Prominence effects Referential Choice and the Environment

Tomlin and Pu 1991 move from a strict episode accounting of reference to one based on activation. In this view a noun is chosen if a given referent is believed to be inactive in a comprehender’s mind, or just in case it might be. This is congruent with claims by Chafe 1980a that pronouns or zero anaphora typically are used for active referents, and nouns are used for inactive or semi-active referents. Chafe’s two nonactive categories are differentiated from each other primarily based on the length of pause a speaker uses before using one or the other category. An inactive concept has a longer preceding pause then a semi-active concept. The episode based models and the activation model make different claims about the root causes of noun and pronoun use. In one, the use of a noun is used to mark the beginning of a new episode. In the other, the shift to a new episode causes a deactivation of referents and forces a noun to reactivate the referent. The current production paradigms cannot conclusively distinguish between the two compet- ing models. So far the investigators on both sides manipulate the events a speaker sees and record ei- ther as an on-line report or a delayed report. Clancy 1980 points out that both a listener based strategy and a speaker based strategy of placement of nouns at episode boundaries instead of pronouns is defensible. In the listener based strategy the speaker uses the nouns to mark the start of a new epi- sode, while in the speaker based strategy the start of a new episode forces a reactivation of the referent causing the selection of a noun. Since both speaker based and listener oriented strategies lead to the same effect, it seems likely that the two factors reinforce one another during the course of learning how to tell an effective narrative. Clancy 1980:172–173 If a speaker has trouble maintaining activation across episode boundaries as Chafe 1980a claims and Clancy 1980 suggests as one possible explanation, it is reasonable to assume that listeners would have the same if not a worse problem. The language comprehender does not have the knowledge of where the discourse is going; he can only infer it based on what the language producer has transmitted to him. This gives a possibility to check the claims made for activation versus episode boundaries. If a language comprehender can be shown to have a high activation across episode boundaries where a language producer uses a noun, or conversely if a language comprehender can be shown to have a low activation where a language producer uses a pronoun, then it would be reasonable to conclude that ac- tivation is not causally related to the problem of reference choice. Anderson, Garrod, and Sanford’s work 1983 gives credence to both points of view. They found that the status of certain referents highly topical ones allowed them to be realized by a pronoun across ep- isode boundaries, which supports the view that the use of a noun at the start of an episode boundary is for a boundary signal. The inability to use a pronoun for an episode dependent participant supports the view of the activation hypothesis in that the boundary seems to cause a loss of activation for the dependent participant. Memorial activation fits in well with the pure episode approach, and subsumes the advantages of the recency approach. Being a more powerful model it is more difficult to find data that will disprove it. For example, it does not require that all episode boundaries cause a reactivation with a nominal, al- though it does not preclude it. Memorial activation as a model does make a very specific claim. It pre- dicts that current activation is the only determiner of referential form. This means that some measure or measures of activation should be able to be uniquely associated with each referential form. It also predicts that no effect should be demonstrable for cataphoric usage. And further, it predicts that all in- active referents must be introduced by nominals. The Olo data shows that each of these claims are not supported. This is not because they are completely wrong, but rather because they insist on only looking at the current state with no regard for any future plans.

3.3.4 Prominence effects

The distinction between main participants and scenario dependent participants made by Anderson et al. 1983 argues that language producers do not treat all participants the same, but that some par- ticipants have special status in a narrative discourse. Hinds 1977 argues for an episode based model on the basis that the choice between nouns and pronouns affects paragraph boundaries. His claim is that the choice of a noun over a pronoun affects the prominence of the sentence. A noun makes it a 3.3 Referential Choice and the Environment 55 peak sentence and shows there is a new paragraph. A number of authors in a volume edited by Grimes 1978 find that the status of participants in a discourse affects the choice of either a nominal or pro- nominal referent. Perrin 1978 found that in Mambila the main participant was almost constantly identified by a zero after the initial introduction and other participants by pronouns or nouns. She also consistently found in the turning point of the story the main participant was re-identified by a noun. This use of a noun seems to be involving prominence, for Perrin claims: “In Mambila a re-identification of the main participant alerts the hearer to the fact that something exciting is about to happen” Perrin 1978:110. On the other hand Fox claims such prominence analyses are not valid for English written narratives Fox 1987, but Clancy in her analysis of the Pear Stories Chafe 1980b claims that just the opposite holds Clancy 1980. She claims that some English speakers used pronominalization to focus attention on the pronominal referent. Conversely she claims the use of a nominal was to “background” the participant. She did not report this as a universal strategy in English, but one that was used in addi- tion to the episode strategy. This is similar to what Kuno 1976 and Kuno and Kaburaki 1977 claim. They promote a theory of “empathy” which does not denote sympathy, but rather point of view. According to them, the speaker can and does make referential choices to reflect a given point of view, which would affect the promi- nence of one of the referents. It is necessary to distinguish these prominent participants from less prominent participants and see if they are treated by speakers in a different fashion in regards to refer- ential form. The question to be addressed is whether the “prominence” of a given referent is in any way linked with activation. The work of Anderson, Garrod, and Sanford 1983 clearly shows that more im- portant referents can be maintained across episode boundaries. Their activation is maintained even though the place has been changed or the event is over. We can conclude that important or prominent participants carry a higher level of activation than the lesser participants Givón 1983c. This allows them to be realized by pronouns where less prominent participants would need a noun to be felicitous. This means that the status of a participant should make a difference in the choice of referential form.

3.4 The cognitive effects of reference forms