Contrastive studies on discourse functions of the deteminers in Japanese, French and English in the framework of the Mental Space Theory

尽管日语中的裸名词和英语中的定名词短语在意义上存在差异，但我还是展示了一种令人惊讶的行为平行性，并从语篇处理的角度对此进行了解释。语言输入的加工与语篇资源有关，语篇资源由三个不同的数据库组成：一般知识、话语情境和语篇记忆。语篇记忆又可分为语言数据记忆、语言理解记忆和长时语篇记忆三个子领域，每一个子领域都需要一定的手段来识别其中的成分。代词只能在语料记忆中寻找，指示词只能在话语情境或语料记忆中寻找。英语中的名词和日语中的裸名词通常表示角色，但没有指定参数。当参数被指定时，它们会产生值，但它们并没有告诉如何识别适当的参数。这种不确定性正是他们能够在话语资源的任何领域进行搜索所需要的。如果任何一种语言都需要一种手段来表示这种默认搜索，并且只有日语中的裸名词和英语中的限定词才能实现这种默认搜索，那么它们肯定会这样做。因此，我们假设英语中的限定词和日语中的裸名词的行为的平行性来自于这种语言的一般原则。

I have shown a surprising parallelism of behavior in spite of the difference in meaning between bare nouns in Japanese and definite noun phrases in English, and explained it in tems of discourse prodessing. Linguistic input is processed in relation to the discourse resources consisting of three distinct data bases : general knowledge, utterance situation and discourse memory. Discourse memory is further divided in three subdomains : linguistic data memory, linguistic understanding memory, and long-term discourse memory.For each of these five domains, some means must be available for identifying elements there. Pronouns can only search in the linguistic data memory and demonstratives, in the utterance situation or the linguistic data memoty. Definites in English and bare nouns in Japanese usually express roles with parameters left unspecified. They yield values when the parameters are specified, but they don't tell how to identify the appropriate parameters. This underdetemination is exactly what is meeded for them to be able to operate a search in any of the domains within the discourse resources. If any language needs a means to signal this kind of default search and if only bare nouns in Japanese and definites in English can fulfill this, they will certainly assume it. We thus hypothesize that the parallelism of behavior of definites in English and bare nouns in Japanese comes from this kind of general principle of language.