Referential Devices Research Articles

Cohesion in Finnish EFL essays

The study investigated cohesion in Finnish upper-secondary school EFL learners’ essays (N=46). Cohesive devices were digitally identified using TAACO 2.0.4, and robust correlations were run to examine how the devices related to human-rated holistic essay quality. The analyses found that the two most important predictors of writing quality were the use of modifying adverbs and adverbials as referential devices across paragraphs, and a wide array of connectives to organise the text. Further, the writing sessions were video-recorded to examine the role of consulting digital sources in cohesionbuilding. The recorded data suggested that consulting online dictionaries and informational pages assisted cohesion-building if the writer possessed adequate vocabulary knowledge and computer skills and knew how to exploit the sources efficiently. Pedagogically, the findings indicated that learners need more instruction and practice not only on writing cohesive texts but also on how to search for information and lexis effectively.

Latent semantic analysis for tagging activation states and identifiability in northwestern Mexican news outlets

The present work aims to study the relationship between measures, obtained from Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and a variant known as SPAN, and activation and identifiability states (Informative States) of referents in noun phrases present in journalistic notes from Northwestern Mexican news outlets written in Spanish. The aim and challenge is to find a strategy to achieve labelling of new / given information in the discourse rooted in a theoretically linguistic stance. The new / given distinction can be defined from different perspectives in which it varies what linguistic forms are taken into account. Thus, the focus in this work is to work with full referential devices (n = 2 388). Pearson’s R correlation tests, analysis of variance, graphical exploration of the clustering of labels, and a classification experiment with random forests are performed. For the experiment, two groups were used: noun phrases labeled with all 10 tags of informative states and a binary labelling, as well as the use of two bags-of-words for each noun phrase: the interior and the exterior. It was found that using LSA in conjunction with the inner bag of words can be used to classify certain informational states. This same measure showed good results for the binary division, detecting which sentences introduce new referents in discourse. In previous work using a similar method in noun phrases in English, 80% accuracy (n = 478) was reached in their classification exercise. Our best test for Spanish reached 79%. No work on Spanish using this method has been done before and this kind of experiment is important because Spanish exhibits a more complex inflectional morphology.

Analysis of Grammatical Cohesion in Qira’at Text (The Reading) of Al-Arabiya Baina Yadaik Ii Book

This study aims to describe referential devices, substitution ellipsis, and conjunction in qira’at (the reading) text of Al-Arabiya Baina Yadaik (ABY) II book. This research uses a qualitative method in an appropriate setting with a grammatical cohesion analysis approach to identify the grammatical elements from a reference perspective within the qira’at text in the ABY II book. The obtained data subsists of grammatical cohesion, including referential devices, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction in qira’at (the reading) text. Due to the limited research time, there were only eight qira’at texts, from wihdah (unit) 1-8 of the ABY II book, explored in this research. The results indicate that (1) the referential devices in the qira’at texts is personal (subsisting of third-person singular ‘mufrad’, dual ‘mutsanna’, and plural), demonstrative ( the word ذلك) and comparative (the words that compare sentences); (2) the identified substitution devices are nominal and clause substitution; (3) the discovered ellipsis devices are nominal, verbal and clause ellipsis; and (4) the found conjunction devices are temporal, causal, additive, and adversative.

Metonymy is a Cognitive Mechanism of News Discourse

The paper considers metonymy as a cognitive mechanism widely used in news discourse. Views of different scholars on the concept of metonymy were analyzed in this paper. The problem of metonymy in linguistics is associated with two functions: 1) as a means of creating artistic speech; 2) as a means of nomination. The second part of the paper deals with different trends of metonymic transfer: psychological, logical and semiotic. In the third part, different classifications on the types of metonymic transfer are given. Finally, the fourth part of the paper considers the cognitive approach to metonymic study. The cognitive mechanism of conceptual metonymy operates within a single conceptual domain, one element replacing another. The replacement element is called a vehicle. It opens up access to another conceptual structure called the concept target within a single conceptual domain at the mental level. In news discourse, metonymy is used to express a concept economically. A shift in focus in metonymic nomination creates a positive or negative assessment, distortion of information, and depersonalization of individual referents to influence the reader. Thus, metonymy has a referential function, i. e. it allows one entity to replace another. But metonymy is not only a referential device. It also serves to understand.

