English proforms in Functional Discourse Grammar

The aim of this paper is to challenge the generally accepted claim in descriptive and theoretical linguistics that English anaphoric proforms replace constituents (semantic or syntactic units) in underlying representation. On the basis of authentic examples, it is shown that the anaphoric use of the predicative proforms one and do so, the demonstrative pronouns that and those, and some use of the personal pronouns he, she and they often requires hearers to retrieve lexical information that does not form a unit at any level of representation. A definition and analysis of proforms is proposed within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar which does not depend on the presence of an antecedent in the form of a linguistic unit. It is argued that this approach does not only allow for a unified treatment of all anaphoric proforms, but can also be applied to deictic and other non-phoric proforms. The paper also contributes to the further development of the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar by providing an analysis of proforms at the Interpersonal, Representational and Morphosyntactic Levels of organization. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.