A theory of pronominal reference based on information theory - Part II

In this part II, new definitions of 'speaker reference' and 'co-reference' are given. A theory of coding and reference in discourse is constructed inv olving the Lambrecht theory of information and using the idea that referenc e is never to a linguistic expression, but rather to the mental representat ion of expressions. The key result is: let D denote a discourse, m a mental representation, p an expression coding m in D. If m is identifiable and ac tive (resp. topical and active), then in the unmarked case, p is pronominal (resp. unaccented). Application is made to examples in the literature.