On referential abilities in personal narratives of Mandarin-speaking children aged three to six years

This study examines referential abilities in Mandarin-speaking children aged 3;0-6;0, a population that is currently understudied in the area of referential development. Most prior studies have explored how children use referential devices in narratives from storybooks (e.g., frog stories) or in lab-based communication tasks. Such an approach has had an impact on revealing children's referential skills, though children may point to persons or objects rather than verbally describe them. In our study, 74 children were asked to tell personal narratives, where all referential forms can be used. References to persons and objects were coded for form and discourse functions, i.e., introduction, maintenance and re-introduction. Children's referential forms developed significantly with age in terms of frequency and variety. The use of referent introductions and maintenance also increased significantly in terms of frequency, but not proportion, across age groups. The use of pronominal forms for re-introduction increased significantly both in frequency and proportion across age groups. Significant differences were found among discrepant age groups. Our findings underline the importance of always considering frequency and proportion of linguistic data, as Hoff-Ginsberg (1992) and Ambridge et al. (2015) have suggested.

A pessoa and uma pessoa: Grammaticalization and functions of a human impersonal referential device in European Portuguese

The grammaticalization of nouns meaning ‘man’ or ‘person’ into impersonal pronouns (so-called man-impersonals) has been related to languages with obligatory subject expression, like Germanic languages and French. Albeit regarded as a null-subject language, European Portuguese (EP) presents a similar development: the noun phrases uma pessoa ‘a person’ and a pessoa ‘the person’ are used in ways that resembles man-impersonals. The present paper aims at shedding light to the semantics, pragmatics and morphosyntactic properties of the pessoa constructions in EP and discuss their status as potentially grammaticalized or grammaticalizing referential devices. It is argued that the emergence of these constructions is favored by pragmatic and morphosyntactic tendencies found in EP: avoidance of direct person reference and a preference for expressed subjects even in contexts permitting null subjects.

“When you were that little…”

Abstract In this article, I analyse how conventional height-specifier gestures used by speakers of Yucatec Maya become incorporated into Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs). Combining video-data from elicitation, narratives, conversations and interviews collected from YMSL signers from four communities as well as from hearing nonsigners from another Yucatec Maya village, I compare form, meaning and distribution of height-specifiers in gesture and sign. Co-speech gestures that depict the height of upright entities – performed with a flat hand, palm facing downwards – come to serve various linguistic functions in YMSLs: a noun for human referents, a verb GROW, a spatial referential device, and an element of name signs. Special attention is paid to how height-specifier gestures fulfil a grammatical purpose as noun-classifiers for human referents in YMSLs. My study demonstrates processes of lexicalisation and grammaticalisation from gesture to sign and discusses the impact of gesture on the emergence of shared sign languages.

한국대학생 영어 작문 코퍼스에서의 지칭 표현: 응집성을 중심으로

This study investigates the use of cohesive devices in the corpus of Korean college students’ compositions. In particular, it attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the lexico-grammatical contexts in which cohesive referential devices are employed in argumentative essays. For this purpose, a Korean EFL corpus and a native speaker corpus were analyzed based on Gray’s (2010) coding scheme. The coding scheme included variables such as the place and unit of the antecedent, the grammatical role and place of demonstratives, and their preceding or following structures. The results of the analysis showed that Korean EFL learners and native writers were similar in that they tended to use demonstrative pronouns as a subject and demonstrative determiners as objects/complements. Besides this general tendency, non-prototypical uses of the determiners were observed. The learners’ corpus manifested an overuse of an extended antecedent which could reduce the clarity of meaning. The most frequent verb following demonstrative pronouns was the copula (i.e., be) in both corpora. Finally, the learners tended to use a much smaller number of abstract/shell nouns than their native speaker counterparts.

