2 Principles of Discourse Marking: An experimental approach of general and contrastive perspectives
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Óscar Loureda
Abstract
On the basis of experimental eye tracking studies, this contribution outlines the cognitive principles predicting the effects of the presence of discourse particles for utterance processing. Data show that, compared with non-marked utterances, discourse particles activate four instructions linked to basic cognitive processes, namely: building a new access route to information (First Principle), constraining processing effort of semantically more complex information (Second Principle), optimizing the initial access to a communicated assumption and constrain the need for reanalysis (Corollary of the First and Second Principles) and facilitating the immediate discursive integration of the upcoming segments (Third Principle). The value of principles is twofold: (i) they allow one to further define functionally the category of discourse particles, by excluding related expressions, which are, however, substantially different (sentential adverbs); and (ii) they allow one to compare processing patterns between different languages.
Abstract
On the basis of experimental eye tracking studies, this contribution outlines the cognitive principles predicting the effects of the presence of discourse particles for utterance processing. Data show that, compared with non-marked utterances, discourse particles activate four instructions linked to basic cognitive processes, namely: building a new access route to information (First Principle), constraining processing effort of semantically more complex information (Second Principle), optimizing the initial access to a communicated assumption and constrain the need for reanalysis (Corollary of the First and Second Principles) and facilitating the immediate discursive integration of the upcoming segments (Third Principle). The value of principles is twofold: (i) they allow one to further define functionally the category of discourse particles, by excluding related expressions, which are, however, substantially different (sentential adverbs); and (ii) they allow one to compare processing patterns between different languages.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- 1 Discourse markers in interaction: Introduction 1
- 2 Principles of Discourse Marking: An experimental approach of general and contrastive perspectives 17
- 3 New perspectives on car and parce que: Is it about subjectivity, reasoning or speakers? 45
- 4 Individual differences in the ability to master connectives: The importance of exposure to print 69
- 5 Do non-native readers rely on connectives? The processing of coherence relations in L2 89
- 6 How egocentric is discourse marker use? Investigating the impact of speaker orientation and cognitive load on discourse marker production 121
- 7 When do discourse markers affect computational sentence understanding? 159
- 8 Discourse markers and dialogue act annotation for computational dialogue systems 191
- 9 Translating discourse markers: Implicitation and explicitation strategies 215
- 10 Processing polyfunctional discourse markers: Making sense of Hebrew harey 247
- Index 277
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- 1 Discourse markers in interaction: Introduction 1
- 2 Principles of Discourse Marking: An experimental approach of general and contrastive perspectives 17
- 3 New perspectives on car and parce que: Is it about subjectivity, reasoning or speakers? 45
- 4 Individual differences in the ability to master connectives: The importance of exposure to print 69
- 5 Do non-native readers rely on connectives? The processing of coherence relations in L2 89
- 6 How egocentric is discourse marker use? Investigating the impact of speaker orientation and cognitive load on discourse marker production 121
- 7 When do discourse markers affect computational sentence understanding? 159
- 8 Discourse markers and dialogue act annotation for computational dialogue systems 191
- 9 Translating discourse markers: Implicitation and explicitation strategies 215
- 10 Processing polyfunctional discourse markers: Making sense of Hebrew harey 247
- Index 277
