Cover not available

In:Discourse Phenomena in Typological Perspective
Edited by Alessandra Barotto and Simone Mattiola
[Studies in Language Companion Series 227] 2023
► pp. 231–268

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 9
Are referent introductions sensitive to forward planning in discourse?

Evidence from Multi-CAST

 | University of Zurich
 | University of Bamberg
 | University of Bamberg
 | University of Freiburg | Australian National University | ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
Published online: 1 March 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.227.09sch
Abstract
It has been argued that speakers employ morphosyntactic structures such as presentationals and left-dislocations (Lambrecht 1994) to establish new entities in discourse due to considerations of referent accessibility vis-à-vis event processing (Du Bois 1987; Chafe 1987). We here investigate whether introductions are sensitive to the salience of the discourse referent in subsequent discourse (Himmelmann 1996; Lichtenberk 1996). This hypothesis is tested against spoken corpus data from twelve diverse languages. While the use of specific morphosyntactic structures does correlate with discourse prominence, humanness has a much stronger effect. Subsequent discourse salience is hence not the chief determinant of the syntactic positions of new mentions; the convergence of humanness and semantic role associations in specific syntactic positions better explains the attested patterns.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Building a multilingual corpus for typological research in discourse and grammar
    • 2.1Multi-CAST corpus building and corpus composition
    • 2.2Multi-CAST corpus annotations
  • 3.Case study: Patterns of referent introduction vis-à-vis their discourse salience
    • 3.1Referent introduction as a challenge to processing
    • 3.2Establishing new referents for subsequent discourse
      • 3.2.1Role of introductions by frequency in immediate subsequent discourse
      • 3.2.2Role of introductions by overall discourse frequency
      • 3.2.3Role of introductions by humanness
      • 3.2.4Discussion
  • 4.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (87)
References
Adibifar, Shirin. 2016. Multi-CAST Persian. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Andrews, Avery. 2007. The major functions of the noun phrase. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Timothy Shopen (ed), 132–223. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 2008. Pragmatics and grammar. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer E. 2008. Reference production. Language and Cognitive Processes 23(4): 495–527. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer E., Fagnano, Maria & Tanenhaus, Michael K. 2003. Disfluencies signal theee, um, new information. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 32(1): 25–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer E., Tanenhaus, Michael K., Altmann, Rebecca J. & Fagnano, Maria. 2004. The old and thee, uh, new. Psychological Science 15(9): 578–582. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barth, Danielle & Schnell, Stefan. 2022. Understanding Corpus Linguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barth, Danielle & Evans, Nicholas. 2017. SCOPIC design and overview. In The Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC): A Cross-linguistic Resource, Danielle Barth & Nicholas Evans (eds), 1–23. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barth, Danielle, Evans, Nicholas, Arka, I Wayan, Bergqvist, Henrik, Forker, Diana, Gipper, Sonja, Hodge, Gabrielle, Kashima, Eri, Kasuga, Yuki, Kawakami, Carine, Kimoto, Yukinori, Knuchel, Dominique, Kogura, Norikazu, Kurabe, Keita, Mansfield, John, Narrog, Heiko, Putu Eka Pratiwi, Desak, van Putten, Saskia, Senge, Chikako & Tykhostup, Olena. 2021. Language vs. individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology. In Doing Corpus-based Typology with Spoken Language Corpora: State of the Art, Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell & Frank Seifart (eds), 179–232. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bentz, Christian & Ferrer-i-Cancho, Ramon. 2016. Zipf’s law of abbreviation as a language universal. In Proceedings of the Leiden Workshop on Capturing Phylogenetic Algorithms for Linguistics, Christian Bentz, Gerhard Jäger & Yanovich, Igor (eds). Tübingen: University of Tübingen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar. 2003. Referential density in discourse and syntactic typology. Language 79(4): 708–736. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bogomolova, Natalia, Ganenkov, Dimitry & Schiborr, Nils N. 2021. Multi-CAST Tabasaran. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Bresnan, Joan, Dingare, Shirpa & Manning, Christoper D. 2001. Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in English and Lummi. In Proceedings of the LFG 01 Conference, Miriam Butt & Tracy H. King (eds), 13–32. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brickell, Timothy. 2016. Multi-CAST Tondano. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Brickell, Timothy & Schnell, Stefan. 2017. Do grammatical relations reflect information status? Reassessing preferred argument structure against discourse data from Tondano. Linguistic Typology 21(1): 177–209. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1980. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1987. Cognitive constraints on information flow. In Coherence and Grounding in Discourse [Typological Studies in Language 11], Russell S. Tomlin (ed), 21–51. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2010. The origins of grammaticalization in the verbalization of experience. Linguistics 48(1): 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2008. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). [URL] (23 July 2022).