On the comprehension of metonymical expressions by Arabic-speaking EFL learners: A cognitive linguistic approach

AbstractThis study aims to examine the comprehension of L2 metonymies by Arabic-speaking EFL learners and to investigate the extent to which the participants’ L1 conceptual and linguistic knowledge of metonymies can affect the processing of L2 metonymies. A comprehension task was administered to elicit data, and the results showed that the participants encountered various degrees of difficulty comprehending different types of metonymies. Though metonymy has been regarded as a universal cognitive device, numerous factors can collaborate to hinder its comprehension process. The researchers argued that the non-conventionality of conceptual metonymies, the non-compositional nature of metonymy processing, the lack of direct exposure to metonymy as a cognitive referential device in L2, and the differences between L1 and L2 possibly contributed to the participants’ faulty answers on the administered test. The study concluded with a set of pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research studies.

Pronouns as referential devices in Estonian, Finnish, and Russian

This study examines the usage of different anaphoric referential pronominal expressions in three areally close languages: Estonian, Finnish, and Russian. It focuses on the linguistic factors that influence the choice of referential pronominals in spoken narrative discourse, and the relative importance of these factors in languages. We used a picture-sequence based narrative elicitation method to collect a comparable and consistent dataset for these three languages. The data is analyzed using non-parametric conditional inference tree and random forest models. The analysis shows that while the usage frequency and contexts of demonstrative pronouns show large variation in these languages, there are also devices (e.g., personal pronouns and zero reference) that act in a very similar way. There are three significant linguistic factors that influence the choice of referential devices in Estonian, Finnish, and Russian: (i) syntactic role, ii) case of the referential noun phrase, and iii) the referential distance with the previous mention. However, their exact effect, as well as the importance of other factors, varies across languages. These findings support previous research that whilst referential devices have similar grammatical labels (e.g., demonstrative pronouns and personal pronouns) in languages, their actual functions should be analyzed with respect to the specific system of the language.

Els mecanismes de referència en la interfície gramàtica-discurs. Cohesió, coherència i cognició

La cohesió referencial integra una sèrie de mecanismes gramaticals i lèxics de tipus fòric que estableixen lligams de caràcter sintàctic i semàntic entre les entitats discursives. Mitjançant la referència, els significats textuals s’entreteixeixen, de manera que es creen una sèrie de xarxes correferencials i de sentit a través de les quals s’encadenen els mots per contribuir a la cohesió textual. Com a fenomen que inclou la pronominalització, l’el·lipsi o anàfora zero, la dixi textual (que es concreta bàsicament en l’ús no exofòric de demostratius) i una varietat de mecanismes de cohesió lèxica (relacions de repetició, reiteració i associació), la cohesió referencial se situa en la interfície entre el nivell gramatical i el pragmaticodiscursiu. D’una banda, explicita relacions sintacticosemàntiques de tipus estructural i jeràrquic entre els constituents oracionals; d’altra banda, palesa el grau d’activació de les entitats discursives en la memòria dels interlocutors i constitueix una evidència de l’organització discursiva, que permet interpretar la progressió temàtica i la coherència. Així doncs, la diversitat de mecanismes de referència es vincula a la cohesió textual, en el nivell microestructural; esdevé una empremta, palesa i palpable, de les relacions de coherència, en el nivell de la macroestructura, i permet resseguir els processos cognitius en què interactuen els interlocutors per tal de fer efectiva la comunicació –l’objectiu definitori del discurs– en el nivell contextual i pragmàtic.

TALKING ABOUT WORLDS*

AbstractI explore the logic of the conditional, using credence judgments to argue against Duality and in favor of Conditional Excluded Middle. I then explore how to give a theory of the conditional which validates the latter and not the former, developing a variant on Kratzer (1981)'s restrictor theory, as well as a proposal which combines Stalnaker (1968)'s theory of the conditional with the theory of epistemic modals I develop in Mandelkern 2019a. I argue that the latter approach fits naturally with a conception of conditionals as referential devices which allow us to talk about particular worlds.

