Referential Form and Memory for the Discourse History

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Si On Yoon ◽  
Aaron S. Benjamin ◽  
Sarah Brown‐Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Referential Form

Objects in the German prefield

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Markus Bader
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Demonstrative Pronoun ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Speakers ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Free Word

From the perspective of language production, this chapter discusses the question of whether to move the subject or the object to the clause-initial position in a German Verb Second clause. A review of experimental investigations of language production shows that speakers of German tend to order arguments in such a way that the most accessible argument comes first, with accessibility defined in terms like animacy (‘animate before inanimate’) and discourse status (e.g. ‘given before new’). Speakers of German thus obey the same ordering principles that have been found to be at work in English and other languages. Despite the relative free word order of German, speakers rarely produce sentences with object-before-subject word order in experimental investigations. Instead, they behave like speakers of English and mostly use passivization in order to bring the underlying object argument in front of the underlying subject argument when the object is more accessible than the subject. Corpus data, however, show that object-initial clauses are not so infrequent after all. The second part of the chapter, therefore, discusses new findings concerning the discourse conditions that favour the production of object-initial clauses. These findings indicate, among other things, that the clausal position of an object is affected not only by its referent’s discourse status but also by its referential form. Objects occur in clause-initial position most frequently when referring to a given referent in the form of a demonstrative pronoun or NP.

Investigating the Consequences of Focus on the Production and Comprehension of Referring Expressions

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Referential Form

AbstractThis paper investigates issues related to referent tracking in discourse, in particular whether and how contrastive focus interacts with other factors – in particular pronominalization and subjecthood – to influence comprehenders' and speakers' expectations about what entities will be referred to/mentioned in upcoming discourse. On the basis of data from two psycholinguistic experiments, I argue that to better understand the discourse-structuring effects of contrastive focus, we need to consider not only pronoun interpretation but also production-based questions having to do with choice of upcoming referent and choice of referential form. I suggest that looking at the discourse-level consequences of contrastive focus from the perspective of the comprehender as well as the perspective of the speaker (i) allows us to gain new insights about the effects of focus and the discourse-status of focus-induced alternatives, and (ii) highlights (potentially unexpected) asymmetries between likelihood of upcoming mention and likelihood of pronominalization.

Asymmetric anaphoric dependencies determine available readings for VP-ellipsis

2021 ◽  
pp. 320-339
Author(s):  
Andrew Kehler
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Account ◽  
Vp Ellipsis ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Syntactic Binding

Dalrymple et al. (1991) was a landmark contribution to the theory of ellipsis. In addition to providing an elegant semantic account of the interaction between ellipsis and quantification, it demonstrates how strict and sloppy readings can be generated without having to posit an ambiguity between bound and free pronouns in antecedent clauses. A weakness of the theory, however, is its lack of representational sensitivity to choice of referential form: the fact that pronouns and names are represented the same way causes the account to overgenerate sloppy readings in some cases. In this chapter, Kehler discusses a set of examples that provide adequacy criteria for theories of ellipsis with respect to their treatment of anaphoric dependencies. These cases reveal that a more generalized notion of dependency needs to be represented beyond the more limited notion captured by syntactic binding relations, including dependencies that cross clause boundaries and that involve eventualities. A provisional account is offered that captures these cases.

scholarly journals Translatable Self-Reference

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartley Slater
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Quantification Theory ◽  
Semantic Paradoxes ◽  
The Third ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Propositional Quantification ◽  
Self Reference

Stephen Read has advanced a solution of certain semantic paradoxes recently, based on the work of Thomas Bradwardine. One consequence of this approach, however, is that if Socrates utters only ‘Socrates utters a falsehood’ (a), while Plato says ‘Socrates utters a falsehood’ (b), then, for Bradwardine two different propositions are involved on account of (a) being self-referential, while (b) is not. Problems with this consequence are first discussed before a closely related analysis is provided that escapes it. Moreover, this alternative analysis merely relies on quantification theory at the propositional level, so there is very little to question about it. The paper is the third in a series explaining the superior virtues of a referential form of propositional quantification.

