Accessibility in Text and Discourse Processing

A Special Issue of Discourse Processes

Ted J.M. Sanders, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Ted J.M. Sanders, Morton Ann Gernsbacher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781135482657
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This special issue shows how accessibility phenomena need to be studied from a linguistic and psycholinguistic angle, and in the latter case from interpretation, as well as production. The contributions augment the growing knowledge of accessibility in text and discourse processing. They also illuminate how accessibility is marked in a text or a discourse, how readers and listeners respond to those markings, and how mental representations evolve and change as a direct result of accessibility. The editors hope is that the text affects the readers' representations in ways that linguists and psycholinguists theorize as beneficial.

Reference Management in Instructive Discourse

Alfons Maes
Communication and Cognition Group
Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Anja Arts
Discourse Studies Group
Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Leo Noordman
Discourse Studies Group
Tilburg University, The Netherlands

This article investigates the effect of 2 language-in-use factors on the introduction and maintenance of referents in instructive discourse. These factors, implemented as conditions in an instructive production task, were the assumed visual identity for the reader of the objects or referents to be referred to in the instructions (visually same vs. visually different) and the assumed goal of the reader (reading to do vs. reading to learn).

The results show that both factors have a strong impact on the writers' referential behavior. Visually same referents are introduced and reintroduced fairly systematically by means of perceptually overspecified NPs. Visually different referents are introduced systematically by extra propositional identification speech acts and they are reintroduced more often by attenuated anaphoric expressions. Apart from that, writers show a number of referential strategies which fit in with the assumed reader's goal. Writers in the reading to learn condition use more overspecified expressions than writers in the reading to do condition.

The results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that determine the form of referential expressions in discourse. Referential expressions which are more informative than necessary for identification purposes do not only occur when the activation level of discourse referents is low, but also when the writer anticipates specific conditions in which the information will be used by the reader. The main goal of recent theories of discourse reference, such as Accessibility (e.g., Ariel, 1990), Centering (e.g., Grosz, Joshi, & Weinstein, 1995) orGivenness (e.g., Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993), is to provide an explanatory account of the relation between types of referential expressions on the one hand, and degrees of mental activation of discourse referents on the other. The general idea is that referential expressions need more coding material as the referent is less activated and vice versa. In analytical as well as experimental reference research, a large number of factors are uncovered, which are considered to affect the activation level of discourse referents. These factors can be distinguished into different levels: on the one hand surface level characteristics of discourse, such as order of mention (Gernsbacher & Hargreaves, 1988), sentence position, syntactic role (e.g., Gordon, Grosz, & Gilliom, 1993; Gordon, Hendrick, Ledoux, & Yang, 1999), depth of embedding (Gordon & Hendrick, 1997; Ward, Sproat, & McKoon, 1991), competing candidates or referential distance (Ariel, 1988); on the other hand more conceptual characteristics, such as the conceptual structure of discourse in terms of episode shifts (Anderson, Garrod, & Sanford, 1983), protagonist-hood (Francik, 1985), thematic structure (Vonk, Hustinx, & Simons, 1992) or topicality (Morrow, 1985). Apart from that, intricate combinations of surface and conceptual factors are studied, such as morphological gender and conceptual content (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992) or morphological gender and pragmatic-conceptual inferences (Garrod, Freudenthal, & Boyle, 1994).

Research into the mental activation of discourse referents attempts to disentangle the way in which language users distribute and manage their mental attention over referents, a process which is highly determined by the limitations of working memory. A number of heuristics which we use in interpreting referential expressions suggest that attention management is guided by referential economy and efficiency. One such heuristic is the propensity not to expect or use more referential material than necessary to uniquely identify a discourse referent. Another heuristic is that we expect discourse referents to be introduced in their full form and afterwards reintroduced in weakened forms, which is why (1) and not (2) sounds natural to us:

• (1) John is back home again. He traveled through Asia for the last 5 months.
• (2)?He/John is back home again. John traveled through Asia for the last 5 months.

These intuitions make clear that using referential expressions to efficiently activate referents is a solid part of our discourse competence. Yet, they also suggest that referential expressions are monofunctional, which is not. Referential expressions can display additional functions. One such function is adding new information about referents, as is shown in empirical (e.g., Almor, 1999) as well as analytical studies (e.g., Maes & Noordman, 1995). Likewise, one can easily collect referential phenomena which deviate from the idea of economic activation. If for example a novelist decides to introduce and maintain his character by using a pronoun only, if children never talk about their mother by using a pronoun or if defendants and plaintiffs in Flemish court orders are hardly ever pronominalized (Maes, 1991), apparently other than economic activation considerations come into play.

One can take up different theoretical positions to deal with these "non-standard uses" of referential expressions. On the one hand, one can claim that they are all (deliberate) violations of the basic activation pattern. On the other hand, one can think of different basic systems which—in interaction—are responsible for the use of referential expressions. Apart from activation, one can think of a number of performance based aspects of discourse, such as discourse goals, types of relationships between discourse participants, different modes of communication and situational conditions. These aspects can be seen as parameters with different settings, the interaction of which explains referential patterns and strategies in any specific language-in-use context. So, applied to the previous example, a pronoun introducing a main character in a novel can be looked at as being peculiar and deviant, because it violates normal activation procedures of referential expressions, or as normal, given our prior knowledge about specific narrative (literary) conventions and strategies used by novelists.

It is difficult to determine at this moment which theoretical position is the most sensible one. We first need more systematized, controlled, and generalizable knowledge about the language-in-use factors that affect reference, about the interaction of these factors and their effect on referential patterns and strategies.

This article intends to contribute to this type of knowledge. It focuses on a discourse type which is preeminently affected by performance factors, that is, instructions for use. Instructions for use typically intermediate between the mental representation of users on the one hand and the physical execution of tasks on the other. They support the execution of tasks, such as the installation and tuning of computer, video and camera equipment or household appliances, and they imply that users manipulate objects in a physical task environment. In designing these instructions, writers have to take into account the relevant characteristics of users and tasks, and have to assume specific goals, levels of experience, prior knowledge and task conditions of the readers or users. Practice and research in the field of instructive text design uncovers a large number of textual variables which are related to these conditions of use (see e.g., Jansen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Copyright
• Accessibility in Text and Discourse Processing
• Accessibility Marking: Discourse Functions, Discourse Profiles, and Processing Cues
• Reference Management in Instructive Discourse
• Managing Mental Representations During Narrative Comprehension
• Fluctuations in the Availability of Information During Reading: Capturing Cognitive Processes Using the Landscape Model