Malaysian Children Storybooks as ESL Reading Materials

English as a Second Language (ESL) reading materials for children are important in second language development. It is believed that language cannot be taught in a vacuum context as language functions within a culture. Even though learning a language requires learning about the culture unconsciously, learners’ culture should be taken into consideration as well. The study aimed to identify the difference between Malaysian picture storybooks and Malaysian chapter storybooks in terms of readability by using a computational tool, Coh-Metrix TERA. This study also aimed to discuss the suitability of the samples’ readability in relation to the second language comprehension and cognitive development theories. The study collected 10 locally published picture storybooks and chapter storybooks each. The narrative texts from the books were extracted and assessed by Coh-Metrix TERA. It was found that picture storybooks are different from chapter storybooks in terms of the amount of concrete words, referential cohesion devices, and familiar words in the texts. In general, the samples’ readability is in line with the cognitive development theory. However, they can be improved in terms of cohesive devices and familiar words. In brief, Malaysian picture storybooks and chapter storybooks are suitable to be used as reading materials to learn English for Malaysian children. Nevertheless, weak readers may require adult assistance in certain parts of the books.

Impure concepts and non-qualitative properties

Some properties such as having a beard and being a philosopher are intuitively qualitative, while other properties such as being identical to Plato and being a student of Socrates are intuitively non-qualitative. It is often assumed that, necessarily, a property is qualitative if and only if it can be designated descriptively without the aid of directly referential devices (such as demonstratives, indexicals, or proper names). I argue that this linguistic thesis fails in both directions: there might be non-qualitative properties that can be designated descriptively, and there appear to be qualitative properties that can only be designated directly. I conclude that while the linguistic thesis is ultimately untenable as stated, it can be plausibly recast as a thesis about our concepts rather than the properties they designate.

The argument from convention revisited

The argument from convention contends that the regular use of definite descriptions as referential devices strongly implies that a referential semantic convention underlies such usage. On the presumption that definite descriptions also participate in a quantificational semantic convention, the argument from convention has served as an argument for the thesis that the English definite article is ambiguous. Here, I revisit this relatively new argument. First, I address two recurring criticisms of the argument from convention: (1) its alleged tendency to overgenerate and (2) its apparent evidential inadequacy. These criticisms are found wanting. Second, following Zacharska (Univ Coll Lond Work Pap Linguist 22:56–63, 2010), I argue that while the argument from convention does alter the landscape of logical possibilities insofar as it provides good grounds for treating Donnellan’s (Philos Rev 75:281–304, 1966) referential–attributive distinction as having truth-conditional consequences, the argument from convention nonetheless fails to demonstrate that ‘the’ requires two lexical entries.

Reference tracking mechanisms and automatic annotation based on Ob-Ugric information structure

The following paper is concerned with information structure in the Ob-Ugric languages and its manifestation in reference tracking and its mechanisms. We will show how both knowledge on information structure and on reference tracking mechanisms can be used to develop a system for a (semi-)automatic annotation of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions. We assume that the principles of information structure, i.e., the balancing of the content of an utterance, are indicated by the use of anaphoric devices to mark participants in an on-going discourse. This process in which participants are encoded by the speaker and decoded by the hearer is called reference tracking. Our model distinguishes four important factors that play a role in reference tracking: inherent (linguistic) features of a referent, information structure, referential devices and referential strategies. The interaction between these factors we call reference tracking mechanisms. Here, the passive voice and the dative shift are used to exemplify this complex interaction system. Drawing conclusions from this, rules are developed to annotate both syntactic, semantic and pragmatic roles of discourse participants (semi-)automatically.

