center of attention
⊃
active ⊃ familiar ⊃ uniquely identifiable ⊃ referential ⊃ type identifiable
it that,
this, this N
that N the N, proper noun
indef. this N a N
For all three kinds of concepts, active status is implied by the absence of sentence accent, although, according to Lambrecht 1994:112, with predicators the correlation is not as strong as with referents, or
possibly with propositions.
A proposition is treated as pragmatically presupposed if the speaker assumes it is already stored in the addressee’s mental representation §2.3.3, hence can be cited and used without challenge, without being
further asserted. Assertion is an instruction for the addressee to process and store the proposition Givón 1989:135. In other words, a presupposition is already stored in mental representation, while an asserted
proposition is not Lambrecht 1994:52. The distinction between assertion and presupposition for propositions is a state of knowledge that corresponds exactly identifiability for referential enties: both
presupposition and identifiability assume that the concept has been stored. Presupposition has been widely discussed in the literature. The activation state of propositions, however, has been relatively
neglected in the literature. For example, it has only recently been recognized that in a so-called focus- presupposition sentence such as MARY kissed John, the presupposed component “X kissed John” needs to
be active as well as presupposed Dryer 1996:476. In English, active propositions appear to be spoken without sentence accent, as in MARY kissed John, I KNOW it, I KNOW Ø, or in an utterance such as I
KNOW she left you
, where she left you has no sentence accent. If she left you were to have an accent, it
could be an inactive proposition, in an exchange such as the following: A: Mary’s just away for a few days visiting her mother; B: Don’t try to fool me, I know she LEFT you with sentence stress on left.
Presupposition, in this treatment as in Lambrecht 1994:52, has to do with the addressee’s knowledge of a proposition rather than her belief in or acceptance of it. Addressee’s belief seems to have
no counterpart in the case of referents, and belief seems to be independent of activation. Consider the following conversation: A: What do you know about physics? B: I believe that E = mc
2
, just like you do. In this example, E = mc
2
is cited as an inactive proposition, with primary sentence accent, yet it is
believed. In another conversation, this same proposition could be active but not believed: A: You don’t really think that E = mc
2
, do you? B: I don’t believe it any more than you do. So the fact that a certain
proposition is active for the addressee is independent of her belief in that proposition, but either active status or belief appears to imply that the addressee knows about the proposition presupposition.
2.4.2 The Givenness hierarchy
Gundel et al. 1993:275 “propose that there are six cognitive statuses relevant to the form of referring expressions in natural language discourse.” Their treatment seems to exclude generics. While most of
their examples are in English, their general claim is universal, though not all six statuses are coded distinctly in every language p. 284. These statuses are arranged in the “Givenness hierarchy,” as shown
in Figure 11, in such a way that “each status entails all lower statuses” to its right, making it different from Chafe’s scale of activation:
Figure 11: The Givenness hierarchy Gundel et al. 1993
Gundel et al. op. cit. describe these six statuses as follows: •
Type identifiable: “The addressee is able to access a representation of the type of object described by the expression” p. 276. This category appears to be what Langacker 2002 calls a “type”: “by itself,
a noun like dog fails even to evoke a specific number of instances. For example, the compound dog hater does not specifically indicate whether one or multiple dogs are involved, let alone refer to any
particular instance of the dog category.” Perhaps car thief would be an even better example, since it could allude to a single event as well as a single car. Nonreferentials occur within the scope of irrealis
Givón 1984:393f., and subsequent “references” to them are also nonreferential, even though they may use a pronoun such as it. Thus, in Churchill’s speech Appendix A, the expression a new
administration in line 01 designates a nonreferential concept within irrealis: On Friday evening last I received from His Majesty the mission to form a new administration
, as is a subsequent “reference”
to it in line 2: It was the evident will of Parliament and the nation that … it should include all
parties. Consider two examples: a
John wanted to buy a dog, but couldn’t find one he liked.
b
John wanted to buy a dog, but someone else bought it first.
In a the two “references” to a dog are type identifiable, nonreferential, and within the scope of irrealis. In b, both expressions are referential, although the first one occurs within irrealis.
