Accessibility Theory applied to French: The case of il and celui-ci

This paper applies Ariel's (1990) Accessibility Theory to two French anaphors: il and celui-ci. Its aim is to test the hypothesis that pronouns mark a higher degree of accessibility to their antecedents than demonstratives. The four factors, namely distance, saliency, unity and competition, which, according to Accessibility Theory, play a role in the relative accessibility of referents are examined in a newspaper corpus. The results of the analysis partly challenge the claims made by Ariel, as only two parameters, saliency and competition, seem to have an impact on the choice between il and celui-ci