Discourse management

Abstract

Speakers achieve coherence in discourse by alternating between differential lexical forms e.g. noun phrase, pronoun, and null form in accordance with the accessibility of the entities they refer to, i.e. whether they introduce an entity into discourse for the first time or continue referring to an entity they already mentioned before. Moreover, tracking of entities in discourse is a multimodal phenomenon. Studies show that speakers are sensitive to the informational structure of discourse and use fuller forms (e.g. full noun phrases) in speech and gesture more when re-introducing an entity while they use attenuated forms (e.g. pronouns) in speech and gesture less when maintaining a referent. However, those studies focus mainly on non-pro-drop languages (e.g. English, German and French). The present study investigates whether the same pattern holds for pro-drop languages. It draws data from adult native speakers of Turkish using elicited narratives. We find that Turkish speakers mostly use fuller forms to code subject referents in re-introduction context and the null form in maintenance context and they point to gesture space for referents more in re-introduction context compared maintained context. Hence we provide supportive evidence for the reverse correlation between the accessibility of a discourse referent and its coding in speech and gesture. We also find that, as a novel contribution, third person pronoun is used in re-introduction context only when the referent was previously mentioned as the object argument of the immediately preceding clause.

Turkish-Dutch bilinguals maintain language-specific reference tracking strategies in elicited narratives

“…Previous studies have shown that there is a systematic relation between the discourse status of a referent and how much information speakers provide while referring to that referent (Aksu-Koç & Nicolopoulou, 2015; Arnold, 1998; Azar & Özyürek, 2015; Contemori & Dussias, 2016; Givón, 1983; Gullberg, 2006; Hendriks, Koster & Hoeks, 2014; Hickmann & Hendriks, 1999; Perniss & Özyürek, 2015). Referents that are maintained across consecutive clauses are expressed with reduced forms, such as pronouns.…”

General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse

“…Speakers are more likely to gesture while re-introducing referents than while maintaining them (Azar & Özyürek, 215;Gullberg, 2006;Levy & Fowler, 2000;Levy & McNeill, 1992;Perniss & Özyürek, 2015;So & Lim, 2012;So, Lim, & Tan, 2014;Yoshioka, 2008). Gestures are also argued to be sensitive to the richness of expression in speech such that speakers are more likely to gesture with referents that are expressed with richer forms in speech, for example, NPs, as opposed to reduced forms, such as pronouns (Azar & Özyürek, 2015;Gullberg, 2006;Levy & McNeill, 1992;Marslen-Wilson, Levy, & Tyler, 1982;Perniss & Özyürek, 2015). Hence, similar to speech, gestures are sensitive to the Principle of Quantity for topic continuation (Givón, 1984) and the Accessibility Theory (Ariel, 1990).…”

The Next Phase in Heritage Language Studies: Methodological Considerations and Advancements

“…There are also studies that explore the use of overt and null subjects in adult non-heritage Turkish speakers. For example, Azar and Özyürek (2015) used two silent videos to elicit narration from non-heritage Turkish speakers (non-HS). The only personal pronoun the researchers observed in the experiment was 3 rd person singular pronoun (o → he/she/it) and they found that Turkish non-HS prefer overt subjects significantly more than null subjects to reintroduce subject referents.…”