The data in this study are from the Somoro dialect. While many of the conclusions should hold for the other dialects, there is not a one-to-one correspondence.
1.3 The Current Working Theory of Reference
The study of reference and referential forms is not a modern phenomenon. The philosophical under- pinnings can be traced back to Aristotle. In this section I give a general outline of my theory of why a
speaker chooses a specific form to refer to an object so the reader can understand how the different morphosyntactic devices in Olo are used to make reference to objects. Chapter 3 will trace the histori-
cal views of reference as well as comparing and contrasting the different theories.
Many different theories have been proposed to account for the use of nouns or pronouns in dis- course. They can be divided into four general categories: recency, episodes, prominence, and me-
morial activation. Each of these approaches suffers from various flaws. The recency approach, including topic persistence basically states that certain devices are used if the most recent mention
is only a few one or two clauses preceding the current mention see Givón 1983a, 1983b, 1983c, 1983e; Jaggar 1983; Payne 1993. While this approach accounts for large amounts of data, it fails
to handle the influence on referential choice of various discourse boundaries or topic persistence. Episode approaches Anderson, Garrod, and Sandford 1983; Kintsch and van Dijk 1978;
Marslen-Wilson, Levy, and Tyler 1982; Pu 1991; Tomlin 1987; van Dijk 1982; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983 claim that the choice is based on episode boundaries in the text. The claim is that nouns are
used after an episode boundary and pronouns within an episode. This account fails because it does not address the use of pronouns across episode boundaries, nor the use of nouns inside an episode.
The prominence account Clancy 1980; Hinds 1977; Kuno 1976; Kuno and Kaburaki 1977; Perrin 1978 is not as well quantified as the others. Essentially it claims that the choices of referential
form are based on how important a given referent is. The problems with this account have more to do with its testability than its general observations. The Olo data generally supports the idea that
the prominence of a referent influences the choice of referential forms. It can not be claimed that prominence is the most important factor however. The fourth approach, and the most promising, is
that of memorial activation Gernsbacher 1989, 1990; Tomlin and Pu 1991. However, all current work in activation considers the choice of a noun versus a pronoun to be based solely on current ac-
tivation. In this approach the choice of referential form is made only according to the activation level of the referent at the moment of utterance. The activation level is affected by episode bound-
aries at least in Tomlin and Pu’s work 1991. Within an individual episode a recency approach is adopted. In this view the choice of referential form cannot be influenced by any subsequent usage.
The model further predicts that all new referents would be introduced by nouns or noun phrases. While this proposal does account for large amounts of the current data, it specifically does not ac-
count for differences in referential form being correlated with topic persistence, or the use of ver- bal affixes to introduce new participants.
Underlying all uses of referential devices is the premise that the speaker is attempting to communi- cate with his listener, or the writer with his reader, and will therefore choose referential forms that al-
low the listener to connect the form with the object that the speaker intended. A second key premise is that a speaker does not speak in isolated sentences, but rather builds a discourse. In this way the choice
of a referential form is dependent not only on the previous utterances, but is foundational for future utterances.
When a listener hears an utterance, the different referential forms have different effects on his men- tal state. In particular, the activation levels of different referents are changed. Activation is essentially
a measure of how accessible a concept is to a person. A concept that is highly active can be accessed faster than a concept that is less active. The activation level is not constant, it can be suppressed by the
activation of other concepts
4
and it can decay with time, or with the crossing of boundaries in the dis- course structure Clark and Sengul 1979; Garrod and Sanford 1988; Sanford and Garrod 1982. Be-
sides suppression, activation can also be enhanced by a new reference to the concept. The more
4 Introduction
4
The twin ideas of suppression and enhancement are from Gernsbacher 1990.
explicit the referential form, the more dramatic the increase in activation of the object referred to and the more suppressed the activation of any non referent.
