Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik (TBL)
- Sprache: Englisch
Das vorliegende Buch untersucht die semantischen und diskurs-pragmatischen Eigenschaften indefiniter Nominalphrasen. Dabei wird der Zusammenhang zwischen den folgenden zwei Faktoren untersucht: (i) der referenziellen Form (markierte indefinite Nominalphrasen vs. unmarkierte indefinite Nominalphrasen), und (ii) dem diskursstrukturierenden Potential. Durch eine sprachvergleichende Studie mit Schwerpunkt auf Englisch, Deutsch und Rumänisch, wird die Analyse der Funktionen unterschiedlicher indefiniten Nominalphrasen empirisch gestützt und weiterentwickelt. Damit wird die Arbeit zu einem besseren Verständnis von Textstruktur, den kognitiven Grundlagen von Textproduktion und Textverständnis, sowie den allgemeinen Prinzipien der Kommunikation zwischen Gesprächsteilnehmern beitragen.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 468
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Sofiana Lindemann
Special indefinites in sentence and discourse
Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Tübingen
© 2020 • Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen www.narr.de • [email protected]
Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen.
ISBN 978-3-8233-8381-9 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-8233-0210-0 (ePub)
Inhalt
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Klaus von Heusinger, who fostered my decision to become a linguist throughout the years of my studies at the University of Stuttgart. I am grateful for the fruitful and inspiring discussions we had.
I am dearly indebted to Elsi Kaiser, who patiently assisted me and provided insightful advice. During my stay at the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, I was particularly impressed by her gift to inspire her students (including myself) and increase their appetite and knowledge in psycholinguistics.
Many thanks to my colleagues and friends at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, namely Regine Brandtner, Annika Deichsel, Cornelia Ebert, Ljudmila Geist, Dolgor Guntsetseg, Daniel Hole, Elena Karagjosova, Udo Klein, Elisabeth Löbel, Edgar Onea and Johannes Wespel. I am grateful to have been given the chance to work in such a friendly, warm and international environment.
I am thankful for the financial support by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Research and Innovation, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-1241, within PNCDI III.
This work was supported in part by the collaborative research center SFB 732 “Incremental Specification in Context” funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG).
My family and friends provided advice and encouragement at all hours and in all matters from lesser or greater distance. Thank you for your unconditioned support.
1 Introduction
This book is about particular types of indefinite noun phrases that give structure to the discourse in terms of predictive expectations. Indefinite noun phrases are nominal expressions with a descriptive part and a special determiner form in those languages that have developed one. Typical examples of English indefinite noun phrases include, but are not limited to: a man, this man, several men, a certain man, some men, cardinals, the zero of bare plurals, partitives, and, according to some analyses, noun phrases headed by the morpheme any (Horn 1999, among others).
In the discussions starting with early work in the philosophical oriented tradition (Frege 1892, Russel 1905) and continuing with more recent, linguistic oriented proposals (Fodor and Sag 1982, Farkas 1994, 2002, Kamp and Bende-Farkas 2006), the question about the properties, uses, and function(s) of indefinite noun phrases has been answered in several ways. From a semantic point of view, one of the most basic properties that indefinite noun phrases share is existential quantification, which can be paraphrased as “there exists” or “there is at least one”. That means that the predicate within the scope of existential quantifiers is true for at least one value of the predicate variable. Consider the clause in (1), which describes a simple transitive event and in which the indefinite noun phrases a dog and some dog have existential force. This entails that the sentence is true if at least one entity is a dog and is in the garden.
(1)
A dog/ some dog is in the garden.
In addition to asserting existential generalization, indefinite noun phrases display another characteristic that pertains to structuring the information in a paragraph, rather than to the truth conditions of a clause. The so-called Novelty Condition captures the property of indefinite noun phrases to introduce new and unfamiliar entities in the discourse (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, among others). With respect to this property, indefinite noun phrases behave differently compared to other types of referring expressions (e.g. definite noun phrases), which are used to refer back to entities that have been previously introduced in the discourse and refer to discourse-old entities.
Besides existential quantification and novelty of reference, the notion of specificity has played a crucial role in the analysis of indefinite noun phrases as well (Fillmore 1967, Karttunen 1969, Partee 1970, Kripke 1977, Ludlow and Neale 1991, Kamp 1981, Farkas 2002, von Heusinger 2002, 2011). In pre-theoretical terms, a speaker uses a specific indefinite noun phrase as an expression of his intention to refer to a particular referent he “has in mind”. Specificity does not describe particular aspects that apply to all indefinite noun phrases in a unitary way, but rather distinguishes between a variety of uses and readings of indefinite noun phrases. Given the notoriety of the notion of specificity in the discussions involving indefinite noun phrases, it is not surprising that it is employed in investigations of different phenomena cross-linguistically (Enç 1991, Farkas 2002, von Heusinger 2011).
Another line of research has analysed different types of referring expressions in terms of activation and accessibility. The starting point for such investigations is the observation that human communication is not an arbitrary exchange between different speakers in the sense that interlocutors do not randomly switch between different types of referring expressions during the process of referring. Rather, referring expressions are used to introduce and continue reference to particular entities with certain referential properties, but also with particular discourse properties. According to this view, each type of referring expression is associated with one particular referent, which is selected from a list of discourse referents that are ranked with respect to their activation or accessibility. The general assumption is that there is an inverse relation between the explicitness of the anaphoric expression (in terms of descriptive, lexical, and phonological material) and the accessibility or prominence of the antecedent expression. Reduced types of referring expression most often correlate with accessible referents, while the opposite holds for more explicit types of referring expressions. For example, it was shown that a referring expression is likely to be associated with an accessible antecedent, if it is realized as a phonologically reduced form. The personal pronoun er (‘he’) in the second sentence of (2a) is more readily interpreted as coreferring with the subject ein Student (‘a student’) than with the object einen Professor (‘a professor’), even though both interpretations are felicitous. In contrast, the demonstrative pronoun der (‘this’) in (2b) cannot be linked to the subject or topic of the sentence, but, instead, can only be co-indexed with the second referent introduced, einen Professor (‘a professor’) (Bosch, Katz and Umbach 2007, Kaiser and Trueswell 2008).
