ABSTRACT

Although it is clear that unaccented referring expressions are associated with given information in a discourse, it is less clear what aspects of givenness are relevant. We examine whether listeners’ expectation of givenness depends on repetition of a referring expression or on contextual evocation of a referent. The results from two visual world eye-tracking experiments suggest that for interpretation, listeners associated reduced prominence with a repeated referring expression. Listeners expect previously evoked referents to be candidates for reduced referring expressions only when they are referred to with the exact same referential form. The data also suggest that when referents are referred to with different referential forms across utterances, accenting facilitates linking those forms for co-reference.

摘要

尽管很明显，不带重音的指称表达与话语中的给定信息相关联，但尚不清楚给定性的哪些方面是相关的。我们检查听者对被给予性的期望是否取决于指称表达的重复或指称的上下文唤起。两个视觉世界眼动追踪实验的结果表明，对于解释，听众将降低的显着性与重复的指代表达联系起来。只有当它们以完全相同的指称形式被指代时，听众才会期望先前唤起的指称对象成为简化指称表达的候选者。数据还表明，当所指对象在话语中以不同的指称形式被提及时，重音有助于将这些形式联系起来以实现共同指称。