• Referential: “The speaker intends to refer to a particular object or objects” loc. cit.. A referent is an
entity which is established in the speaker’s but not necessarily in the addressee’s mental representation, which he can then refer to in the strict sense of “refer.” Example b above is
referential, but indefinite: John wanted to buy a dog, but someone else bought it first. Number may be specified; in fact, in many language numbers commonly indicate this status: I heard one dogtwo
dogs. As Gundel et al. 1993 note, I heard this dog can be used in this status as well as I heard a dog. “Expressions which are referential but not uniquely identifiable require the addressee to
construct a new representation” p. 277, that is, to insert a new node in their mental representation.
• Uniquely identifiable: “The addressee can identify the speaker’s intended referent on the basis of the
nominal alone” loc. cit. or, as Chafe 1996:38 puts it, “speakers treat a referent as identifiable if they judge that the words they use to express it will enable the listener to identify it”; it is understood
that “the nominal alone” and “the words they use to express it” will be interpreted in a specific context.
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An identifiable referent is one which the speaker assumes is stored in the addressee’s mental representation. It may already be there before the utterance or it may be “forced into” that
representation via
PRAGMATIC ACCOMODATION
Lambrecht 1994, §§2.4, 4.6; Lowe 2005, §4.7.3.2.
Two readings of the following example illustrate these possibilities: I couldn’t sleep last night. The dog next door kept me awake Gundel et al. 1993:277. The addressee might already know of the dog
next door, or she might not but is willing to treat it as if it already belonged in her mental representation. Pragmatic accomodation often appears to result from implicit orientation
ANCHORING
, grounding; §2.3.1. Lowe 2005 gives the example Ivan, how did your opponent get
on?, the context being that Ivan shows up unannounced at the speaker’s house with a black eye and a cut face. The expression your opponent designates a contrastive topic; it is uniquely identifiable in the
sense that the speaker treats the fight as being activated by Ivan’s ostensively showing up as he did, and the frame of fighting requires an opponent. Thus, the definite referent your opponent is implicitly
grounded in the fight frame. Pragmatic accomodation can also be “associated with literary effects. In the text world of a novel, for example, the reader is often pitched headlong in media res, the implicit
suggestion being that this is an existing world which the reader is being shown around in. Accordingly, first mentions are very often definite NPs, as though their presence in this text world is
taken for granted” and even “for first mention to be a personal pronoun” Werth 1995:67. In this literary usage the frame is not immediately recognizable, but rather emerges along with the schema as
the discourse unit is processed. Some pragmatic accomodation is due to text-internal point of view §3.6.2.
• Familiar: “The addressee is able to uniquely identify the intended referent because he already has a
representation of it in memory” op. cit., p. 278. This is simply unique identifiability without pragmatic accomodation the addressee already knows about the dog next door. In English, the
demonstrative determiner that can be used: I couldn’t sleep last night. That dog next door kept me awake. Some familiar referents are semiactive, and in fact, all semiactive referents appear to be
familiar. In a text in Aboriginal English Australia, a snake is coded as familiar she nearly killed dat snake because the story is based on a frame, known to the addressee, which requires a snake: “the
speaker is making a reference to a snake in her activated schema rather than her previous discourse or her immediate evironment” Malcolm and Sharifian 2002:177. The snake in the frame is expected to
put in its appearance in the story, hence is semiactive. Other familiar referents can be inactive, which Lambrecht 1994:166 calls “unused”: in the sentence Mortimer, there’s something on the roof,
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Chafe’s “identifiable” appears to correspond to Gundel et al.’s “uniquely identifiable,” not with their “type identifiable.”
when spoken “out of the blue,” with no previous activation of the roof, that referent is familiar- inactive. Thus, all activation states can be familiar, present in the addressee’s mental representation
Van Valin and LaPolla 1997:201.
• Active: “The referent is represented in current short-term memory” p. 278, that is, the addressee is
conscious of the referent. For example, if a dog is activated by its barking being heard in the encoding situation, one could say I couldn’t sleep last night. That kept me awake loc. cit.. Or the speaker
could point to a picture of a barking dog and say I couldn’t sleep last night. ThisThat kept me awake. Finally, if he has the dog with him, he could gesture to him and say I couldn’t sleep last night. This
dog kept me awake. In Churchill’s speech in Appendix A, the pronoun this in line 02 indicates that the referent, the formation of a new government mentioned in line 01, is active: It was the evident
will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis….
