Semantics of Connectives Guides Referential Expectations in Discourse: An Eye-Tracking Study of Dutch and Russian

This study aims to establish whether connectives can create referential expectations in discourse, and, if so, what these expectations are based on: connective semantics or frequency distributions in language use. This was tested by comparing the processing of the connectives “and” and “but” in Dutch and Russian by means of an eye-tracking experiment using the visual world paradigm. A corpus study showed that in terms of frequency distributions, the Russian connectives are very similar to the Dutch connectives (“and” more often introduces reference maintenance and “but” more often introduces reference shift). In terms of semantics, the two languages are different, because only the Russian connectives are specified for maintenance/shift. The experimental results indicate that only Russian connectives are informative about referential development of discourse. Irrespective of frequency distributions, connectives are only used as processing instructions for referential development if reference maintenance or shift is specified in their semantics.

[1]  T. Sanders,et al.  Causal connectives in discourse processing: How differences in subjectivity are reflected in eye movements , 2013 .

[2]  T. Sanders,et al.  The role of causality in discourse processing: Effects of expectation and coherence relations , 2013 .

[3]  Ted Sanders,et al.  Incremental discourse processing: How coherence relations influence the resolution of pronouns , 2010 .

[4]  Risto Lehtonen,et al.  Multilevel Statistical Models , 2005 .

[5]  Andrei Popescu-Belis,et al.  What are discourse markers ? , 2003 .

[6]  A. Goldberg.  Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language , 2006 .

[7]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  Explaining additive, adversative and contrast marking in Russian and English , 2008 .

[8]  M. Pickering,et al.  What are implicit causality and consequentiality? , 2007 .

[9]  Jeffrey L. Elman,et al.  Coherence and Coreference Revisited , 2007, J. Semant..

[10]  Jerry R. Hobbs.  Coherence and Coreference , 1979, Cogn. Sci..

[11]  Keith K. Millis,et al.  The Influence of Connectives on Sentence Comprehension , 1994 .

[12]  R. Langacker.  Foundations of cognitive grammar , 1983 .

[13]  N.H.J. Oostdijk.  A Reference Corpus of Written Dutch. Corpus design (D-Coi 06-01) , 2006 .

[14]  Leonoor E. Oversteegen,et al.  On the pragmatic nature of causal and contrastive connectives , 1997 .

[15]  Jeanette K. Gundel,et al.  Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse , 1993 .

[16]  J. Anscombre,et al.  Deux mais en français , 1977 .

[17]  T. Givón,et al.  The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions , 1992 .

[18]  John C. Trueswell,et al.  Perceiving and remembering events cross-linguistically: Evidence from dual-task paradigms , 2010 .

[19]  D. Mirman,et al.  Statistical and computational models of the visual world paradigm: Growth curves and individual differences. , 2008, Journal of memory and language.

[20]  Joost Schilperoord,et al.  It's about time: Temporal aspects of cognitive processes in text production , 1996 .

[21]  Mira Ariel.  Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents , 1990 .

[22]  Robbert-Jan Beun,et al.  Filled pauses as markers of discourse structure , 1996, Proceeding of Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. ICSLP '96.

[23]  Christoph Scheepers,et al.  Integration of Syntactic and Semantic Information in Predictive Processing: Cross-Linguistic Evidence from German and English , 2003, Journal of psycholinguistic research.

[24]  J. V. Berkum,et al.  On the use of verb-based implicit causality in sentence comprehension : Evidence from self-paced reading and eye tracking , 2006 .

[25]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  Explaining Conjunction Systems: Russian, English, German , 2009 .

[26]  Leo G. M. Noordman,et al.  Toward a taxonomy of coherence relations , 1992 .

[27]  T. Sanders,et al.  Establishing coherence relations in discourse: The influence of implicit causality and connectives on pronoun resolution , 2013 .

[28]  P. Hawkins.  The Syntactic Location of Hesitation Pauses , 1971, Language and speech.

[29]  E. Bates.  Processing Complex Sentences: A Cross-linguistic Study , 1999 .

[30]  Brian MacWhinney,et al.  Functional constraints on sentence processing: A cross-linguistic study , 1982, Cognition.

[31]  T. Sanders,et al.  Discourse and Text Structure , 2010 .

[32]  Juhani Järvikivi,et al.  Activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. , 2010, Experimental psychology.

[33]  Joan L. Bybee,et al.  Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language , 2006 .

[34]  Wilbert Spooren,et al.  Some aspects of the form and interpretation of global contrastive coherence relations , 1989 .

[35]  Nick C. Ellis,et al.  FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING , 2002, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.