Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

First-person singular pronouns in Japanese: How do they work in conversation?

Subjectivity-- expression of our thoughts and emotions-- is the essence of everyday conversation (e.g., Benveniste, 1971; Scheibman, 2002). Previous studies have found that subjectivity is expressed in a variety of linguistic items in a wide range of languages. First-person singular (1SG) pronouns may be one of the most fundamental linguistic items for expressing subjectivity because they directly reflect the speaker, who is the owner of subjective point of view. This dissertation explores the use of 1SG pronouns in Japanese utilizing the analysis of naturally occurring conversational data. In Japanese, personal pronouns including first person are used infrequently, especially in spoken language, and the first-person reference is often unexpressed (what is known as pronoun ellipsis). Although they may look odd or ill-formed from the perspective of languages that have rigid syntactic structures such as English, utterances with unexpressed elements can be considered to be the default\u27 in Japanese conversation. Because of the variability of expression of 1SG pronouns, it is assumed that they add some pragmatic functions when they are explicitly expressed. Data analyses of 1SG pronouns taken from naturally occurring conversation revealed that the use is often motivated by various discourse-pragmatic functions such as expressing subjectivity, introducing a topic, and holding the floor rather than referential necessity. The speaker decides to use 1SG pronouns or not to use them in order to achieve his or her particular communicative goals. First-person singular pronouns in Japanese are a versatile linguistic item beyond so-called pronouns that simply replace nouns. This strongly suggests that 1SG pronouns are essentially different from English I, and will lead us to reconsider the categorization of 1SG pronouns in Japanese. Furthermore, the use and nonuse of 1SG pronouns in Japanese has important educational implications. In order to teach linguistic items that are not syntactically required but are used by pragmatic motivations, I suggest that educators seek more effective teaching methods based on authentic language use.\u2

The use of English referring expressions by Chinese children living in Britain

This thesis examined the English referring expressions used by the Chinese children living in Britain and English children matched by English language ability to the Chinese children. Two adult groups (one Chinese and one English) were used as controls. Two experiments were conducted in a year time apart, involving 166 participants in total. In the experiments, participants described stories presented in pictures to listeners who could (El) or could not (E2) see the pictures. The stories in El described two protagonists of different genders, those in E2 described two of the same gender. Predictions concerned the use of appropriate referring expressions on first mention of novel entities and on second mention of familiar entities; whether a thematic subject strategy was used; whether Chinese children's choice of specific referring expressions (Bare Nouns, Demonstratives, and Zero Anaphors) was influenced by their first language; and which factors (Fist Language, English Language Ability, Cognitive Ability, and Age) were significant predictors of the children's use of English referring expressions. The main results were as follows: Both groups of children used definite references on second mention more frequently than they used indefinite references on first mention. There were hardly any transcripts showing use of a thematic subject strategy. Instead, participants used either an explicit strategy, in which full explicit noun phrases were used throughout or a strategy in which the subject slot is reserved for the current topic, which may change a the discourse proceeds. English parents predominantly used this second strategy. Regression analyses showed that cognitive ability was the best predictor of first mention indefinites in both experiments and of second mention definites in El, where definite articles were appropriate for identifying the referent. English language ability was the best predictor of second mention definites in both experiments. These results were discussed in relation to previous studies and the notion of mental models. It was concluded that Chinese children did not use an inter-language that contained information about specific words or phrases. The major effect of first language may be discourse level strategies, but this was only appeared with the parents

Topic and focus constructions in spoken Korean

textThis study discusses topic and focus constructions in spoken Korean within the framework of information structure. Information structure is a part of grammar that deals with the relation between linguistic forms and the mental states of speakers and hearers. Since the different formal realizations of topic and focus constructions in Korean are due to differences in speakers' assumptions about the mental states of hearers, research on Korean topic and focus constructions falls under the proper domain of information structure. Five different topic constructions in Korean are reviewed and their discourse contexts are analyzed; zero pronouns, bare NPs, and right-dislocated NPs are generally used for discourse-active topic referents, and the maliya-construction and nun-marked NPs are generally used for topic referents that are not discourse-active. Sometimes, active topic referents are also marked with --nun when the topic referents have more salient topics already established in the discourse or speakers are considering potential alternatives to the active topic referents. Topics are divided into ratified and ungratified topics according to whether their status as topics is assumed to be taken for granted by hearers. Among the five topic constructions in Korean, zero pronouns, bare NPs and right-dislocated NPs express ratified topics, while the maliya-construction and nunmarked topics express unratified topics. The marker --ka, which has been long regarded as a subject indicator, is reanalyzed, and it is suggested that --ka marks not only the subject but also argument focus and sentence focus. Accessible or active referents can sometimes be marked with --ka, constituting sentence-focus constructions. In those constructions, the propositional content of the sentences expresses some unexpected or surprising event. Also, frequent occurrences of the maker --ka in presupposed subordinate clauses are examined, and it is suggested that --ka can be used as a mere subject indicator, losing its function of indicating focus in presupposed clauses with topic-comment construals, in which there is no actual focus.Linguistic

