Cognitive Status and Subject Reference in Spanish Written Discourse

Ingrid Abisambra Miccheli; Margaret Lubbers Quesada

doi:10.1515/shll-2023-2003

Article

Cognitive Status and Subject Reference in Spanish Written Discourse

Ingrid Abisambra Miccheli and Margaret Lubbers Quesada

Published/Copyright: April 28, 2023

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics Volume 16 Issue 1

Abstract

Speakers make assumptions regarding the informativeness and saliency of referents in discourse and about their addressee’s cognitive status (memory and attention) regarding those referents. These assumptions, in turn, determine the forms (e.g., pronouns, NPs) speakers use when referring to entities. Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2). 274–307 proposed a set of implicationally related cognitive statuses in the Givenness Hierarchy that predict the forms speakers use to refer to entities in discourse. Greater levels of attention and memory predict the use of phonetically minimal referential forms and lesser levels predict more phonetically elaborate forms. Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla tested the predictive power of the Hierarchy for referring expressions in Spanish oral film-retell narratives. Results showed that speakers use the most minimal forms possible (e.g., null pronouns) even when the hierarchy predicts more elaborate forms. Assuming writers make fewer assumptions regarding readers’ level of attention and memory, the present study examines whether the revised Hierarchy proposed by Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla is valid for predicting referring forms in Spanish written film retell narrative discourse. The data corroborate that participants select subject forms as predicted, but also reveal an increased use of definite NPs, suggesting that the Hierarchy has a stronger predictive power for oral narratives where attention and memory play a greater role in referent identification.

Keywords: cognition; memory; attention; referring expressions; Spanish

Corresponding author: Ingrid Abisambra Miccheli, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA, E-mail: i.abisambra.m@gmail.com

Appendix 1: Output for Table 5

Null:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	2.2644	0.1661	13.631	<2e-16***
	stylewritten	−0.8000	0.2416	−3.311	0.00093***
	Null deviance: 481.73 on 637 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 470.93 on 636 degrees of freedom

Overt:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−2.8610	0.2144	−13.345	<2e-16***
	stylewritten	−0.2599	0.4024	−0.646	0.518
	Null deviance: 253.89 on 637 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 253.46 on 636 degrees of freedom

DefNP:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−3.9536	0.3569	−11.08	<2e-16***
	stylewritten	1.8421	0.4197	4.39	1.14e-05***
	Null deviance: 247.98 on 637 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 225.22 on 636 degrees of freedom

PrpN:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−4.6563	0.5024	−9.269	<2e-16***
	stylewritten	1.2744	0.6325	2.015	0.0439*
	Null deviance: 111.14 on 637 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 106.87 on 636 degrees of freedom

Appendix 2: Output for Table 7

Null:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	1.5362	0.2674	5.746	9.14e-09***
	stylewritten	−1.3539	0.4039	−3.352	0.000802***
	Null deviance: 161.70 on 139 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 150.29 on 138 degrees of freedom

Overt:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−2.3979	0.3693	−6.494	8.38e-11***
	stylewritten	−0.6466	0.8124	−0.796	0.426
	Null deviance: 72.049 on 139 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 71.344 on 138 degrees of freedom

DefNP:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−3.8501	0.7146	−5.388	7.12e-08***
	stylewritten	2.4920	0.8064	3.090	0.002**
	Null deviance: 77.075 on 139 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 64.027 on 138 degrees of freedom

PrpN:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−4.554	1.005	−4.530	5.89e-06***
	stylewritten	2.889	1.086	2.659	0.00784**
	Null deviance: 61.329 on 139 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 49.676 on 138 degrees of freedom

Appendix 3: Output for Table 9

Null:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−2.0314	0.3760	−5.402	6.58e-08***
	stylewritten	−0.7820	0.7034	−1.112	0.266
	Null deviance: 73.912 on 121 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 72.566 on 120 degrees of freedom

Overt:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−0.3814	0.2452	−1.556	0.1198
	stylewritten	−0.8473	0.4097	−2.068	0.0386*
	Null deviance: 154.37 on 121 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 149.89 on 120 degrees of freedom

Dem:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−3.0910	0.5902	−5.237	1.63e-07***
	stylewritten	0.5855	0.7866	0.744	0.457
	Null deviance: 53.604 on 121 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 53.043 on 120 degrees of freedom

DefNP:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−1.0415	0.2742	−3.799	0.000145***
	stylewritten	1.1548	0.3884	2.973	0.002950**
	Null deviance: 161.67 on 121 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 152.51 on 120 degrees of freedom

PrpN:
	Coefficients:
		Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(>\|z\|)
	(Intercept)	−1.8971	0.3575	−5.307	1.11e-07***
	stylewritten	−0.3646	0.5904	−0.618	0.537
	Null deviance: 86.947 on 121 degrees of freedom
	Residual deviance: 86.557 on 120 degrees of freedom

References

Abisambra Miccheli, Ingrid. 2022. Cognición y selección de sujetos: análisis comparativo entre narrativas escritas y orales en el discurso de español como L2. Athens, GA: University of Georgia dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Ariel, Mira. 1988. Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics 24(1). 65–87. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700011567.Search in Google Scholar

Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. New York, NY: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla.Search in Google Scholar

Carminati, Maria N. 2002. The processing of Italian subject pronouns. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 25–55. New York, NY: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Figueras, Carolina. 2002. La jerarquía de la accesibilidad de las expresiones referenciales en español. Revista Española de Lingüística 32(1). 53–96.Search in Google Scholar

Givón, Talmy. 1983. Introduction. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study, 5–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Franklin.10.1075/tsl.3Search in Google Scholar

Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2). 274–307. https://doi.org/10.2307/416535.Search in Google Scholar

Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5526.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Lubbers Quesada, Margaret. 2015. The L2 acquisition of Spanish subjects. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9781614514367Search in Google Scholar

Ochs, Elinor. 1979. Planned and unplanned discourse. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 12, 51–80. New York, NY: Academic Press.10.1163/9789004368897_004Search in Google Scholar

Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Peter Cole (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 223–233. New York, NY: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Toribio, Almeida J. 2000. Setting parameter limits on dialectal variation in Spanish. Lingua 10. 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3841(99)00044-3.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2023-04-28

Published in Print: 2023-05-25

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/shll-2023-2003

Keywords for this article

cognition; memory; attention; referring expressions; Spanish