Dingemanse, Mark, Blythe, Joe & Dirksmeyer, Tyko. 2014. Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages. Studies in Language 18(1): 5–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark, Rossi, Giovanni & Floyd, Simeon. 2017. Place reference in story beginnings: A cross-linguistic study of narrative and interactional affordances. Language in Society 46(2): 129–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Bois, John. 1987. The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63(4): 805–855. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoan village. Berkley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durie, Mark. 2003. New light on information pressure. In Preferred Argument Structure [Studies in Discourse and Grammar 14], John Du Bois, Lorraine Kumpf & William J. Ashby (eds), 159–196. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Levinson, Stephen C. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(5): 429–492. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forker, Diana & Schiborr, Nils N. 2019. Multi-CAST Sanzhi Dargwa. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Friedman, Jerome H., Hastie, Trevor & Tibshirani, Robert. 2000. Additive logistic regression: A statistical view of boosting. Annals of Statistics 28(2): 337–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1983. Introduction. In Topic Continuity in Discourse [Typological Studies in Language 1], Talmy Givón (ed), 5–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1954[1960]. A quantitative approach to the morphological typology of language. In Method and Perspective in Anthropology, Robert F. Spencer (ed), 192–220. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hadjidas, Harris & Vollmer, Maria. 2015. Multi-CAST Cypriot Greek. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Haig, Geoffrey & Schnell, Stefan. 2014. Annotations using GRAID (Grammatical Relations and Animacy in Discourse): Introduction and Guidelines for Annotators. Version 7.0. Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
. 2016. The discourse basis of ergativity revisited. Language 92(3): 591–618. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Annotated Spoken Texts. Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Haig, Geoffrey, Schnell, Stefan & Schiborr, Nils N. 2021. Universals of reference in discourse and grammar: Evidence from the Multi-CAST collection of spoken corpora. In Doing Corpus-based Typology with Spoken Language Corpora: State of the Art, Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell & Frank Seifart (eds), 141–177. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haig, Geoffrey, Vollmer, Maria & Thiele, Hanna. 2019. Multi-CAST Northern Kurdish. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Haig, Geoffrey, Schnell, Stefan & Wegener, Claudia. 2011. Comparing corpora from endangered languages: Explorations in language typology based on original texts. In Documenting Endangered Languages: Achievements and Perspectives, Geoffrey Haig, Nicole Nau, Stefan Schnell & Claudia Wegener (eds), 55–86. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2006. Review of Preferred argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function, by John Du Bois, Lorraine Kumpf, and William Ashby. Language 82(4): 908–912. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondences and predictability. Journal of Linguistics 57(3): 605–633. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2014. Cross-linguistic Variation and Efficiency. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hildebrandt, Kristine A., Jany, Carmen & Silva, Wilson (eds). 2017. Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages [Language Documentation & Conservation special publication 13]. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1996. Demonstratives in narrative discourse: A taxonomy of universal uses. In Studies in Anaphora [Typological Studies in Language, 33], Barbara A. Fox (ed), 205–254. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36(2): 161–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56(2): 251–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1976. Discourse referents. In Syntax and semantics, 7: Notes from the Linguistic Underground, James D. McCawley (ed), 363–385. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kimoto, Yukinori. 2019. Multi-CAST Arta. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Kurabe, Keita. 2021. Multi-CAST Jinghpaw. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levelt, Willem J. M. 1989. Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia. 2019. Token-based typology and word order entropy: A study based on universal dependencies. Linguistic Typology 23(3): 533–572. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Corpus-based typology: Applications, challenges, and some solutions. Linguistic Typology 26(1): 129–160. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levshina, Natalia & Moran, Steve (eds). 2021. Efficiency in human languages: Corpus evidence for universal principles. Linguistics Vanguard 7(s3): 20200081. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lichtenberk, František. 1996. Patterns of anaphora in To’aba’ita narrative discourse. In Studies in Anaphora [Typological Studies in Language, 33], Barbara A. Fox (ed), 379–411. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, William, Levy, Elena & Taylor, Lorraine K. 1982. Producing interpretable discourse: The establishment and maintenance of reference. In Speech, Place, and Action: Studies in Deixis and Related Topics, Robert J. Jarvella & Wolfgang Klein (eds), 339–378. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mayer, Mercer. 1969. Frog, Where Are You? New York NY: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mayer, Thomas & Cysouw, Michael. 2014. Creating a massively parallel Bible corpus. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), Reykjavik, Iceland, 26–31 May 2014, Nicoletta Calzolari (ed), 3148–3163. Reykjavik: European Language Resources Association (ELRA).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony, Tanaka, Izumi & Botley, Simon. 2000. Corpus annotating and reference resolution. In ANARESOLUTION ’97: Proceedings of a Workshop on Operational Factors in Practical, Robust Anaphora Resolution for Unrestricted Texts, Ruslan Mitkov & Branimir Boguraev (ed), 57–74. Stroudsburg PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meng, Chenxi. 2019. Multi-CAST Tulil. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Mosel, Ulrike & Hovdhaugen, Even. 1992. The Samoan Reference Grammar. Oslo: Scandinavian Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mosel, Ulrike & Schnell, Stefan. 2015. Multi-CAST Teop. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Newman, John, Baayen, Harald & Rice, Sally (eds). 2011. Corpus-based Studies in Language Use, Language Learning, and Language Documentation. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ozerov, Pavel. 2021a. Multifactorial information management (MIM): Summing up the emerging alternative to information structure. Linguistic Vanguard 7(1): 20200039. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021b. This research topic of yours – Is it a research topic at all? Using comparative interactional data for a fine-grained reanalysis of traditional concepts. In Doing corpus-based Typology with Spoken Language Corpora: State of the Art, Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell & Frank Seifart (eds), 233–280. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed), 223–255. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1998. On the limits of syntax, with reference to left-dislocation and topicalization. In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 29: The Limits of Syntax, Peter W. Culicover & Louise McNally (eds), 281–302. San Diego CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riester, Arndt & Baumann, Stefan. 2017. The RefLex scheme – Annotation guidelines. SinSpeC: Working Papers of the SFB 732 14. [URL] (23 July 2022).
