Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s (1989) measurements of

three-stage-renovation cycle of indefinites, in which pragmatic “importance”

leads to semantic referentiality:

(294) Three-stage-renovation cycle of indefinites (Wright and Givón 1987: 28) Stage I: All indefinites are marked similarly (by zero or by some

invariant article)

Stage II: The new marker codes only pragmatically important — thus primarily semantically referential — indefinites

Stage III: The new marker gradually expands its scope to mark all indefinites, it thus becomes de-marked, bringing the system back to its point of origin.

I, however, will pursue a different, and non-diachronic argumentation in Chapter 7, in that I assume the semantics to be prior and that the correlating pragmatic discourse effects are to be derived from the semantics, respectively (cf.

von Heusinger 2011b).

Wright and Givón’s experiment shows, independently of how they interpret the results, how Givón’s (1983) parameter of topic persistence can be practically applied in order to analyze the discourse behavior of indefinites in the upcoming

immediacy of reference and with lower referential explicitness. The methodology used in Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989) was (roughly) used as a model for the experimental study presented in this dissertation. I will thus summarize the experiment performed by Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989) in the following.

In the experiment, Gernsbacher and Shroyer auditorily presented several informal narratives to their subjects, informing them that the narrator would stop talking at one point in the narrative. When this happened the subjects were told to continue telling the narrative. The narratives were constructed in a way such that the last clause of each narrative contained noun phrases either introducing a referent with indefinite this or with the simple indefinite article a(n). One example of such a narrative with the critical noun phrase in the final sentence is given below:

(295) I went to the coast last weekend with Sally. We’d checked the tide schedule ‘n we planned to arrive at low tide — ‘cuz I just love beachcombin’. Right off, I found 3 whole sand dollars. So then I started look’ for agates, but I couldn’t find any. Sally was pretty busy too. She found this / an egg...

(Gernsbacher and Shroyer 1989: 537)

The continuations provided by the participants were then analyzed in terms of what Gernsbacher & Shroyer (1989) label forward-looking discourse accessibility.

Before summarizing their measurement methods, let me summarize Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s proposal (1989: 536): “as speakers speak, listeners build mental representations of the ongoing discourse. Both parties benefit if these representations are efficiently constructed. One characteristic of an efficient mental representation is that key concepts are easily accessible,” and the accessibility of indefinites is, in Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s view, reflected in the discourse effects of the respective expressions in the subsequent discourse after their introduction. Thus, they propose that speakers use certain devices in order to mark key concepts, in particular, concepts that might play a role in the subsequent discourse after their introduction. They also propose that these concepts marked with these devices have a privileged status in listener’s mental representations — in particular, they are more accessible (defining accessibility as cognitive accessibility). Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989: 537) strive to measure the cataphoric discourse effects of the referents investigated via three parameters, which they describe as manifestations in the upcoming discourse after the introduction of the referent of interest. Their parameters are: (i) frequency of reference, (ii) immediacy of reference and (iii) referential explicitness.

These three parameters Gernsbacher and Shroyer (1989) make use of enable them to measure a quantified degree of “referential accessibility” of the referring expressions investigated. With (i) frequency of reference they relate to how often reference is made to the critical referents in the subsequent discourse. They

assume that the more accessible a concept is in a speaker’s mental representation, the more frequently he or she will refer to it. With (ii) immediacy of reference they mean how likely an expression would be immediately re-mentioned. They assume that the more accessible a concept is in a speaker’s representation the more quickly he or she can refer to it. They support the postulation of this parameter via various studies all predicting that accessibility strongly predicts initial mention (Bock 1982, 1986; Gernsbacher and Hargreaves 1988). By (iii) referential explicitness they relate to how likely it is that referents would be re-mentioned with more explicit forms of anaphor, such as noun phrases, as opposed to less explicit forms such as pronouns. They propose that accessibility is manifested in referential explicitness because referential explicitness is inversely related to focus, foregrounding and topicality, Thus they predict that speakers use less explicit anaphors, such as pronouns, to refer to more focused, foregrounded or topical concepts. (Remember that I consider the parameter of referential explicitness to pertain to a different type of Discourse Prominence.)

45 undergraduates, all native American English speakers, were used as subjects for the experiment. The materials consisted of 20 experimental narratives and 8 filler narratives which were all composed in a rather informal style. All 28 narratives were recorded, whereas half of the narratives was recorded using indefinite this to introduce the critical referents, and the other half was recorded using the indefinite article. The subjects would then listen to the stories and orally continue telling it for 20 seconds. The continuations were then transcribed and judged by naïve transcriptors.

The findings for the first parameter, frequency of reference, fulfill the expectations, as “the subjects did indeed refer to the critical noun more frequently when the critical nouns were introduced with this, the subjects referred to them with an average of 4.05 times per continuation; in contrast, when the critical nouns were introduced with a, the subjects referred to them only 2.76 times per continuation. This difference was statistically reliable” (Gernsbacher and Shroyer 1989: 538). Further on, Gernsbacher and Shroyer note that it was not the case that the subjects did simply produce more clauses when the critical nouns were introduced with this rather than with a, as in both conditions the same average number of clauses (17.8) per continuation was produced. It was rather the case, that the subjects simply used up a greater proportion of their clauses in order to refer to the critical nouns, when they were introduced with this. I find this observation particularly interesting, as it shows how the use of indefinite this blocks reference to other referents. In my study, the parameter of referential persistence relates to Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s parameter of frequency of reference, measuring the same effect.

With respect to the second parameter, immediacy of reference, the predictions were fulfilled as well, as “the subjects were indeed more likely to refer to the critical nouns in their very first clauses when the nouns were introduced with this” (Gernsbacher and Shroyer 1989: 539). The subjects were found to refer to the critical nouns in 47% of their first clauses when they were continuing

narratives that introduced nouns with this, whereas in contrast they referred to the critical noun only in 34% of their first clauses when they were continuing narratives of the a-version — this finding also being statistically reliable. In my experiment, the “immediacy of reference” is measured as well but not considered to be an independent parameter, as the measuring method applied accounting for referential persistence (counting how often a referent is re-mentioned anaphorically in the subsequent discourse) automatically accounts for immediacy of reference: it counts how often and where (in which continuation clause) the critical referent is re-mentioned again. Thus, in my account, I do not consider immediacy of reference an independent parameter but will discuss the results related to immediacy of reference as an additional result discussing the results for referential persistence.

With respect to the third parameter, referential explicitness, Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s predictions were fulfilled, as well, as the subjects “were indeed more likely to use less explicit anaphors to refer to the critical nouns when the noun had been introduced with this” (1989: 539). The parameter of referential explicitness was not taken into account in my study, as it relates to a different type of Discourse Prominence on my understanding (following Chiriacescu and von Heusinger 2010), i.e. to the accessibility of a referent in the discourse. The type of Discourse Prominence (Discourse Structuring Potential) investigated in this work deals with discourse patterns (in terms of frequency effects pertaining to the discourse structure) across (multiple) sentence boundaries only.

Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s (1989) study strongly inspired the study conducted in this dissertation, especially as their methodology, using a story-continuation task, i.e. a perception-production experiment, appears to be a good fit with respect to the investigation of the discourse behavior of indefinites. It allows us to compare minimal pairs containing indefinite dieser and ein. Furthermore, their operational definition of the cataphoric discourse effects via three measurable parameters builds a clear base for a quantitative text-based study, as it is transparent and comprehensible. In this work, I will take over Gernsbacher and Shroyer’s methodology and (at least) one of their parameters suggested⁴⁹: frequency of reference (which is, on my view, directly related to immediacy of reference.)