Abstract
Instead of a full sentence like Bring me to the university (uttered by the passenger to a taxi driver) speakers often use fragments like To the university to get their message across. So far there is no comprehensive and empirically supported account of why and under which circumstances speakers sometimes prefer a fragment over the corresponding full sentence. We propose an information-theoretic account to model this choice: A speaker chooses the encoding that distributes information most uniformly across the utterance in order to make the most efficient use of the hearer's processing resources (Uniform Information Density, Levy and Jaeger, 2007). Since processing effort is related to the predictability of words (Hale, 2001) our account predicts two effects of word probability on omissions: First, omitting predictable words (which are more easily processed), avoids underutilizing processing resources. Second, inserting words before very unpredictable words distributes otherwise excessively high processing effort more uniformly. We test these predictions with a production study that supports both of these predictions. Our study makes two main contributions: First we develop an empirically motivated and supported account of fragment usage. Second, we extend previous evidence for information-theoretic processing constraints on language in two ways: We find predictability effects on omissions driven by extralinguistic context, whereas previous research mostly focused on effects of local linguistic context. Furthermore, we show that omissions of content words are also subject to information-theoretic well-formedness considerations. Previously, this has been shown mostly for the omission of function words.
Highlights
In order to communicate a message to a hearer, speakers have to select a particular utterance from a set of utterances that can be used to convey this message in the utterance situation
Even though our approach loses this mathematical property of the original definition of surprisal in the literature, the probability estimate that we propose is in line with the insight by Hale (2001) that processing effort is proportional to the probability mass of the parses that are compatible with an input
In this article we propose an information-theoretic account as an answer to the previously underexplored question of why speakers use fragments, when they prefer a fragment over the corresponding complete sentence, and if they do so, which fragment is selected
Summary
In order to communicate a message to a hearer, speakers have to select a particular utterance from a set of utterances that can be used to convey this message in the utterance situation. Besides utterances that contain different word forms or syntactic constructions, speakers can often resort to a subsentential utterance like (1-a) instead of a full sentence like (1-b). Despite their reduced form, given an appropriate context, such subsentential utterances are interpreted as roughly meaning-equivalent to their fully sentential counterparts. Predictability and Omissions in Fragments (1) [A pedestrian approaches a taxi at the train station and says:]. B. Bring me to the university, please
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.