A Cognitive-Functional Account for English Articles and Demonstratives

초록

From a cognitive-functional perspective, the use of articles and demonstratives reflects our mental presentation or process (e.g. identification, generalization, specification, limitation, definition, idealization, etc.) in human communication. The purpose of this study is to identify cognitive-functional factors that characterize or distinguish functional similarities and differences between articles and demonstratives in English. As for the cognitive factors governing the functional differences between the two entities, it is proposed that the degree of cognitive salience, a speaker/hearer-oriented device, and the degree of contextual salience play a decisive role in determining different mental representation for encoding an intended referent in context. Finally, it is suggested that articles and demonstratives in English show different cognitive processes for context selection and for the satisfaction of referent-identification requirement, given that the crucial difference between articles and demonstratives lies in the way they orient the hearer towards the identification of the referent.

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