5
Other features also affect the activation level of referents. One of the most important is the advantage of first mention Gernsbacher 1989, 1990;
Gernsbacher and Hargreaves 1988. All other things being equal, the referent that is mentioned in a sentence first will have a higher activation level than any of the referents in following positions. The
amount of coding material also affects the activation levels, so that a noun has a different effect from a pronoun Gernsbacher 1990, which is different from zero Chang 1980; Corbett and Chang 1983.
Different grammatical andor semantic roles could well affect the activation of a referent, but this has not been explicitly tested where it was not confounded with the advantage of first mention.
Given the shortcomings of previous work recency, episode, prominence, and memorial activation it is necessary to move to a comprehensive account of activation. I propose a melding of prominence
and activation. I call my approach “Goal Oriented Activation.” In this approach the language producer adjusts the activation of the different participants in the discourse, building not only on the current ac-
tivation level, but also according to what the producer wants to do in the rest of the discourse with the particular participant. So that the choice of referential form is not determined simply by the producer’s
estimation of how active the participant is in the mind of the comprehender, but also how active the speaker wants this particular referent to be vis-á-vis all other participants. The producer takes into ac-
count hisher estimate of the activation levels in the mind of the comprehender and uses the appropri- ate device to change the activation to the level heshe wants the comprehender to have at the end of
the sentence. This then builds on the previous sentence and lays the foundation for the next sentence. The form of reference chosen should ideally unambiguously denote the participants and adjust the
relative activation of the participant vis-á-vis all other participants.
The basic techniques employed for this study involve counting the different occurrences of referen- tial forms in the text database. The instances are marked for referential distance, topic persistence, and
occurrence of boundary phenomena. The basic methodology was pioneered by Givón 1983d. The two most important changes I have made to Givón’s methodology involve the treatment of new refer-
ents and distant references. In my account new referents are kept distinct from later references. The data from new referents is crucial to the argument I am making. Givón did not count more than twenty
clauses back for a referent to find the last mention. I impose no such arbitrary limit. This results in more variance in the data. To handle this I use the median rather than the mean to report a figure for
the referential distance of each group. The boundary phenomena are simply a yesno question of whether a certain boundary has occurred since the last mention.
In examining the morphosyntactic devices used to denote a referent in Olo we find some basic dis- tinctions. Firstly, the choice between pronominal
6
and nominal forms is correlated with referential distance. Pronominal forms have a median referential distance of one, while the median for nominal
forms is three or higher. This is consistent with the accounts of both memorial activation and Goal Ori- ented Activation. The topic persistence of pronominals is higher than that of the nominals. Verbal af-
fixes and zero have a lower topic persistence than the combination of a free pronoun and a verbal affix. The topic persistence data also distinguishes free forms with no coreferential verbal affixes from free
forms with coreferential affixes. This pattern is reported by Payne for Yagua 1993 as well. The topic persistence data is inconsistent with memorial activation, but is highly consistent with Goal Oriented
Activation. The boundary phenomena of intonationpunctuation, temporal change, spatial change, and discourse markers also can be correlated with the different referential forms as shall be discussed
in detail in chapter 5.
The referential forms used to introduce new referents are inconsistent with the accounts of memo- rial activation and episodes. Both accounts would predict that all unknown referents would be intro-
duced by nominals. However, unimportant referents can be introduced by minimal devices, either zero or a verbal affix. All seven instances of introduction of new referents by zero are for referents that
occur five or fewer times in the text. In the case of verbal affixes fifteen of the seventeen occurrences
1.3 The Current Working Theory of Reference 5
5
The term competing referent is sometimes used here. It is best to think of referents as competing when they are ambiguous and each “competes” for the resolution in their favor. In this case a referent that does not compete in the sense that there is no
way it can be confused with the referent mentioned still has it’s activation suppressed.
6
In this context pronominal forms includes both free pronouns and bound verbal affixes as well as zero markers.
are for referents that occur five or fewer times. That any occur is counter to memorial activation and episodes, but fully supports the account of Goal Oriented Activation.
1.4 Summary
