Perspective-shifting and free indirect discourse: Experimental investigations

Abstract

The psycholinguistic experiments reported in this paper explore the question of who gets to be the ‘judge’ according to whom we interpret linguistic expressions that seem to require some kind of epistemic anchor, such as epithets (e.g. that jerk). Experiments 1a and 1b corroborate Harris and Potts’ (2009) findings that epithets and appositives can receive non-speaker-oriented readings. Experiments 2 and 3 compare sentences with and without epithets and epistemic adverbs, and show that the presence of these elements can in fact boost the rate of non-speaker-oriented interpretations, at least in contexts that allow the text to be interpreted as fiction/narrative. We suggest this is because, in such contexts, expressions like epithets and epistemic adverbs can signal free indirect discourse.

Experience matters: A psycholinguistic investigation of predicates of personal taste

“…This explicit task is similar to what is used in the experiment described in the present paper. Crucially, Kaiser (2015) found that the pronounbased task that implicitly probes perspectival processing and the explicit 'whose perspective' task yielded the same kind of results: Both show that naïve participants are indeed sensitive to epithets and epistemic adverbials signaling perspective shift.…”

“…probably, definitely), as these have been claimed by literary narratologists to be indicators of free indirect discourse and perspective shift (McHale 1978, see also Banfield 1973Fludernik 1993). Kaiser (2015) tested whether participants would interpret the epithet (ex.9b) or epistemic adverbial (ex.10b) as signaling a shift to the character's point-of-view, compared to a 'plain' version of the same sentence without an epithet or epistemic adverbial (ex.9a,10a). The items were designed so that interpretation of the pronoun in the second clause could be used to detect perspective shift: If a comprehender interprets 'that ignorant jerk' as being Arthur's thoughts about Eric (i.e., Arthur=judge), then 'he' refers to the preceding object Eric in ex.(9b).…”

When is it ok to call someone a jerk? An experimental investigation of expressives

“…For discussion, see i.a. Amaral et al (2007) Schlenker (2007, Potts (2007), Harris and Potts (2009), Harris (2012), Kaiser (2015).…”

“…There have been empirical studies on expressives, in particular Harris and Potts (2009) and Kaiser (2015), but 17 what they have tested is the availability of non-speaker-oriented uses of expressives. This topic, however important, remains somewhat orthogonal to the issues that we have tried to address.…”

Commonalities and Differences in the Interpretation of Predicates of Personal Taste vs. Relational Locative Expressions: Some Theoretical Considerations and Experimental Evidence

“…The scenarios were described linguistically, and additionally by means of a schematic picture representing the scenario from a bird's eye view. We chose to address the research question in this somewhat indirect manner, since previous studies used a rather blunt approach to assess the perspectivized interpretation of participants by asking them directly from whose perspective a certain expression was to be evaluated (e.g., see Harris and Potts (2009), Kaiser (2015), Kaiser and Lee (2017);…”