(2)
(a)
Ein Student1 begrüßt einen Professor2. Er1>2 sagt…
a student greets a professor. He says…
(b)
Ein Student1 begrüßt einen Professor2. Der*1, 2 sagt…
a student greets a professor. DemPron says…
‘A student greets a professor. He says […].’
The use of a particular type of referring expression depends upon the accessibility of its associated referent, which is in turn computed based on the status retained by this referent in the immediately preceding discourse. As indefinite noun phrases generally do not have a discourse history as they do not refer back to an antecedent, they have been either left unaccounted for, or they have been associated with referents ranked lowest in accessibility or activation (Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski 1993, Ariel 2001).
This book takes a different perspective on the analysis of indefinite noun phrases by investigating their function within larger discourse units. I argue that despite being associated with locally non-accessible referents, indefinite noun phrases fulfil different functions that become visible in larger discourse units. In a communication model that assumes cooperative discourse participants, speakers use particular indefinite noun phrases to indicate their referential intention and to instruct hearers to establish a permanent discourse representation for the referents associated with those indefinite noun phrases. In addition to these requirements, the newly introduced referents differ with respect to their potential to give structure to the subsequent discourse. The discourse structuring potential captures the relation between the type of indefinite expression used and the function the referent associated with this indefinite noun phrase will play in the upcoming discourse. This book provides empirical evidence from English, German and Romanian to sustain these claims. Moreover, I will propose two measures for the discourse structuring potential of indefinite noun phrases, which can be observed as the discourse unfolds. The two measures are: the likelihood of subsequent mention and the topic shift potential of a referent.
An account of indefinite noun phrases that integrates the role played by their associated referents in the ensuing discourse was advanced for English indefinite noun phrases headed by the simple indefinite article a/an and indefinite this, as illustrated in (3). The difference between the two indefinite noun phrase forms is that the latter not only introduces discourse and hearer-new referents, but also indicates the referential intention of the speaker to elaborate upon this referent (Perlman 1969, Prince 1981, Maclaran 1982, Wald 1983, Wright and Givón 1987, Gernsbacher and Shroyer 1989). As the expectation about the elaboration of the referent introduced by indefinite this remains unfulfilled in (3a), compared to (3b), the sentence containing this expression is rendered infelicitous. On the contrary, the simple indefinite article a/an is neutral with respect to this expectation (i.e. it does not require its referent to be further elaborated upon), which is mirrored in its acceptance in both sentences (3a) and (3b).
(3)
(a)
Becky wrote some thank-you notes using {a/ #this} purple pen; then she mailed the notes to her friends.
(b)
Becky wrote some thank-you notes using {a/ this} purple pen, which suddenly exploded, spilling purple ink all over Becky’s clothes and furniture! (Ionin 2006: 181)
Indefinite this has been considered an exception found in English and few other languages, but broadening our perspective and looking beyond this language will bring new insights. The present book brings empirical evidence for the observation that English is not the only language in which different types of indefinite noun phrases vary with respect to their preference for particular semantic readings and simultaneously with respect to their discourse structuring potential. Based on data from German and Romanian, I will show that these two languages have adopted or adapted different means to indicate that referents associated with particular types of indefinite noun phrases retain a preferential status in the subsequent discourse. The purpose of this introductory part is to present the phenomena central to the analyses in the next Chapters and to sketch out the central aspects of the claims I wish to make. The conclusion of this Chapter contains an overview of the book.
1.1Introducing the phenomena
This book contains a case-based proposal as to how it could be accounted for the discourse structuring potential of different types of indefinite noun phrases. Besides English indefinite this, the two types of indefinite noun phrases central to the present investigation are indefinites headed by so’n in German and pe-marked indefinites in Romanian. In the following, I introduce the relevant contrasts in the two languages in turn.
German developed two determiners that are similar in function to English indefinite this, namely the indefinite demonstrative diese(r) (Wald 1983, Lyons 1999) and the complex determiner so’n (Wespel 2007, Chiriacescu 2010, von Heusinger 2011). In this book, I focus solely on the latter determiner form, as it comes closer to its English cognate in terms of distribution in colloquial language. Similar to English indefinite this, indefinite noun phrases headed by so’n show a tendency for referential readings, as illustrated in (4).
(4)
(a)
Anna
will
so’n Buch
von
Mircea Eliade
lesen.
Anna
wants
so-a book
by
Mircea Eliade
read
‘Anna wants to read so-a book by Mircea Eliade.’
(b)
Anna
will
ein Buch
von
Mircea Eliade
lesen.
Anna
wants
a book
by
Mircea Eliade
read
‘Anna wants to read a book by Mircea Eliade.’
While the indefinite noun phrase ein Buch (‘a book’) in (4b) is ambiguous between a referentially specific and a non-specific reading, the indefinite noun phrase headed by so’n in (4a) bears only a specific interpretation as it refers to a particular book Anna wants to read.
