ANTECEDENTLESS ANAPHORS - DEIXIS, ANAPHORA, OR WHAT SOME EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH AND FRENCH

Taking a cognitive perspective, and concentrating on instances of exop hora (or so-called 'antecedentless' anaphora), where by definition the re is no co-occurring expression in terms of which a given anaphor mig ht be interpreted (i.e. a potential 'antecedent'), I aim to show, firs tly, that so-called exophora falls within the category of anaphora pro per and not deixis; secondly, that it is in terms of a conceptual repr esentation of the situation being evoked, and not in terms of the phys ical situation itself, that the anaphor is interpreted; and finally, t hat exophora is in reality a more central manifestation of anaphora th an the 'endophoric' type, where the 'antecedent' expression co-occurs with the anaphor. I will base the discussion on naturally occurring da ta from French and English, and will consider the contributions of gen der- and number-marking within pronominal anaphors, as well as of such features of the anaphoric segment as the argument and referent-order statuses assigned to an anaphor by the governing predicator and its mo difiers, and the stress and pitch characteristics of the anaphor. All these features play an important role in the assignment of a full inte rpretation to so-called 'endophoric' anaphors just as much as 'exophor ic' ones, thereby weakening the theoretical basis for the distinction between the two types.