Đang chuẩn bị nút TẢI XUỐNG, xin hãy chờ
Tải xuống
By strictest interpretation, theories of both centering and intonational meaning fail to predict the existence of pitch accented pronominals. Yet they occur felicitously in spoken discourse. To explain this, I emphasize the dual functions served by pitch accents, as markers of both propositional (semantic/pragmatic) and attentional salience. This distinction underlies my proposals about the attentional consequences of pitch accents when applied to pronominals, in particular, that while most pitch accents may weaken or reinforce a cospecifier's status as the center of attention, a contrastively stressed pronominal m a y force a shift, even when contraindicated by textual features | The Effect of Pitch Accenting on Pronoun Referent Resolution Janet Cahn Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA 02139 USA cahn@media.mit.edu Abstract By strictest interpretation theories of both centering and intonational meaning fail to predict the existence of pitch accented pronominals. Yet they occur felicitously in spoken discourse. To explain this I emphasize the dual functions served by pitch accents as markers of both propositional semantic pragmatic and atten-tional salience. This distinction underlies my proposals about the attentional consequences of pitch accents when applied to pronominals in particular that while most pitch accents may weaken or reinforce a cospecifier s status as the center of attention a contrastively stressed pronominal may force a shift even when contraindicated by textual features. Introduction To predict and track the center of attention in discourse theories of centering Grosz et al. 1983 Brennan et al. 1987 Grosz et al. 1989 and immediate focus Sidner 1986 rely on syntactic and grammatical features of the text such as pronominal-ization and surface sentence position. This may be sufficient for written discourse. For oral discourse however we must also consider the way intonation affects the interpretation of a sentence especially the cases in which it alters the predictions of centering theories. I investigate this via a phenomenon that by the strictest interpretation of either centering or intonation theories should not occur the case of pitch accented pronominals. Centering theories would be hard pressed to predict pitch accents on pronominals on grounds of redundancy. To bestow an intonational marker of salience the pitch accent on a textual marker of salience the pronominal is unnecessarily redundant and especially when textual features correctly predict the focus of attention. Intonational theories would be similarly hard pressed but on grounds of information quality and efficient use of limited resources. .