A similar contrast is found in Romanian, a language in which direct objects are realized distinctively, as only some indefinite noun phrases are preceded by the morpheme pe, whereas the other class of indefinites remains unmarked (Niculescu 1965, Pană-Dindelegan 1997, Cornilescu 2001, Chiriacescu 2007, von Heusinger and Onea 2008, Lindemann 2018). Although the variation between a pe-marked direct object and a non-pe-marked direct object applies to definite unmodified noun phrases in equal manner (Chiriacescu 2007, von Heusinger and Chiriacescu 2009, 2011), here I focus only on cases that involve postverbal indefinite noun phrases, as illustrated in (5). Note that direct object arguments in Romanian are often accompanied by pronominal clitic doubling.
(5)
(a)
Petru
l-
a
vizitat
pe
un
actor.
Petru
CL
Aux.
visited
pe
an
actor
‘Peter visited an actor.’
(b)
Petru
a
vizitat
un
actor.
Petru
Aux.
visited
an
actor
‘Peter visited an actor.’
Only in (5a) is the indefinite noun phrase un actor (‘an actor’) accompanied by the free morpheme pe, in (5b), the indefinite noun is neither preceded by pe, nor doubled by the pronominal clitic. The distribution of pe-marking with indefinite noun phrases has been either left unaccounted for in the literature so far, or has been explained in terms of different types of specificity (Farkas 1978, Dobrovie-Sorin 1994, von Heusinger and Onea 2008). According to the latter proposal, the referent associated with the direct object in (5a) is interpreted as referring to a particular actor, the identity of which is “known” to the speaker, whereas the referent in (5b) is analysed as being neutral with respect to this issue and thus allowing for both, a specific and a non-specific reading of the referent.
Despite their preference for particular referential readings, the distinction between a specific and a non-specific reading of the two types of indefinite noun phrases in German and Romanian is not that straightforward as it might seem at first sight, though. Consider example (6), in which both the indefinite headed by so’n as well as the indefinite headed by einen (‘a/an’) are compatible with a continuation sentence in which the identity of the referents they are associated with is denied. In other words, both indefinite noun phrases get a non-specific reading.
(6)
Maria will so’nen/ einen Prinz auf einen weißen Ross heiraten. Aber sie hat noch keinen kennengelernt.
Mary wants to marry so-a/ a prince on a white horse. But she has not met one yet.’
In this book I argue that the tendency for particular referential readings (i.e. wide scope, fixed reference, epistemic specificity, etc.) stems from the speaker’s referential intention to introduce a referent that will give structure to the discourse in terms of referential persistence or continuation and potential topic shift.
To investigate the discourse structuring potential of indefinite noun phrases in English, German and Romanian, I analyse production and comprehension biases while referring. To this end, I restrict the experimental studies by (i) using a constrained form of discourse, i.e. multi-sentence discourses and by (ii) focussing on the establishment of referential chains. The dependent variable is the way writers refer subsequently to the referents introduced in the initial stories. For a brief illustration, consider the two mini-discourses given in Table 1.1, which are taken from the story continuation experiment reported in Chapter 5.
pe-marked direct object
non-pe-marked direct object
S0
Anul trecut când am fost la mare am cunoscut un salvamar1. (Pro)1 era tot timpul activ. La sfârşitul sejurului meu, (pro)1 a salvat-o pe o fată2 de la înec.
‘Last year when I was at the seaside I met a lifeguard1. He1 was very active all day long. At the end of my stay there, he1 saved PE-a girl2 from drowning.’
Anul trecut când am fost la mare am cunoscut un salvamar1. (Pro)1 era tot timpul activ. La sfârşitul sejurului meu, (pro)1 a salvat o fată2 de la înec.
‘Last year when I was at the seaside I met a lifeguard1. He1 was very active all day long. At the end of my stay there, he1 saved a girl2 from drowning.’
S1
M-a mirat că (pro)1 a reușit să o2 salveze, pentru că (pro)1 era un burtos.
‘I was surprised that he1 could save her2, because he1 was a big-bellied man.’
(pro)1 Era un tip solid, mustăcios și încrezut.
‘He1 was a strong man, moustachioed and conceited.’
S2
Dar cum (pro)1 a văzut-o pe fată2 că (pro)2 striga după ajutor, (pro)1 nu a stat pe gânduri și (pro)1 s-a dus după ea2.
‘But as soon as he1 saw PE-girl2 that she2 was screaming for help, he1 did not hesitate and went after her2.’
Deși (pro)1 era enervant, multe fete îl1 plăceau.
‘Despite the fact that he1 was annoying, many girls liked him1.’
S3
Fata2 era inconștientă când (pro)2 a fost adusă la ţărm.
‘The girl2 was unconscious as she2 was brought to shore.’
După ce (pro)1 a salvat-o pe fată2 de la înec, (pro)1 a devenit atracția plăjii.
‘After (pro)1 saved PE girl2 from drowning, (pro)1 became the attraction of the beach.’
S4
(pro)2 nu avea mai mult de 10 ani.
‘She2 was not older than 10.’
Toată lumea vroia să se fotografieze cu acest bărbat curajos1.
‘Everyone wanted to be photographed with this brave man1.’
Sample experimental item from the experiment on pe-marking (Chapter 5)
Note that the indefinite noun phrases realized in direct object position in the initial context (i.e. S0) constitute minimal pairs, in the sense that the descriptive material of the noun phrases and the verbs selecting these objects are almost the same. I only manipulated the type of indefinite noun phrases used in direct object position in the two contexts (i.e. a pe-marked direct object in the left column vs. a non-pe-marked direct object in the right column of Table 1.1). The two direct objects in Table 1.1 differ with respect to their discourse structuring potential, which becomes evident in the continuation sentences. The referent of the direct object preceded by pe is introduced in sequence S0 by means of the indefinite noun phrase pe o fată (‘PE a girl’). Within the next sentences – (S1) through (S4) – the referent of the indefinite noun phrase is mentioned again six times. On the contrary, the referent of the non-pe-marked direct object o fată (‘a girl’) is mentioned in the discourse following its first mention in S0 only once, in continuation sentence three (i.e. S3). Based on larger discourse contexts like the ones illustrated in Table 1.1, I show that the functions of the three indefinite markers (this, so’n and pe) discussed in the beginning of this Section are best accounted for in terms of their discourse structuring potential. The basic claims I wish to make are outlined in the following Section.
