Noun-phrase anaphora and focus: The informational load hypothesis.

Almor, Amit

doi:10.1037/0033-295x.106.4.748

Cited by 307 publications

(369 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

299

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Grammatical subjects in English are often the first-mentioned entity in an utterance, but not always, and both positions have been shown to impact reference resolution when unconfounded (see Kaiser & Trueswell, in press). Other relevant features of the discourse are the thematic roles of recently mentioned referents, parallelism of the syntactic roles of anaphors and antecedent, and information carried by focus constructions, like clefts (e.g., Almor, 1999;Arnold, 2001;Arnold, Eisenband, et al, 2000;Ariel, 1990;Givón, 1983;Sanford & Garrod, 1981;Stevenson, et al, 1994; see Arnold, 1998, for a review). A referent that is highly accessible in an addressee's discourse representation does not require as specific a referential expression as a new referent does, so effects of discourse status can be interpreted as evidence that speakers aim to produce expressions that are optimally interpretable.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts☆

Arnold

Griffin

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

227

307

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two story-telling experiments examine the process of choosing between pronouns and proper names in speaking. Such choices are traditionally attributed to speakers striving to make referring expressions maximally interpretable to addressees. The experiments revealed a novel effect: even when a pronoun would not be ambiguous, the presence of another character in the discourse decreased pronoun use and increased latencies to refer to the most prominent character in the discourse. In other words, speakers were more likely to call Minnie Minnie than shewhen Donald was also present. Even when the referent character appeared alone in the stimulus picture, the presence of another character in the preceding discourse reduced pronouns. Furthermore, pronoun use varied with features associated with the speaker's degree of focus on the preceding discourse (e.g., narrative style and disfluency). We attribute this effect to competition for attentional resources in the speaker's representation of the discourse. Keywords language production; discourse; reference; pronouns; word selection; proper names When people talk, they refer to things. They constantly make rapid decisions about whether an expression should be explicit, like Michelle Bacheletor the first female president in Chile, or whether it should be relatively underspecified, like she. In this paper we examine the production processes involved in the choice between less specific expressions, like pronouns, and more explicit expressions, like proper names.Research on this issue has primarily focused on the aspects of discourse that constrain speakers' choices in referring expressions, and in particular, the linguistic discourse history. The standard approach assumes that a speaker's task is to pick a referring expression that maximally fits the current discourse situation, so as to make it easy for the listener to interpret. An explicit formulation of this idea is offered by Chafe (1994), "If language is to function effectively, a speaker is obliged to categorize a shared referent in a way that allows the listener to identify it" (p. 97). Similarly, Gundel and colleagues (1993) state, "the form of referring expressions… Corresponding author: Dr. Jennifer Arnold, UNC Chapel Hill, Dept. of Psychology, CB#3270 Davie Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270, Email: jarnold@email.unc.edu. This research was partially funded by NIH grants HD-41522 to J. Arnold and MH61318-01 to Z. Griffin, as well as NSF grant BCS-0318456 to Z. Griffin.Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Aut...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts☆

Arnold

Griffin

2007

Journal of Memory and Language

227

307

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As we will see below, these are features that contribute to referent prominence. Generally speaking, entities that the linguistic context has made especially prominent are more likely to be realized as pronouns by speakers, and are more easily identified as referents for pronouns by listeners, than are less prominent referents (e.g., Almor, 1999;Ariel, 2001;Fletcher, 1984;Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski, 1993;Prince, 1992, among many others). Less prominent referents tend to be invoked by more explicit linguistic forms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children's interpretation of pronouns

Song

Fisher

2007

Lingua

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three experiments examined 2.5-year-olds' sensitivity to discourse structure in pronoun interpretation. Children heard simple two-character stories illustrated by pictures on two video screens. In Experiments 1 and 2, one character in each story was established as more prominent than the other in several context sentences because it was mentioned first, appeared in subject position, was mentioned more often, and was pronominalized once. In Experiment 3, one character was singled out as more prominent only by being mentioned first and placed in subject position. In all three experiments, after hearing a pronoun subject in the final (test) sentence of each story, children looked longer at the character established as more prominent in the preceding sentences. These experiments show that 2.5-year-olds, like older children and adults, interpret pronouns relative to a discourse representation in which referents are ranked in prominence, and that the prominence of discourse referents is influenced by some of the same factors that guide pronoun interpretation in adulthood.

show abstract

“…Results from numerous psycholinguistic experiments have shown that anaphor resolution is greatly determined by semantic factors (e.g., Dell, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1983;Garnham, Oakhill, & Cain, 1997;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980;O'Brien, Raney, Albrecht & Rayner,1997; for reviews, see Almor, 1999;Ariel, 1990;Garnham, 2001;Myers & O'Brien, 1998;Garrod & Sanford, 1994;Gernsbacher, 1989;Sanford & Garrod, 1989). For example, readers experience difficulties in resolving anaphors that are more specific than their antecedent (e.g., ''A bird would sometimes wander into the house.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The interplay between semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution: Evidence from ERPs

Nieuwland

Berkum

2008

Brain and Language

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tIn this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and incoherent anaphors elicited an N400 effect. Simultaneously ambiguous and incoherent anaphors elicited an ERP pattern resembling that of the incoherent anaphors. These results suggest that semantic incoherence can preclude readers from engaging in anaphoric inferencing. Furthermore, approximately half of our participants unexpectedly showed common late positive effects to the three types of problematic anaphors. We relate the latter finding to recent accounts of what the P600 might reflect, and to the role of individual differences therein.

show abstract

Noun-phrase anaphora and focus: The informational load hypothesis.

Cited by 307 publications

References 44 publications

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts☆

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts☆

Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children's interpretation of pronouns

The interplay between semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution: Evidence from ERPs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About