Coreference Annotation in the Russian Clinical Pear Stories Corpus: Annotation Features and Preliminary Results

This work is devoted to the distribution of different referential devices in spoken discourse produced by healthy speakers and people with aphasia and its comparison to written discourse. We discuss some special annotation issues for the corpus of Pear film retellings (Russian CliPS) by people with aphasia (PWA), right hemisphere damage (RHD), and healthy speakers (HP for healthy people) of Russian. The study summarizes the comprehensive annotation schema developed for this task and the preliminary research of the referential choice features based on the corpus. Comparing retellings and written texts, we found a significant difference in the use of basic coreferential expressions between the two. Firstly, there is a significant difference in the distribution of basic NP types. Speakers use reduced devices such as zero anaphora or bare nouns in retellings more frequently than in written texts. There are also differences in the distribution of more granulated features such as the word order within an NP, the use of anaphoric and reduced expressions (demonstratives or zero NPs) for the first mention of an entity, and the inclusion of epistemic markers into NPs. We also found that the retellings produced by PWA and HP do not differ much in terms of the distribution of basic NP types. However, a detailed analysis within different NP types and taking into consideration various disfluencies reveals some prominent differences between the two populations. These include a difference in zero subject distribution, the frequency of non-referential NP links, the frequency of co-reference errors. While adapting the initial coreference annotation scheme we concluded that besides referential ambiguity, which is normally taken into account in spoken discourse analysis, and basic taxonomy of the referential devices (full NP vs. anaphoric pronoun vs. anaphoric zero), other features need to be considered.

Referential Choice: Predictability and Its Limits.

We report a study of referential choice in discourse production, understood as the choice between various types of referential devices, such as pronouns and full noun phrases. Our goal is to predict referential choice, and to explore to what extent such prediction is possible. Our approach to referential choice includes a cognitively informed theoretical component, corpus analysis, machine learning methods and experimentation with human participants. Machine learning algorithms make use of 25 factors, including referent’s properties (such as animacy and protagonism), the distance between a referential expression and its antecedent, the antecedent’s syntactic role, and so on. Having found the predictions of our algorithm to coincide with the original almost 90% of the time, we hypothesized that fully accurate prediction is not possible because, in many situations, more than one referential option is available. This hypothesis was supported by an experimental study, in which participants answered questions about either the original text in the corpus, or about a text modified in accordance with the algorithm’s prediction. Proportions of correct answers to these questions, as well as participants’ rating of the questions’ difficulty, suggested that divergences between the algorithm’s prediction and the original referential device in the corpus occur overwhelmingly in situations where the referential choice is not categorical.

You and we: Impersonal second person singular and other referential devices in Spanish sociolinguistic interviews

The present investigation deals with the variable use of referential devices expressing generic or speaker-oriented reference in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews where Spanish informants talk about their studies and work experience. The analysis focuses on impersonal second person singulars (2SG-imp), which are compared with the first person singular (1SG) and plural (1PL), uno ‘one’ and reflexive-based impersonal constructions. Quantitative analysis shows that age, gender and familiarity between the speakers are significant factors in accounting for the inter-speaker variation. There is a negative correlation between age and 2SG-imp usage and a positive correlation between age and 1PL usage, and female speakers use both constructions more than men. I discuss the relation of the choice of referring expressions and the expression of intersubjectivity in the interviews. Qualitative analysis of the interview content suggests that there is a connection between the choice of referential devices and generational differences in the choice of individual vs. collective perspective and the inclusion of the addressee.

Who's on First? Investigating the referential hierarchy in simple native ASL narratives

Discussions of reference tracking in spoken languages often invoke some version of a referential hierarchy. In this paper, we asked whether this hierarchy applies equally well to reference tracking in a visual language, American Sign Language, or whether modality differences influence its structure. Expanding the results of previous studies, this study looked at ASL referential devices beyond nouns, pronouns, and zero anaphora. We elicited four simple narratives from eight native ASL signers, and examined how the signers tracked reference throughout their stories. We found that ASL signers follow general principles of the referential hierarchy proposed for spoken languages by using nouns for referent introductions, and zero anaphora for referent maintenance. However, we also found significant differences such as the absence of pronouns in the narratives, despite their existence in ASL, and differential use of verbal and constructed action zero anaphora. Moreover, we found that native signers’ use of classifiers varied with discourse status in a way that deviated from our expectations derived from the referential hierarchy for spoken languages. On this basis, we propose a tentative hierarchy of referential expressions for ASL that incorporates modality specific referential devices.