1.2Goals of the book and proposed analysis
The main goal of this book is to account for the distribution of the three types of indefinite noun phrases introduced in the previous Section. I argue that English indefinite this, German so’n and Romanian pe-marking share several common characteristics at the semantic and discourse-pragmatic level, which distinguish them from noun phrases headed by the simple indefinite article a/an. First, at the semantic level, the three types of indefinites show a strong and robust affinity for particular referential properties (i.e. fixed reference, wide scope, epistemic specificity). Second, I suggest that any account of indefinite noun phrases that investigates only their sentence-level properties fails to capture their discourse-pragmatic contribution. By analysing larger discourse units (i.e. containing more than two adjacent sentences) in which such indefinite noun phrases occur, I show that compared to their simple indefinite correlates, referents associated with indefinite this in English, indefinite so’n in German and pe-marked indefinites in Romanian are more prone to: (i) be frequently mentioned in the ensuing discourse and to (ii) shift the discourse topic. At first sight, these two discourse effects call for an analysis in terms of accessibility or prominence. Most interestingly, however, the above-mentioned effects appear with a latency of one or two subsequent sentences after the indefinites were mentioned for the first time, in multi-sentence discourses. Furthermore, another argument that cannot be easily accommodated within exsiting models based on accessibility or prominence is the observation that referents introduced in this way show low rates of subsequent pronominalization. Despite being frequently rementioned and showing a high potential to become the topic, referents associated with these expressions are picked up by more lexial material (e.g. definite noun phrases) in the ensuing discourse. Rather than reflecting prominence, I propose that the special indefinite noun phrases function as discourse structuring devices. They are used as higher-level cues and their main function is to establish coherence at a more global level, by pre-activating particular referents. The pre-activating function is a signal to the hearer that the referent introduced in this way will be mentioned next and will eventually become the sentence topic. The findings presented in Chapters 3-5 ask for a reevaluation of the notion of accessibility or prominence. It will become evident by the end of Chapter 5, that the attested discourse structuring effects cannot be explained in terms of accessibility alone. Furthermore, we will see that pronoun production biases and pronoun interpretation biases are not modulated by the same notion of accessibility or prominence, thus a stricter dissociation between production and interpretation preferences is needed.
The special indefinites analysed here do not only facilitate comprehension by functioning as processing signals that help establish local coherence, but also by triggering predictions about the upcoming discourse structure. The findings reported here can be interpreted as evidence for the relevance of anticipation of discourse structure in discourse processing. Language users create specific expectations of discourse structure based on cues in the preceding context. The present investigation also addresses a gap in psycholinguistic research: While there has been a wealth of research on syntactic and semantic processing, few psycholinguistic studies focused on discourse processing. The reason for this exclusion may have been the perception that larger discourse units are too complex and unpredictable.
Many behavioural, neural and psycholinguistic studies suggest that we predict probabilistically at multiple levels and layers of representations (Jackendoff 1987, Tabossi 1988, Levy 2008). The results presented here can be best accommodated in an expectancy-based, forward-looking model of language processing, which assumes that processing is predictive as speakers use different signals to indicate to their hearers what to expect next. However, compared to previous accounts on language expectation or anticipation, the approach introduced in Chapter 2 makes an essential distinction between two main types of expectations, which are triggered by different factors at different levels of linguistic representation. The first type of expectation, which is generally discussed in the literature on pronoun resolution in terms of accessibility, can be derived from structural factors such as a particular syntactic position and a certain argument structure. Based on such factors, hearers make probabilistic expectations about those referents that are more probable to be mentioned next and more likely to be pronominalized. The second type of expectation comes about by discourse structuring devices such as the three types of indefinite noun phrases discussed in this book. Such linguistic devices target larger discourse units in that they indicate which referent will be mentioned over lager discourse segments. It is important to note that the discourse structuring potential is not to be confounded with accessibility or activation, as different types of referring expressions that are associated with a high discourse structuring potential are not necessarily more activated or accessible compared to referring expressions that are not associated with a discourse structuring potential. Moreover, I argue that the expectancy of continuation (i.e. the forward pointing potential) is a property defining (in)definite noun phrases, but that at the same time it is a fine-grained feature that differentiates between several sub-types of such expressions. A referent mentioned for the first time by means of an indefinite noun phrase is more or less prone to be mentioned again in the following discourse. Besides showing referential persistence, indefinite noun phrases associated with a high discourse structuring potential are additionally more prone to become the topic in the subsequent discourse. Moreover, I will show that the three languages under investigation do not differ with respect to the expectations they yield, as both sentence-by-sentence effects and discourse structuring effects are realized. What is different is the formal marking employed by each language for each function and the relative weighting that languages assign to each of them. The main suggestion resulting from the presented evidence is that expectancy operates in parallel at different levels of representation.
On a more general level, this book explores the way in which language users generate expectations at discourse level and how these expectations impact the way the discourse unfolds. It is unanimously accepted that people actively predict upcoming sounds, words, syntactic configurations, or events. Reseach to date has investgated how anticipative processing modulates discourse relations that hold within a sentence or between two adjacent sentences. Whether anticipatory processing takes place in larger discourse units, which linguistic factors or cues guide this processing, how predictions manifest themselves at discourse level and how these global-level predictions interact with sentence-level predictions is still not known up to now. The studies reported in this book target both local (i.e. between adjacent sentences) and global (i.e. between more than two adjacent sentences) discourse processing to investigate how the anticipation of coreference and topic establishment extend to larger discourse units.
