COGNITIVE STATUS AND THE FORM OF REFERRING EXPRESSIONS IN DISCOURSE

In this paper we propose six implicationally related cognitive statuse s relevant for explicating the use of referring expressions in natural language discourse. These statuses are the conventional meanings sign alled by determiners and pronouns, and interaction of the statuses wit h Grice's Maxim of Quantity accounts for the actual distribution and i nterpretation of forms when necessary conditions for the use of more t han one form are met. This proposal is supported by an empirical study of the distribution of referring expressions in naturally occurring d iscourse in five languages-English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Russia n, and Spanish.