scholarly journals To Name or to Describe: Shared Knowledge Affects Referential Form

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphna Heller ◽  
Kristen S. Gorman ◽  
Michael K. Tanenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Referential Form

Character reference in Greek-German bilingual children’s narratives

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Andreou ◽  
Eva Knopp ◽  
Christiane Bongartz ◽  
Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Language Dominance ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Language Patterns ◽  
Referential Expressions ◽  
German Children ◽  
Old Greek ◽  
Referential Form

This study investigates reference management of two groups of 8–12 year old Greek–German bilinguals, resident in Greece (Bilinguals_GR N = 38) and in Germany (Bilinguals_GE N = 39). We analyze the bilinguals’ retellings in each language and compare them with data from two monolingual control groups of Greek and German children (Monolinguals_GR and Monolinguals_GE, N = 20 respectively). We seek to establish how the use of referential forms in character introduction, maintenance and reintroduction in the bilinguals’ narrative retellings is affected by language dominance and whether proficiency in each language patterns similarly with respect to dominance in input. Our results indicate that differences in choice of referential form can be attributed to language dominance. Bilingual production of referential expressions differed from that of monolinguals when exposure to one language outweighed the other, as in the case of Bilinguals_GE. Similarly, proficiency in terms of vocabulary, verb diversity and syntactic complexity was affected in the weaker language for this group, which showed a strong dominance in German input. When exposure was more balanced (Bilinguals_GR), proficiency measures in both languages were affected, but to a lesser degree.

scholarly journals Word Order, Grammatical Function, and Referential Form: On the Patterns of Anaphoric Reference in Finnish

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.28 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Referring Expressions ◽  
Reference Resolution ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Referential Expressions ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Anaphoric Expression

Research on reference resolution has shown that there exists a connection between the form of a referring expression and the accessibility/salience of its referent. More specifically, the most salient referents – i.e. those currently at the center of attention and most prominent at that point in the discourse – are referred to with the most reduced referring expressions. This raises the question: What kinds of factors influence a referent’s salience, i.e. make it a good candidate to be referred to with a reduced anaphoric expression? This paper focuses on two factors which have been claimed to influence referent salience: (1) grammatical/syntactic role and (2) word order. These issues are addressed from the perspective of Finnish, a highly inflected, flexible word order language which has canonical SVO order and two kinds of third person anaphors: the gender-neutral pronoun <em>hän</em> ‘s/he’ and the demonstrative <em>tämä</em> ‘this.’ In this paper, I present the results of three psycholinguistic experiments investigating the referential properties of these two anaphors, and show that <em>hän</em> and <em>tämä</em> differ in their referential properties and are sensitive to different kinds of factors. The results indicate that instead of trying to define the referential properties of these forms according to a unified notion of salience, we should investigate how different factors may be relevant for different referential expressions. The implications that these findings have for our view of how referential systems work are also discussed.

scholarly journals Coreference and discourse coherence in L2

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theres Grüter ◽  
Hannah Rohde ◽  
Amy J. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Discourse Coherence ◽  
Referential Expressions ◽  
Reference Processing ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Referential Form ◽  
Gradient Effects

Abstract Discourse-level factors, such as event structure and the form of referential expressions, play an important role in native speakers’ referential processing. This paper presents an experiment with Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English, investigating the extent to which discourse-level biases that have gradient effects in L1 speakers are also implicated in L2 speakers’ coreference choices. Results from a story continuation task indicate that biases involving referential form were remarkably similar for L1 and L2 speakers. In contrast, event structure, indicated by perfective versus imperfective aspect, had a more limited effect on L2 speakers’ referential choices. The L2 results are discussed in light of existing accounts of L1 reference processing, which assume that referential choices are shaped by speakers’ continually updated expectations about what is likely to be mentioned next, and argued to reflect L2 speakers’ reduced reliance on expectations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document