1.3Limitations of the investigation
Before presenting the outline of this book, I will enumerate several limitations of this investigation. First, this book is focused on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic functions of indefinite noun phrases. While I will include brief discussions on other types of referring expressions, especially when dealing with notions such as activation, accessibility and topicality, future research will show to what extend the analysis put forth in this book is applicable to other types of referring expressions as well. More recent investigations on the discourse-pragmatic effects of pe-marking as differential object marking in Romanian (Lindemann 2018) bring promising evidence for an analysis of definite noun phrases in terms of discourse structuring devices as well.
Second, I restrict my analysis to indefinite noun phrases found in direct object position and do not discuss the semantic and discourse-pragmatic contribution of indefinites in subject position. One of the reasons that contributed to this decision is the intention to compare the observations and experimental results from the three languages under scrutinity. As Romanian pe-marking only occurs with direct objects, I limited the analysis of indefinite this in English and so’n in German to their distribution in direct object position. Another reason for concentrating on the direct object position is due to the well-attested bias of subject referents to be associated with highly accessible referents and of direct object referents to be associated with less accessible referents. Previous research has neglected the investigation of referents associated with less accessible referents, or has tested them indirectly, by comparison to the most accessible referent in the sentence. Thus, the results put forth here provide novel insights into the ranking of referents and the factors that contribute to this ranking in multi-sentence contexts.
1.4Outline of the book
In the remainder of this introductory part, I present the outline of this book. Chapter 2 reviews research on the discourse properties of different types of referring expressions, which will be important for the investigation of the indefinite noun phrases discussed in Chapters 3-5. The accounts presented in this Chapter differ in many respects, but one of their common denominators is the notion of accessibility. The proponents of the first account I discuss analyse accessibility in terms of attention or cognitive activation (Chafe 1975, Ariel 1988 and Gundel et al. 1993), while the second account to accessibility investigates it in terms of topicality (Givón 1983, Grosz, Joshi and Scott 1995, Walker, Joshi and Prince 1998). In this book, I will adopt an expectancy-driven view to accessibility (Arnold 1998, 2010, Kehler, Kertz, Rohde and Elman 2008), as this model distinguishes between two types of expectancies: (i) expectancies with respect to the referent that will be mentioned next and (ii) expectancies with respect to the type of referring expression used for a particular referent. Most crucial for the present investigation is the fact that an expectancy-driven account allows for an analysis of the referents of indefinite noun phrases in terms of discourse structuring devices.
Despite the fact that most of the above accounts focus on pronoun resolution (i.e. on the factors that license the use of a pronoun), I summarize those parts of their accounts, which deal with the import of indefinite noun phrases in structuring the following discourse. By the end of Chapter 2, I will propose two textual characteristics to measure the discourse structuring potential of indefinite noun phrases, namely (i) referential persistence, and (ii) topic shift potential. These factors will be used in the story-continuation investigations presented in the following three Chapters to test the discourse structuring potential of indefinite this in English, German indefinite so’n and Romanian pe.
In Chapter 3 I argue for an analysis of indefinite this in English as indicating the speaker’s referential intention to introduce a discourse prominent referent in the following text. First, in line with other findings (Prince 1981, Ionin 2006), I confirm the preference of indefinite this for particular referential readings. Second, the experimental results reported in this Chapter indicate that indefinite this functions as a discourse-structuring device. This function is reflected by the high referential persistence and by the topic shift potential of the referents marked in this way compared to their simple indefinite counterparts.
In Chapter 4 I investigate the behaviour of indefinite noun phrases headed by the indefinite determiner so’n. I show that so’n indefinites display a strong preference for referential readings, as rigid reference and epistemic specificity. This theoretical consideration receives further support from a web-based sentence interpretation task (Experiment 1), which shows that indefinite noun phrases headed by so’n tend to presuppose the existence of their associated referents in contexts that contain intensional operators and negation. Furthermore, indefinites headed by so’n introduce referents with particular discourse-pragmatic properties that become visible in contexts that do not contain operators at sentence level. In light of the findings of a sentence-continuation study (Experiment 2), I conclude that referents headed by so’n show effects upon the subsequent discourse similar to English indefinite this. Such referents are referentially highly continuous and more prone to shift the topic in a subsequent matrix clause.
Chapter 5 is centred on the distribution of pe-marking with indefinite noun phrases as an instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Romanian. I show that pe-marking with indefinite noun phrases cannot be thoroughly accounted for, unless the broader discourse contexts in which such noun phrases are used is investigated. More precisely, contrary to previous approaches on DOM in Romanian (e.g. Dobrovie-Sorin 1994), I argue that (referential, scopal or epistemic) specificity is not sufficient to account for the distribution of the pe-marker in the domain of indefinite noun phrases and that pe-marked direct objects are also sensitive to the discourse context they appear in, changing the discourse properties of their referents. Based on the findings of an off-line story-continuation experiment, I show that pe-marked referents are devices for structuring the discourse, being interpreted by hearers as signals of high referential continuity. At the same time, pe-marked referents are more prone to shift the topic of the discourse. These findings receive further support from the analysis of definite unmodified noun phrases in direct object position that are characterized along the same lines, as discourse structuring devices.