• Center of attention:
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“The referent is not only in short-term memory [active], but is also at the current center of attention” op. cit., p. 279. Commonly, this applies when the referent is a current
discourse topic that has been established and is currently active op. cit., p. 279; cf. Givón 1983:18; §3.5. In English, a personal pronoun is used in the following:
Example text 12: Ghost story, excerpt Straub 1979:38, cited in Emmott 1997:219
01 Ricky turned dismissively away from the cinema and faced a prospect far more pleasing. 02 The original high frame houses of Milburn had endured, even if nearly all of them were now
office buildings; even the trees were younger than the buildings.
03 He walked, his polished black shoes kicking through crisp leaves…
Here, Ricky is an obvious discourse topic; not only is sentence 1 from his point of view §3.6.2, but 2 is as well, since it describes what he saw and why the prospect pleased him, even
though he is not referred to there. The pronoun he in 3 is possible because of Ricky’s topic status, his being a center of attention. However, personal pronouns, as minimal coding in English,
are not used for discourse topics alone, but also for referents which have just been mentioned. This is the case in line 29 of “Winds of terror” Appendix B: Belly-crawling clear of the
garage before it disintegrated, Jim had hooked his muscular arms around the base of a pine tree; here, ‘the garage’ is referred to by the pronoun it, not because it is a discourse topic—it was last
mentioned several paragraphs back and is not mentioned again—but because it is a
RECENT
-
REFERENCE CENTER OF ATTENTION
.
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Discourse topics and recent-reference centers of attention are, therefore, two kinds of referents that can be center of attention. Discourse topics are
unit-base phenemoma whereas recent-reference centers of attention are sequential phenemoma; both can use the same linguistic resources. Recent-reference centers of attention do not generally
retain that status across the boundary of micro-level units, which are steps in a paragraph schema §2.6.2. Certain referents which Lambrecht 1996:147 considers secondary sentence topics are
simply recent-reference centers of attention §3.3.5. From the Givenness hierarchy, we note that active status is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a referent to be a center of attention.
Centers of attention also apparently need to be noncontrastive, completely established §3.5.1, and in English anaphorically accessed.
Chafe 1994:179 criticizes the Givenness hierarchy: “it appears that what is presented as a single dimension is actually a conflation” of different cognitive or conceptual dimensions, three of which are
activation based on attention or consciousness, identifiability based on knowledge, and established discourse topicality based on construal via conceptual structure and interest. Ariel, who presents a scale
of her own which is frankly based on a conflation of dimensions Ariel 1996:21, 2000:108; what
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Gundel et al. 1993 actually use the term “in focus” for this status. In order to avoid confusion with focus in information structure, I prefer the term “center of attention,” which Gundel et. al also use, along with Tomlin et. al
1997:86.
50
In artificial intelligence, such transitory referents are sometimes said to be “centered” or “focused” Emmott 1997:216; Linde 1979 calls them “focus of attention.”
underlies the scale is a complex “degree of accessibility of the mental entity for the addressee” as the speaker assesses it Ariel 1996:15. In her Accessibility Theory, degree of accessibility is based on “many
variables,” prominent among which are discourse topicality, recent mention, and lack of other possibilities Ariel 2004:99.
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Topical and recent active concepts with no competitors are easier to access than their opposites, though for different reasons. Sometimes, in place of actual discourse
topicality status in a given context, Ariel cites semantic properties of prototypical topics, particularly humanness.
Since, however, there are different dimensions to “givenness”“accessibility,” it is not surprising if they at times make different use of linguistic expressions. At the left end of the scale, as noted above,
center of attention combines criteria from both discourse topicality and activation, and in English it is commonly used both for discourse topics and very recent referents. But under certain conditions,
languages may have referents that are even more accessible than “center of attention.” Mambila Northern Bantoid, Nigeria uses zero reference for a special case of discourse topicality: the global VIP main
participant of a narrative, once established, is generally referred to by zero, whereas “participants other than the main one are re-identified by a noun every time they are mentioned” Perrin 1978:110f.; see
Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:60 for an example. Thus, the Givenness hierarchy could be extended to the left and possibly branched to include categories of “ultra high accessibility,” which would have to do with
discourse topicality for Mambila.
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So although the Givenness hierarchy may be generally correct, it is in fact a composite, it requires extensions to cover other statuses, and its details need to be adapted to
particular languages.
2.4.3 Coding weight C
