The story of zero / T. Givón.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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The Story of Zero; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; Preface; Part I. Natural zero; 1. The communicative ecology of€zero€anaphora; 1. Introduction ; 2. Discourse structure and referential coherence ; 2.1 Overview ; 2.2 High-continuity devices ; 2.3 Low continuity -- discontinuity -- devices ; 3. Quantitative distribution of major referent-coding devices ; 3.1 Preliminaries ; 3.2 English ; 3.3 Ute ; 3.4 Biblical Hebrew ; 3.5 Spoken Spanish ; 3.6 Japanese ; 3.7 Mandarin Chinese ; 3.8 Word order and referential continuity ; 3.8.1 Word-order and referential continuity in spoken English.

3.8.2 Word order and referential continuity in spoken Ute 3.8.3 Word-order and referential continuity in Early Biblical Hebrew ; 4. Closure: From typology to diachrony ; Abbreviations of grammatical terms ; 2. The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions; 1. Grammar, text and mind* ; 2. The structure of coherent discourse ; 2.1 Propositions, clauses and information ; 2.2 Coherent discourse ; 2.2.1 Multi-propositional coherence ; 2.2.2 Linear and hierarchic structure ; 2.3 The grounding of information ; 2.3.1 Old vs. new information ; 2.3.2 The grammar of grounding.

3. Topicality 3.1 Preamble ; 3.2 Topicality and grammar ; 3.3 Measuring topicality in discourse ; 3.3.1 Clause vs. discourse ; 3.4 The discourse-pragmatics of topicality; 3.4.1 Preamble; 3.4.2 Referential accessibility: The shared context; 3.4.3 The shared deictic context; 3.4.4 The shared cultural context; 3.4.5 The shared current text; 3.5 Quantified measures of topicality; 3.5.1 Measures of referential continuity/accessibility; 3.5.2 Measures of thematic importance; 3.5.3 Some results of text-based quantitative measures of€topicality; 3.6 Is topicality scalar?; 3.6.1 Preamble.

3.6.2 Discreteness in grammar3.6.3 Discreteness in cognition; 3.6.4 Artifacts of scalarity in text-based topicality measures; 4. The cognitive interpretation of the grammar of reference ; 4.1 Overview ; 4.2 Major attentional activation options ; 4.2.1 Overview ; 4.2.2 Assignment of default vs. non-default activation status ; 4.3 The cognitive status of definite referents ; 4.3.1 Overview ; 4.3.2 Markedness status of definite referents ; 4.3.3 Important vs. unimportant definites ; 4.3.4 Cognitive processing instructions for definite referents.

4.4 Determining the antecedent source of definite reference 4.5 Searches for culture-based reference ; 4.6 Mental processing of text-based definite referents ; 4.6.1 Reorientation ; 4.6.2 Short-distance searchers within the€currently-activated clause-chain ; 4.6.3 Long-distance searches beyond the currently active clause-chain ; 5. Discussion ; 5.1 Summary ; 5.2 Referent processing and attentional activation ; 5.3 Mental representation ; 5.4 The working-memory buffer ; 3. Zero and the rise of pronominal agreement; 1. Introduction.

The zero coding of referents or other clausal constituents is one of the most natural, communicatively and cognitively-transparent grammatical devices in human language. Together with its functional equivalent, obligatory pronominal agreement, zero is both extremely widespread cross-linguistically and highly frequent in natural text. In the domain of reference, zero represents, somewhat paradoxically, either anaphorically-governed high continuity or cataphorically-governed low topicality. And whether in conjoined/chained or syntactically-subordinate clauses, zero is extremely well-governed, at a level approaching 100% in natural text. The naturalness, cross-language ubiquity and well-governedness of zero have been largely obscured by an approach that, for 30-odd years, has considered it a typological exotica, the so-called'pro-drop'associated with a dubious'non-configurational'language type. The main aim of this book is to reaffirm the naturalness, universality and well-governedness of zero by studying it from four closely related perspectives: (i) cognitive and communicative function; (ii) natural-text distribution; (iii) cross-language typological distribution; and (iv) the diachronic rise of referent coding devices. The latter is particularly central to our understanding the functional interplay between zero anaphora, pronominal agreement and related referent-coding devices.

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