San Roque, Lila, Rumsey, Alan, Gawne, Lauren, Spronck, Stef, Hoenigman, Darja, Carroll, Alice, Miller, Julia & Evans, Nicholas. 2012. Getting the story straight: Language fieldwork using a narrative problem-solving task. Language Documentation and Conservation 6: 135–174.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schiborr, Nils N. 2015. Multi-CAST English. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
2021a. Lexical Anaphora: A Corpus-based Typological Study of Referential Choice. PhD dissertation, University of Bamberg.
2021b. multicastR: A companion to the Multi-CAST collection. R package version 2.0.0. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Schiborr, Nils N., Schnell, Stefan & Thiele, Hanna. 2018. RefIND – Referent Indexing in Natural-language Discourse: Annotation Guidelines. Version 1.1. Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Schnell, Stefan. 2015. Multi-CAST Vera’a. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Schnell, Stefan & Schiborr, Nils N. 2022. Cross-linguistic corpus studies in linguistic typology. Annual Review of Linguistics 8: 171–191. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schnell, Stefan, Schiborr, Nils N. & Haig, Geoffrey. 2021. Efficiency in discourse processing: Does morphosyntax adapt to accommodate new referents? In Efficiency in Human Languages: Corpus Evidence for Universal Principles, Natalia Levshina & Steve Moran (eds). Linguistics Vanguard 7(s3): 20190064. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seifart, Frank. 2021. Combining documentary linguistics and corpus phonetics to advance corpus-based typology. In Doing Corpus-based Typology with Spoken Language Corpora: State of the Art, Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell & Frank Seifart (eds), 115–139. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seifart, Frank, Paschen, Ludger & Stave, Matthew (eds). 2022. Language Documentation Reference Corpus (DoReCo), Version 1.0. Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft & Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (UMR5596, CNRS & Université Lyon 2). [URL] (23 July 2022).
Stolz, Thomas. 2007. Harry Potter meets Le petit prince – On the usefulness of parallel corpora in crosslinguistic investigations. STUF – Language Typology and Universals 60(2): 100–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thieberger, Nicholas & Brickell, Timothy. 2018. Multi-CAST Nafsan. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Torres Cacoullos, Rena & Travis, Catherine E. 2019. Variationist typology: Shared probabilistic constraints across (non-)null subject languages. Linguistics 57(3): 653–692. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Visser, Eline. 2021. Multi-CAST Kalamang. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Vollmer, Maria. 2020. Multi-CAST Mandarin. In Multi-CAST: Multilingual Corpus of Spoken Annotated Texts, Geoffrey Haig & Stefan Schnell (eds). Bamberg: University of Bamberg. [URL] (23 July 2022).
Wälchli, Bernhard & Cysouw, Michael. 2012. Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Towards a semantic map of motion verbs. Linguistics 50(3): 671–710. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wald, Benji. 1983. Referents and topics within and across discourse units. Observations from current vernacular English. In Discourse Perspectives on Syntax, Flora Klein-Andreu (ed), 91–116. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeman, Daniel, Nivre, Joakim, Abrams, Mitchell et al. 2021. Universal Dependencies 2.8. Prague: Universal Dependencies Consortium. [URL] (25 July 2022).
Zipf, George K. 1935. The Psycho-biology of Language: An Introduction to Dynamic Philology. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Ozerov, Pavel
2024. Left Dislocation in Spoken Hebrew, it is neither topicalizing nor a construction. Linguistics DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue