This book makes a general survey of an exciting and ever-developing field of anaphora in the context of Bengali language The present study is perhaps the first attempt at a systematic investigation into Bengali anaphora. Anaphora is a phenomenon which is enjoying central critical interest in linguistic studies at present It has become a central issue to the linguistic research since the inception of generative grammar, the goal of which is to construct a universal theory of coreference On the other hand, it has gained growing attentions from the scholars of specific fields of interest- the philoso-phers, cognitive scientists, artificial intelligence-workers and so on. The importance of anaphora may at once be estimated when Chomsky himself claims anaphora to be a phenomenon reflecting the underlying principles of innate universal grammar And it interacts with not only syntactic but also semantic and pragmatic factors.
The present work investigates anaphora with two specific modes of approach First of all, it adopts descriptive formalism to interpret anaphora as a general coreferential process Secondly, it considers the phenomenon in terms of more formal pre-minimalist Government-Binding model developed by Chomsky Thus the present study contains an investigation into the binding conditions determining the possiblility of coreference between the referential expressions, anaphors or pronominals Besides these approaches, this work also attempts to look into anaphora from a more realistic computational viewpoint Obviously, the data-base in this book is mainly derived from Bengali. But such a language-specific approach is quite justified Because the conception of universal grammar as a system rightly opens up the possibility for a specific core grammar which can be derived by fixing values for open parameters of the universal grammar. Moreover the present research also helps us to uncover the deep structural similarities existing between the apparently different languages like English and Bengali.
I have here tried my best to introduce the topic to the readers in a simple manner without invoking any theoretical or configurational complexities. However, in this work, many stipulations have been made regarding the syntactic structure of Bengali without a thorough examinations of all the issues involved. Some of the stipulations are always open to questions and re-analysis. But still I hope that this work in its present form would contribute to further researches on anaphora in Bengali.
Here, I would like to thank all those once again who have helped me in various ways for performing this research work. I had a rare opportunity to leam Linguistics from Prof. Dr. Mrinal Nath who as my revered teacher taught us what is really meant by scientific data analysis. I was fortunate enough to correct and modify initial plan of this work by him. My sincerest thanks are also due to Prof. B. B. Chowdhuri and Prof. Probal Sengupta of Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta who have always initiated me to make research in this field. I am also indebted to the then authority of the Asiatic Society, the Librarian and other staffs of the institute, constantly assisting me in carrying out the work. I owe my deep sense of gratitude to Late Prof. Pranabesh Sinha Roy and Prof. Dr. Subhandra Kumar Sen who have guided me in the Asiatic Society as Senior Fellows. I am grateful to Prof. Pabitra Sirkar, Prof. Rameshwar Shaw and Prof. Amitrasudan Bhattacharya, always encouraging me for preparation of this volume. Prof. Probal Dasgupta and Prof. Uday Narayan Singh have no doubt become perennial sources of inspiration to me.
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