Chapter 6 reviews the theoretical observations and the experimental evidence described in this book, which pointed out that different types of indefinite noun phrases give structure to the subsequent discourse in different ways. First, I will argue that the indefinite noun phrases discussed here achieve stability of reference (Farkas and Brasoveanu 2010) via prominence at the discourse level in terms of discourse structuring potential. Discourse prominence prevents these noun phrases to scope under certain operators. Thus, the indefinite noun phrases show a preference for particular referential interpretations because they are discourse prominent, and not vice versa. Second, I will discuss possible reasons for why languages use different devices to mark referents that will play a preferential role within a discourse. This proposal will build on several investigations on the grammaticalization path of the indefinite article cross-linguistically (Heine 1997, Givón 1981, Stark 2002).
The final Chapter sums up the main conclusions and discusses discourse theories against the findings brought to light in the more empirical Chapters. It is argued that any approach concerned with the status of a referent in the discourse has to distinguish between (at least) two properties of this referent, namely its (local) accessibility or prominence status and its discourse structuring potential. This Chapter also discusses some loose ends that suggest directions for further work.
2 Past work on reference
This book is concerned with the use of a particular class of indefinite noun phrases in English, German and Romanian. In a plain context, speakers of the aforementioned languages could use, seemingly interchangeably, two types of indefinite noun phrases to refer to the same referent. In each of the three languages, one indefinite noun phrase form is headed by a special marker (i.e. indefinite this in English, so’n in German and pe-marking in Romanian), whereas the other form remains unmarked (i.e. it is headed by the simple indefinite determiner a/an). While the propositional contribution of the two types of indefinite noun phrases seems to be the same, the two types of indefinite expressions differ with respect to their contribution at the discourse level in terms of the expectations they give rise to. A question that arises at this point is, on what grounds do speakers choose one type of referring expression over the other, so that their hearers can successfully identify the referent in question and generate expectations with respect to the subsequent discourse?
The three markers central to the present analysis, namely English indefinite this, German indefinite so’n and pe-marking in Romanian are used to introduce new referents in the discourse. Moreover, their sentence semantic contribution can be partly explained by appealing to their particular referential properties. In Chapters 3-5, I will discuss in turn the referential behaviour of each of the three types of indefinite noun phrases in sentences containing operators and in plain and transparent sentences and show that while they display an affinity for referential readings, this correlation is imperfect. In other words, while all three types of indefinite noun phrases tend to bear specific readings (compared to their simple indefinite counterparts), we still find sentences in which the indefinite noun phrases bare non-specific readings. Thus, the use of these indefinite noun phrases cannot be (solely) accounted for in terms of their sentence-level contribution and it seems that they impact larger discourse units. An analysis of the noun phrases headed by English indefinite this, German so’n and pe-marking in Romanian in terms of their discourse contribution may seem straightforward, but it simultaneously raises several questions, which I aim to answer in the remainder of this Chapter. First, it is important to note that the centrepieces of previous studies have been, with some exceptions, definite noun phrases, while the analysis of indefinite noun phrases has been often left unaddressed. The latter are either considered not to be referential expressions at all, or not to contribute in a significant way to the overall discourse structure. Thus, the first question that arises is, what the discourse contribution of indefinite noun phrases in general is and how it can be tested? More specifically, what are the textual characteristics that indicate their function at the discourse level? Second, most accounts investigating the contribution of different types of referring expressions limit their analyse to short discourse segments, consisting of two adjacent sentences. Another question that arises is, whether the impact of indefinite noun phrases can be observed within larger discours units, consisting of more than two adjacent matrix sentences? And finally, a more general question is, whether the observed effects can be traced back to accessibility or prominence alone, or whether we need to identify other mechanisms to account for the observed effects?
This Chapter is structured as follows: In the first Section, I discuss semantic-pragmatic accounts on definite and indefinite noun phrases, which provide an explanation for the use of a particular type of referring expression on the basis of their contribution at sentence level. The next Sections are dedicated to several approaches that motivate the use of different types of referring expressions in terms of the accessibility of their associated referents. First, in Section 2.2.1 I discuss accessibility in terms of cognitive activation (Ariel 1988, 1990), which considers that referents are ranked according to their activation level in the minds of the conversation participants. A particular degree of activation licenses the use of a type of referring expression over another. The more activated a referent is, the less explicit the type of referring expression used to refer to it will be. And conversely, the less activated a referent is, the more lexical material is needed to refer back to it. In Section 2.3, I then introduce an alternative model of accessibility in terms of topicality (Givón 1981, 1983, Grosz, Joshi and Scott 1995; Walker, Joshi and Prince1998, among others), which integrates some of the semantic-pragmatic factors discussed in the previous Section in a more complex model of referential management. Another line of research showed that several semantic-pragmatic factors determine the proper use and interpretation of a given type of referring expression. In Section 2.3.3 I discuss five of these factors that have been shown to contribute to the accessibility or prominence of referents, namely recency, givenness, syntactic prominence, semantic prominence, implicit causality and coherence relations. Section 2.4 focuses on the view of accessibility in terms of expectancy (Arnold 2001). According to this approach, an accessible referent is one that is expected in terms of likelihood of subsequent mention. The three special indefinite markers (i.e. indefinite this, so’n and pe) will be analysed in terms of the expectancies they trigger on comprehenders’ side. In Section 2.4.1 I introduce the analysis method that will be used in the Chapters to follow to determine the discourse structuring potential of the indefinites headed by this, so’n and pe. The last Section concludes the present Chapter.
