ABSTRACT

Across three experiments, we investigated how different markers of contrastive focus affect text encoding and retention. Prior work suggests that some contrastive focus markers (e.g. contrastive pitch accents) can enhance long-term memory for discourse; we tested whether this arises from contrast alone or the realisation of linguistic focus in particular. Participants read texts containing true propositions for which a salient alternative was previously mentioned (e.g. The British scientists found the monkey when the French were previously mentioned) and took a memory test. Contrast markers alone (adversative connectives) did not facilitate retention whereas contrastive focus markers (it-clefts) did. However, contrary to what has been observed for other contrastive focus markers (contrastive pitch accents and font emphasis), it-clefts facilitated retention of focused words rather than salient alternatives. We suggest that, consistent with recent linguistic accounts, cognitive and mnemonic effects vary across contrastive focus markers as a function of properties such as exhaustivity.

摘要

在三个实验中，我们研究了对比焦点的不同标记如何影响文本编码和保留。先前的工作表明，一些对比性焦点标记（例如对比性音高重音）可以增强话语的长期记忆；我们测试了这是否仅来自对比或特别是语言焦点的实现。参与者阅读包含真实命题的文本，之前提到了一个显着的替代方案（例如，英国科学家在之前提到了法国人时发现了猴子）并进行了记忆测试。单独的对比标记（反义连接词）不能促进保留，而对比焦点标记（它-裂缝）做到了。然而，与观察到的其他对比焦点标记（对比音高重音和字体强调）相反，它的裂缝促进了重点词的保留，而不是突出的替代品。我们建议，与最近的语言学描述一致，认知和助记效应在对比焦点标记之间变化，作为诸如穷举性等属性的函数。