nonnative speakers, and how native speakers' use of frame anaphora differs from that of nonnative speakers’. A subset of data written by Korean speakers is analyzed to determine if native language can account for the writers' errors in using frame anaphora.
The data show that in addition to making syntactic errors, nonnative speakers have problems with two basic pragmatic aspects of frame anaphora: establishing a frame in discourse and explicitly indicating that a referent is locatable in that frame. The data written by Korean speakers show that in many cases there is a lack of identifiable interference from Korean, demonstrating that the complexity of the definite article itself often plays more of a role in the production of errors than interference from the native language. The data from native speakers show that frame anaphora can be used for the stylistic purpose of bringing the reader into the writer's perspective.
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