2.1Semantic-pragmatic accounts on (in)definiteness
One possible way to answer the question on what grounds speakers choose between different types of referring expressions at a particular stage in the discourse is to look at the semantic-pragmatic contribution of these referring expressions. Semantic theories account for speakers’ referential choices by distinguishing between two main types of expressions in terms of definiteness. Languages vary with respect to the lexical or morphological means they employ to mark noun phrases. In English, for example, definiteness can be realized by: the simple definite article (e.g. the), demonstrative articles (e.g. this/ that), personal pronouns (e.g. I/ you), (unmodified) proper nouns (e.g. Mary, Germany), possessive adjectives (e.g. my house), and quantifiers (e.g. every, all). Indefiniteness marking can be realized by the simple indefinite article (e.g. a/an), and by different quantifiers (e.g. some, any, one). Research in the field has generally focused on the prototypes of definite and indefinite expressions, namely on singular nouns headed by the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an (Russel 1905, Christophersen 1939, Strawson 1950, Heim 1982, among others). These two types of referring expressions are thought of in terms of one particular property that applies in equal strength to all members of one of the two categories, but not to the other. In contrast to proper names and pronouns, the sentence semantic contribution of definite and indefinite noun phrases is the enrichment of the proposition with descriptive material. In distinguishing the defining properties of definite and indefinite noun phrases, uniqueness, familiarity and salience have been shown to be important factors. In classical semantics (Frege, 1892; Russell, 1905; see Heim 1991, 2011 for an overview), definite noun phrases contribute a uniqueness condition to the sentence semantics and denote a uniquely identifiable referent. Indefinite noun phrases, on the contrary, are treated as quantifiers that assert the existence of their descriptive content but are neutral towards uniqueness, as they do not imply non-uniqueness. Under the uniqueness account, the definite determiner in example (1a) signals that there is only one vase in the discourse domain to which the description the vase can be applied. The unique status of the entity can come about by mechanisms as different as the explicit mention of the associated referent in the previous discourse (the anaphoric use), or the demonstrative use of the referring expression, to name just a few (see Hawkins 1978 or Lyons 1999 for a detailed discussion on the different uses of definite noun phrases). The indefinite noun phrase a vase in (1b), on the contrary, is not specified for uniqueness. In other words, the use of the indefinite noun phrase is felicitous in a context in which we can find at least one entity in the discourse domain that fits the description of the noun phrase.
(1)
(a)
Telia broke the vase.
(b)
Telia broke a vase.
Within the framework of “dynamic semantics” (Karttunen 1976, Kamp 1981, Heim 1982), in which the developing context of interpretation plays an important role in mediating between linguistic form and reality, both definite and indefinite noun phrases are analysed as two types of referring expressions that contribute a discourse referent to a discourse representation. The difference between the two types of noun phrases is that definites (usually) refer back to familiar (i.e. already established) discourse referents, whereas indefinites canonically introduce new (novel) and non-familiar discourse referents into the common ground. For example, the definite noun phrase the doll in sentence (2a) is analysed as referring to one unique individual in the discourse whose existence is presupposed and with which both the speaker and the hearer are familiar. The indefinite noun phrase a doll in sentence (2b) is rather analysed as introducing a new entity in the discourse (Heim 1982, Prince 1992), and referring to an unfamiliar and non-presupposed entity. The fact that the speaker chooses an indefinite noun phrase to refer to the doll in sentence (2b), when he could have opted for a definite noun phrase, indicates an asymmetry in the amount of shared knowledge between the discourse participants.
(2)
(a)
Telia bought the doll on Monday.
(b)
Telia bought a doll on Monday.
In the realm of indefinite noun phrases, which constitute the focus of this book, an additional distinction was discussed in terms of specificity (Fillmore 1967, Karttunen 1969, Partee 1970, Kripke 1977, Ludlow and Neale 1991, von Heusinger 2002). Indefinite noun phrases have been shown to display an ambiguity between specific and non-specific readings. The notion of specificity is generally understood in terms of the referential intention of a speaker. For example, the indefinite noun phrase a Croatian in (3) is interpreted depending on whether the speaker intends to refer to a particular Croatian, or not. The continuation given in (3a) disambiguates the indefinite noun phrase towards the specific reading, in which the speaker refers to a particular Croatian Paula wants to marry. The referent is fixed, independently of the interpretation of the clause. On the contrary, the continuation in (3b) disambiguates the indefinite noun phrase towards a non-specific reading, in which the Croatian is non-identifiable to the speaker or to the matrix subject, Paula. Moreover, the observation that only (3a) allows the insertion of “a certain” to modify the indefinite noun phrase, underlines once more the different readings in terms of specificity given in example (3).
(3)
(a)
Paula wants to marry a Croatian. He is her neighbour.
(b)
Paula wants to marry a Croatian. She has to meet one first.
Based on the findings from a cross-linguistic survey, Haspelmath (1997) points out that the distinction between specific and non-specific is so important that certain languages use different types of morphological or lexical markers to encode this distinction. As researchers focussed on one or more properties of indefinite noun phrases, different views on specificity emerged. This being so, it is no surprise that the concept of specificity has been used as a general term for several, partially overlapping phenomena such as: scopal specificity, epistemic specificity, partitive specificity and specificity as noteworthiness. In the literature on this topic we sometimes find the term referentiality being used as a synonymous expression for specificity (Fodor and Sag 1982, Givón 1984). However, in line with von Heusinger (2002), I consider that specificity and referentiality should be teased apart and be analysed as two distinct phenomena. In this book, referentiality is taken to be an indicator for the existence and accessibility in the discourse and specificity is understood in terms of the referential intention of the speaker or of another salient agent in the discourse. Contexts containing modals and non-factive propositional attitude verbs (i.e. operators, Heim 1981) make the distinction between a referential and a non-referential reading of an indefinite noun phrase clear. The indefinite in (3a), for example, scopes over the operator want and allows for an existential assertion of its associated referent. This allows for an interpretation in which the pronoun he in the second conjunct is bound by the indefinite noun phrase in the preceding sentence. The indefinite in (3a) has a referential reading and is specific as well, as it refers to an individual the speaker has in mind1. The indefinite in (3b), on the contrary, is interpreted inside the scope of the operator.
