The role of selection in the comprehension of focus alternatives

Husband, E. Matthew; Ferreira, Fernanda

doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1083113

Cited by 49 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…In a sense, focus particles could create a placeholder such that participants already know that alternatives are relevant in the upcoming discourse but they still need to determine what the relevant alternatives are (Gotzner et al, ). Contrary to this expectation, however, we found that listeners need longer to determine relevant alternatives in the case of focus particles while priming effects were already observed at the offset of the focused expression in the case of bare focus accenting (see especially Experiment 1, this paper, and Husband & Ferreira, ). This could suggest that selection mechanisms are a later process than retrieval as indexed by lexical decision tasks (see also the arguments brought forth by Husband and Ferreira) and that these mechanisms are further delayed in the presence of focus particles due to competition between co‐activated alternatives.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 95%

“…They were slower to reject unmentioned alternatives which were possible alternatives. The authors argued that during initial comprehension, a mental model of the discourse is in the process of being built, and during this process, distinguishing mentioned from unmentioned alternatives is demanding, in particular because, as we saw in the lexical decision task, unmentioned alternatives are highly activated due to general activation spreading mechanisms (see also Husband & Ferreira, ). Finally, acceptance of the mentioned alternatives as having occurred in the discourse was the slowest process.…”

Section: Online Processing Of Focus and Focus Particlesmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Husband and Ferreira () entertained the hypothesis that, initially, all associates of the element in focus (i.e., alternatives and general associates) become activated while, eventually, only activation for contrastive associates (i.e., relevant alternatives) will be sustained. To this end, Husband and Ferreira carried out a cross‐modally primed lexical decision task.…”

Section: Online Processing Of Focus and Focus Particlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The life and times of focus alternatives: Tracing the activation of alternatives to a focused constituent in language comprehension

Gotzner

Spalek

2019

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The function of focus is to activate a set of alternatives, providing the locus for focus‐sensitive particles like only. In the past decade, psycholinguistic research has shown that listeners entertain a set of alternatives in online language comprehension, similar to the algorithm stipulated by Alternative Semantics. The purpose of the present review is to gain a comprehensive picture of the role of focus alternatives in utterance comprehension and interpretation. Specifically, we focus on how the processing of focus particles interacts with alternatives activated by focus. We show that focus marking activates a network of related concepts, but over time, only those that can be considered as focus alternatives in the relevant context of the utterance are retained in the mental representation of the discourse. Focus particles, in turn, increase the competition between the focused element and its alternatives during the initial stages of comprehension, helping contextual restriction of the set of alternatives. Overall, the studies presented in this review show that focus does not only guide a listener in determining which alternatives are relevant for the purpose of conversation, it also plays a fundamental role in the memory representation of a discourse.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 95%

Section: Online Processing Of Focus and Focus Particlesmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Online Processing Of Focus and Focus Particlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The life and times of focus alternatives: Tracing the activation of alternatives to a focused constituent in language comprehension

Gotzner

Spalek

2019

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…The on-line studies presented in the previous section indicated that the representation of alternatives unfolds and changes over time (in particular, Husband & Ferreira, 2015 ). To fi nd out how the representation of alternatives emerges in the listener's [ 2 ] In a second experiment, we replicated the same pattern of results with a narrative item structure not involving a correction.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 50%

“…In summary, Braun and Tagliapietra ( 2010 ) revealed that contrastive intonational contours specifi cally lead to the activation of contrastive associates (i.e., alternatives) while non-contrastive prosody did not cause such an eff ect. Husband and Ferreira ( 2015 ) followed up on Braun and Tagliapietra ( 2010 ) and investigated how alternative sets evolve over time. They compared the activation of contrastive and non-contrastive associates to a prime word across two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives

2016

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a b st r a c tThe semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992 ). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The fi rst experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming eff ects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference eff ects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element.k e y w o r d s : focus particles , alternative-set semantics , probe recognition task , lexical decision task , competitive inhibition .[ * ] We are grateful to

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Contrastive Prosody and the Subsequent Mention of Alternatives During Discourse Processing

Schafer

Camp

Rohde

et al. 2019

Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing

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Linguistic research has long viewed prosody as an important indicator of information structure in intonationally rich languages like English. Correspondingly, numerous psycholinguistic studies have shown significant effects of prosody, particularly with respect to the immediate processing of a prosodically prominent phrase. Although co-reference resolution is known to be influenced by information structure, it has been less clear whether prosodic prominence can affect decisions about next mention in a discourse, and if so, how. We present results from an open-ended story continuation task, conducted as part of a series of experiments that examine how prosody influences the anticipation and resolution of co-reference. Overall results from the project suggest that prosodic prominence can increase or decrease reference to a saliently pitch-accented phrase, depending on additional circumstances of the referential decision. We argue that an adequate account of prosody's role in co-reference requires consideration of how the processing system interfaces with multiple levels of linguistic representation.

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The role of selection in the comprehension of focus alternatives

Cited by 49 publications

References 77 publications

The life and times of focus alternatives: Tracing the activation of alternatives to a focused constituent in language comprehension

The life and times of focus alternatives: Tracing the activation of alternatives to a focused constituent in language comprehension

The impact of focus particles on the recognition and rejection of contrastive alternatives

Contrastive Prosody and the Subsequent Mention of Alternatives During Discourse Processing

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