Estudios acerca del establecimiento de conexiones entre enunciados hablados: ¿qué pueden contribuir a la promoción de la construcción de una representación coherente del discurso por parte de los estudiantes?

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of how the establishment of discourse connections among spoken statements has been studied by approaches to discourse analysis and psycholinguistic studies, in order to highlight what variables appear to be important for understanding how comprehension of spoken discourse can be facilitated. The consideration of discourse analysis approaches allows us to think about the role of the establishment of discourse connections among speech acts in the classroom, the uses of contextualization cues by bilingual students, the identification of social and cultural notions in teachers’ discourse, and the interactional effects of teachers’ interventions. Preliminary psycholinguistic studies contribute to our understanding of the role of establishing causal connections and integrating adjacent statements through the presence of discourse markers in the comprehension of spoken discourse by college students. The results of these approaches and studies provide insight into students’ comprehension of classroom discourse, and hold the potential for implications for instruction.El propósito de este artículo es realizar un recorrido a través de enfoques de análisis del discurso y estudios de psicolingüística que han investigado el establecimiento de conexiones entre enunciados hablados, a fin de destacar las variables que parecen ser centrales para facilitar la comprensión. La consideración de los enfoques del análisis del discurso nos permitirán pensar acerca del rol del establecimiento de conexiones entre actos del lenguaje en el aula, las funciones de las claves de contextualización, la identificación de las nociones sociales y culturales en el discurso de los profesores, los efectos de las intervenciones de los profesores en la interacción con los estudiantes. Los estudios preliminares de psicolingüística contribuirán a nuestra comprensión del rol del establecimiento de conexiones causales e integración de enunciados adyacentes a través de marcadores del discurso por parte de estudiantes universitarios. La consideración de estos enfoques y estudios nos ayudarán a pensar acerca de las contribuciones que sus propuestas y métodos pueden hacer al enriquecimiento de nuestro entendimiento de cómo los estudiantes comprenden el discurso producido durante las clases.Fil: Yomha Cevasco, Jazmin. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Broek, Paul van den. Leiden University; Países Bajo

Referential precedents in spoken language comprehension: a review and meta-analysis

Listeners’ interpretations of referring expressions are influenced by referential precedents—temporary conventions established in a discourse that associate linguistic expressions with referents. A number of psycholinguistic studies have investigated how much precedent effects depend on beliefs about the speaker’s perspective versus more egocentric, domain-general processes. We review and provide a meta-analysis of visual-world eyetracking studies of precedent use, focusing on three principal effects: (1) a same speaker advantage for maintained precedents; (2) a different speaker advantage for broken precedents; and (3) an overall main effect of precedents. Despite inconsistent claims in the literature, our combined analysis reveals surprisingly consistent evidence supporting the existence of all three effects, but with different temporal profiles. These findings carry important implications for existing theoretical explanations of precedent use, and challenge explanations based solely on the use of information about speakers’ perspectives

Third Person References: Forms and Functions in Two Spoken Genres of Spanish

This volume, a case study on the grammar of third person references in two genres of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish, examines from a discourse-analytic perspective how genre affects linguistic patterns and how researchers can look for and interpret genre effects. This marks a timely contribution to corpus linguistics, as many linguists are choosing to work with empirical data. Corpus based approaches have many advantages and are useful in the comparison of different languages as well as varieties of the same language, but what is often overlooked in such comparisons is the genre of language under examination. As this case study shows, genre is an important factor in interpreting patterns and distributions of forms. The book also contributes toward theories of anaphora, referentiality and Preferred Argument Structure. It is relevant for scholars who work with referentiality, genre differences, third person references, and interactional linguistics, as well as those interested in Spanish morphosyntax. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1096/thumbnail.jp

Enhancement and suppression effects resulting from information structuring in sentences

Information structuring through the use of cleft sentences increases the processing efficiency of references to elements within the scope of focus. Furthermore, there is evidence that putting certain types of emphasis on individual words not only enhances their subsequent processing, but also protects these words from becoming suppressed in the wake of subsequent information, suggesting mechanisms of enhancement and suppression. In Experiment 1, we showed that clefted constructions facilitate the integration of subsequent sentences that make reference to elements within the scope of focus, and that they decrease the efficiency with reference to elements outside of the scope of focus. In Experiment 2, using an auditory text-change-detection paradigm, we showed that focus has similar effects on the strength of memory representations. These results add to the evidence for enhancement and suppression as mechanisms of sentence processing and clarify that the effects occur within sentences having a marked focus structure

Inferentials in spoken English

Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch's work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax

Direct speech, subjectivity and speaker positioning in London English and Paris French

This paper examines functional similarities and differences in the use of pragmatic features – in particular quotatives and general extenders – on the right and left periphery of direct quotations. This comparative study, based on the analysis of a contemporary corpus of London English and Paris French (MLE – MPF) , finds that the form and frequency of these particles tend to vary not only with respect to social factors such as speakers’ age and gender, but also with respect to the different pragmatic functions they come to perform in different interactional settings. The contemporary data is analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively to show how different variants position the speaker in relation to: i) the content of the quote, ii) the interlocutors, iii) the presumed author of the quote. The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of pragmatic universals and variability in the use of direct speech

The Pragmatic Functions of Repetition in TV Discourse

Since repetition is a natural phenomenon used to perform various functions in interactional discourse, adopting a pragmatic analysis to the discourse of Dr. Phil and his guests on Dr. Phil's TV show, this study attempted to explore the pragmatic functions of such repetitions as used by English native speakers. The data were gathered from conversations between native speakers of English, and based on 7 full episodes of Dr. Phil's TV Show. The researchers watched, and studied these episodes on YouTube. The study revealed that one of the salient features of TV discourse is repetition, which is employed to perform a variety of language functions. Repetition was used to express emphasis, clarity, emotions, highlight the obvious, be questionable, express annoyance, persuasion, express surprise, give instructions, and as a filler in order to take time, when the speaker was searching for a proper word to say what would come next. The study concluded that these findings had significant implications for EFL/ESL teachers and the interlanguage development of EFL/ESL learners