ANÁLISIS DE CONVENIOS Y TRATADOS INTERNACIONALES

Speakers’ reference to entities in the world relates to information structure, i.e. the structure of a sentence as a means of communicating information to an addressee (Oxford Reference 2017). Information structure involves both introducing new referents and re-introducing already-mentioned referents into discourse. It guides speakers’ selections of nouns, pronouns and other referring expressions following complex discursive rules (Arnold, Kaiser, Kahn & Kim 2013). The most common referring expressions are the nominal and pronominal elements. These elements organise reference in discourse involving further specific linguistic choices, such as choice of definiteness in noun phrases (definite or indefinite) and pronoun use (null or overt, personal or demonstrative).

Choices of referential expressions reflect a distinction between contextually given versus new information. Given information implies information which is familiar, i.e. supplied by the speaker, previously known, assumed or inferred, hence somehow recoverable by the addressee. New information is information that is introduced into the discourse for the first time: it is non-derivable, hence not known to, or assumed by the addressee. Apart from previously-established information in the discourse, relevant world knowledge and inferences are crucial in modulating the effects of information structure on reference (see Ariel 1990).

Referential choices also reflect the distinction between the discursive features of topic and focus. Topic involves previously-established information and ‘topicality’ denotes referential importance (Givón 2016: 6). For Kiss (1995: 7), the ‘(discourse-)semantic’ concept of topic is identical to the notional subject and often (yet not always) coincides with the grammatical subject, while in NS languages topics are also associated with resumptive pronouns or clitics. Focus is new information, highlighted or non-presupposed. The ‘(discourse-)semantic’ function of focus is twofold: (a) it can denote the part of the sentence which carries new information (wide focus); and (b) it can entail an operator expressing identification (narrow focus) (Kiss 1995: 15).

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The information status of a referent in the context of a discourse segment is established by the above-mentioned distinctions of given vs new information, or topic vs focus functions (see also Arnold et al. 2013). Although there are different discourse features which regulate subjects, the present study pays particular attention to the presence or absence of topic shift in discourse. Since topics tend to appear in subject position (e.g. Miltsakaki 2011), it is assumed here that topics are the subjects of clauses.

Definiteness largely concerns noun phrases, i.e. lexical subjects or objects in the framework for this study, and deals with the identifiability and non-identifiability of referents in a given context for the speaker or the addressee. Definite noun phrases are referential phrases in which the existence and uniqueness of referents is presupposed or inferable, while indefinite noun phrases are also referential but they presuppose that the entity presented in discourse is new/unfamiliar (see e.g. Abbott 2006; Belletti et al. 2007; Chiriacescu 2014; Mastropavlou et al. 2014). Definite descriptions and pronouns are not equivalent as to their effect on coherence because they engender different inferences on the part of the addressee (Grosz et al. 1995). With respect to pronominal reference, use of pronouns enables speakers to refer to established (usually previously mentioned) referents avoiding the need to expressly restate them, thus preventing excessive redundancy or repetition (e.g. Keating, VanPatten & Jegerski 2011; Arnold et al. 2013; Iraola 2015). As stated by Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993: 274-275), ‘different determiners and pronominal forms conventionally signal different cognitive statuses (information about location in memory and attention state), thereby enabling the addressee to restrict the set of possible referents’. Thus, pronouns used anaphorically constitute cues guiding the listener to identify an entity in discourse by providing an amount of information about its cognitive status regulated by the speaker (see Almor 1999). In line with Ariel’s (1990) ‘geographic’ view on context, pronouns typically refer to the Linguistic Context, demonstratives to the Physical Context and proper names to General Knowledge (Clark & Marshall 1981 as cited in Ariel 1990).

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In generativist terms, the basic assumption on the overt/null subject use is captured by the Avoid Pronoun Principle, a universal of economy formulated by Chomsky in 1981, which outlines the condition of their distribution. OSP use is restricted to cases where their explicit realisation aims at ensuring recoverability in the discourse, emphasis or contrast. In other words, OSP are produced whenever NS are impossible. NS are used for economy purposes on condition that they can be licensed and identified, since omitting a subject is less effortful than expressing it overtly. The Avoid Pronoun Principle holds generally but it applies only to NS languages. However, its instantiation is language specific. The standard use of OSP in Greek and in most Spanish varieties is found in contexts of switch of subject referent or focus. Thus, referential pronouns in NS languages are governed by both morphosyntactic and discourse/pragmatic properties, i.e. they are both syntactically and pragmatically constrained. Greek and Spanish pronoun properties are more complex than their counterparts in non-NS languages, such as English, which has a less complex pronoun distribution, not conditioned by discourse factors. Accordingly, OSP (both stressed and unstressed) in NS languages would correspond to stressed English pronouns, while NS generally correspond to English unstressed pronouns, albeit without patterning in exactly the same way (Frascarelli 2007; Miltsakaki 2007; Liceras & Fernández Fuertes 2017).