Over the past forty years, a wealth of research has focused on the analysis of referring expressions within larger discourse segments. It is generally accepted that discourses are structured in such a way as to achieve coherence. In order to successfully process a coherent discourse, discourse participants must construct a mental representation of the events being described. Definite and indefinite noun phrases represent one way to achieve such representations and to keep track of the referents introduced in the discourse. It has been argued that the position of an entity in a particular discourse structure determines the use of a particular type of referring expression in the subsequent mention of that referent. Prince (1988: 1) argues that when “a speaker evokes an entity in the discourse s/he first hypothesizes the information status of that entity in the hearer’s mind, with respect to both familiarity and saliency”. In the process of referring, speakers do not randomly opt for a particular type of referring expression; rather they choose the appropriate type of referring expression based on the referential status of the referent it is associated with. In other words, the use of a certain type of referring expression is negotiated at each point in the discourse between speakers and hearers. Thus, whether speakers use an indefinite noun phrase, a definite noun phrases, a pronoun, and so forth, to refer to a particular referent, depends on the information status of that entity at a particular time in the discourse. Prince (1988, 1992) captures the controversial notions of givenness and familiarity discussed above in a more intuitive classificational system of referential status, which impacts the choice of the type of referring expression. She introduces two fundamental referential statuses to account for the use of different types of referring expressions, namely the discourse status and the hearer status, as illustrated in Table 2.1. The discourse status reflects the discourse history of a referent and indicates whether a referent has already been evoked in the discourse (i.e. discourse-old), or not (i.e. discourse-new). The hearer status captures another dimension of the referent that pertains to the shared knowledge between discourse participants. According to this dimension, information is shared between the discourse participants if it was explicitly introduced in the discourse, or if it represents unused, old information for the hearer, otherwise the information is hearer-new.
Discourse-new
Discourse-old
Hearer-new
Brand-new
-
Hearer-old
Unused
Textually evoked
Taxonomy of referential status (Prince 1992)
The discourse status and the hearer status represent two dimensions of an entity and are not independent of each other. For example, if a referent is discourse-old (i.e. textually evoked), it must be hearer-old as well as it simultaneously represents shared information between the discourse participants. However, when a referent is discourse-new, it can represent both hearer-old (i.e. unused) and hearer-new (i.e. brand-new) entities. Prince (1992: 303) notes that the hearer-status is formally marked in English by definiteness, with hearer-new entities being typically realized as indefinite noun phrases and hearer-old entities being realized as definite noun phrases. The discourse status of a referent, however, remains more often than not unmarked.
Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski (1993) propose an alternative discourse-pragmatic model to account for the proper use and felicitous processing of different types of referring expressions. The starting point of their analysis is the observation that the descriptive content of a certain type of referring expression restricts the set of possible referents to which the referring expression might apply to those referents that have (at least) the designated attention and memory status for the hearer. Each type of referring expression is linked to a precise memory node or cognitive status, which is in turn sufficient and necessary so that this referring expression can be used. Gundel et al. (1993) delimitate six cognitive statuses or mental representations, which are understood as processing instructions to the hearer as to which referent suits the referring expression best. The six cognitive statuses are arranged on a scale, ranging from “most restrictive” (i.e. the “in focus” status) to “least restrictive” (i.e. the “type identifiable” status). Table 2.2 illustrates the scale of cognitive statuses, called “the Givenness Hierarchy”, with English examples for each cognitive status.
In focus>
Activated>
Familiar>
Uniquely identifiable>
Referential>
Type
identifiable
it
that, this
that N, this N
the N
indefinite this N
a N
The Givenness Hierarchy (Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski 1993)
Because cognitive statuses are considered parts of mental representations, the Givenness Hierarchy does not give instructions about the way in which a certain type of referring expression acquires a certain status. For example, whether a referent is discourse-old or discourse-new in Prince’s (1992) terms, does not impact the cognitive status of the referent. Examples (4a) and (4b) illustrate the relation between a type of referring expression and the mental activation of the associated referent (Gundel et al. 1993).
(4)
(a)
I couldn’t sleep last night. A dog (next door) kept me awake.
(b)
I couldn’t sleep last night. It kept me awake.
According to this view, the hearer of sentence (4a) only has to know what the word dog means to understand the least restrictive simple indefinite noun phrase a dog. However, the hearer of sentence (4b) cannot understand the most restrictive form it unless s/he has a unique mental representation of the dog in question, which is also in his/ her focus of attention at the time the sentence is produced. The advantage of the Giveness Hierarchy lies in its implicational nature. A referential expression is individually and separately marked for the degree of accessibility its associated referent codes. The statuses are not mutually exclusive, they rather correlate with degrees of specification of some property and do not correspond to absolute degrees of the property. In other words, for any cognitive status on the Givenness Hierarchy, the associated referring expression codes the status indicated and simultaneously entails all lower statuses (i.e. the least restrictive ones, on its right). This prediction explains, for example, why a referent associated with the highest cognitive status “in focus” can be realized by referring expressions associated to all other lower statuses, i.e. “activated”, “familiar”, “uniquely identifiable”, “referential” and “type identifiable”. The indefinite determiner this in example (5), which codes the higher status “referential” can be replaced by the indefinite article a/an, which is associated to the lowest status “type identifiable”, given the unidirectional entailment relations of the Givenness Hierarchy.
(5)
I saw √this/ √a man in my dream, dressed as Santa Klaus2.