The relevance of referring expressions: the case of diary drop in English

This thesis offers a pragmatic analysis of subjectless sentences in non-null subject languages, focusing on English ‘diary drop’ (as in ‘Saw a good film yesterday’). In chapter 1, I survey the data and discuss existing syntactic analyses (Haegeman & Ihsane 1999, 2001). While these generally acknowledge the importance of pragmatic factors in an overall account, no detailed investigation of their contribution has been proposed. In chapter 2, I consider subjectless sentences in child language, and suggest that relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/95) can shed light on why such utterances occur. In chapter 3, I revisit the adult data, and having established that null subjects function as referring expressions, I consider two pragmatically-oriented approaches to the analysis of referring expressions: Accessibility Theory (Ariel, 1990) and the Givenness Hierarchy (Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski, 1993). Both adopt the relevance-theoretic framework, but claim that relevance alone is insufficient to account for the data. In chapters 4 and 5, I develop a relevance-based account of referring expressions, and argue that we can do without the machinery of Accessibility Theory and the Givenness Hierarchy on two assumptions: first, that referring expressions encode procedural as well as conceptual meaning (Blakemore 1987, 2002), and second, that this procedural meaning does not identify the intended referent by appeal to considerations of Accessibility or Givenness. An important implication of my account is that the choice of referring expression not only affects reference resolution but can also contribute to what is implicitly communicated by an utterance. I provide detailed evidence for this. In chapter 6, I return to the original null subject data and show that my relevance-based approach sheds new light on how these utterances function in a non-null subject language. In Chapter 7, I draw general conclusions and revisit the conceptual-procedural distinction in light of the analyses proposed

Face vs. empathy: the social foundation of Maithili verb agreement

Maithili features one of the most complex agreement systems of any Indo-Aryan language. Not only nominative and non-nominative subjects, but also objects, other core arguments, and even nonarguments are cross-referenced, allowing for a maximum of three participants encoded by the verb desinences. The categories reflected in the morphology are person, honorific degree, and, in the case of third persons, gender, spatial distance, and focus. However, not all combinations of category choices are equally represented, and there are many cases of neutralization. We demonstrate that the paradigm structure of Maithili verb agreement is not arbitrary but can be predicted by two general principles of interaction in Maithil society: a principle of social hierarchy underlying the evaluation of people's "face” (Brown and Levinson 1987[1978]), and a principle of social solidarity defining degrees of "empathy” (Kuno 1987) to which people identify with others. Maithili verb agreement not only reflects a specific style of social cognition but also constitutes a prime means of maintaining this style by requiring constant attention to its defining parameters. In line with this, we find that the system is partly reduced by uneducated, so-called lower-caste speakers, who are least interested in maintaining this style, especially its emphasis on hierarch

Centering: A Framework for Modelling the Coherence of Discourse

Our original paper (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein, 1983) on centering claimed that certain entities mentioned in an utterance were more central than others and that this property imposed constraints on a speaker\u27s use of different types of referring expression. Centering was proposed as a model that accounted for this phenomenon. We argued that the compatibility of centering properties of an utterance with choice of referring expression affected the coherence of discourse. Subsequently, we expanded the ideas presented therein. We defined various centering constructs and proposed two centering rules in terms of these constructs. A draft manuscript describing this elaborated centering framework and presenting some initial theoretical claims has been in wide circulation since 1986. This draft (Grosz, Joshi, and Weinstein 1986, hereafter, GJW86) has led to a number of papers by others on this topic and has been extensively cited, but has never been published. We have been urged to publish the more detailed description of the centering framework and theory proposed in GJW86 so that an official version would be archivally available. The task of completing and revising this draft became more daunting as time passed and more and more papers appeared on centering. Many of these papers proposed extensions to or revisions of the theory and attempted to answer questions posed in GJW86. It has become ever more clear that it would be useful to have a definitive statement of the original motivations for centering, the basic definitions underlying the centering framework, and the original theoretical claims. This paper attempts to meet that need. To accomplish this goal, we have chosen to remove descriptions of many open research questions posed in GJW86 as well as solutions that were only partially developed. We have also greatly shortened the discussion of criteria for and constraints on a possible semantic theory as a foundation for this work

Interpretation of Korean null pronouns in subject and object position: Comparing native and non-native speakers

We report an experiment that investigates how native and non-native Korean speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in subject and object position is influenced by structural and discourse-level factors. We compare native Korean speakers to L2 Korean learners whose L1, Spanish, only has null pronouns in subject position. We find that native Korean speakers’ interpretation of subject and object null pronouns is guided by structural factors as well as discourse-level coherence relations, with subject nulls being more sensitive to coherence relations than object nulls. In contrast, our results suggest that L2 speakers’ interpretation of null pronouns in Korean is less influenced by coherence relations. Our results support claims that interface phenomena are challenging in L2 acquisition and provide new evidence that this occurs with null pronouns in L2 even when the L1 has null pronouns

Topic and focus in Ngardi

This paper examines the discourse pragmatics of the non- configurational (free word order) Australian language Ngardi. Ngardi is a Ngumbin language spoken by a small number of people east of the Kimberleys. I examine Topic and Focus in equational sentences and question forms gathered from transcripts of card games played by Ngardi speakers. I examine this data from the Information Structure perspective as defined by Lambrecht (1994) and include some discussion of Choi's (2001) NEW and PROM binary features. I conclude that a range of constituents to the left of the obligatory pronominal clitics are conditioned by discourse pragmatic factors.The field data for this thesis was collected by Lee Cataldi, funded by ARC Grant No. A10009036, Chief Investigators Christopher Manning and Jane Simpson