CONCLUSION
Building on the analysis of the Competence-Performance Distinction and of Grammaticality Intuitions presented in Chapter One, and applying a Functional/Cognitive approach to linguistic phenomena, this book has
. reassessed the relationship between Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology (Chapter Two); and
. reanalysed certain well-known phenomena in the
domain of Ellipsis and Anaphora (Part Two)
One of the main aims of Part Two (and of Chapter Six in particular) was to explore the extent to which it might be productive to look upon Ellipsis and Anaphora as a single phenomenon, or family of phenomena.
I have attempted to emphasise what is common to all forms of expression that are less than fully explicit. With this aim in view, a strong claim was made in the form of the following constraint:
(4') The Constraint on Inexplicitness in English.
Any type of information or constituent may be left totally unspecified in any part of any syntactic structure of English, apart from bare Noun Phrases (where special provisions apply), and clause-final material which is not negated.
From a Cognitive point of view, what Anaphora and Ellipsis (A & E) have in common is that they both crucially involve memory, which is the faculty of mind which allows the link to be created between antecedent and (null or non-null) anaphor.
I am in agreement with Bates et al. (1980), who conclude:
This suggests that disambiguation of reference is not the only factor governing choice of surface forms.... It may be that the decision to use an explicit form of reference involves the need to highlight, dramatize, mark
topic shifts and important points, and generally "stage"
utterances in a way that assures the listener's attention.... Certainly the notion of "drama" will be more difficult to formalize than the notion of referential ambiguity. But a full linguistic theory of pronominalization and anaphora may need to include such concepts if we are to describe and explain the rules of reference in natural discourse. (ibid,47).
Nothing in the present work should be seen as detracting from the sentiments expressed in the above passage.