Ted Sanders
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591793 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ted Sanders |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ted |
| FAMILY NAME | Sanders |
| SIGNATURE | SANDERS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8212-7336 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 411 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
‘Doch’ and ‘toch’ as discourse signals in German and Dutch: A cross-linguistic experimental study
Discourse relations can be marked by discourse connectives but can also be indicated by non-connective signals. This study examines how the German modal particle doch and its Dutch translation equivalent toch interact with discourse structure and whether they function as such non-connective discourse signals. A rating study using oral stimuli confirms that both particles interact with discourse relations in the same way: We find that in the two t…
Exploring the use of translation technologies to overcome language barriers in mental healthcare: A qualitative cross-country study
Language barriers in healthcare continue to pose major challenges to equitable, high-quality care, particularly in mental health settings where communication is central to diagnosis, therapeutic alliance, and treatment planning. Translation technologies, including machine translation applications, offer potential solutions, but their real-world usability in mental health care remains underexplored. This cross-country qualitative study examined th…
The Role of Prosody in Expressing Subjective and Objective Causality in English
Numerous studies have established that prosody plays an important role in expressing meanings and functions. However, it remains unknown whether prosody is employed to convey the distinction between subjective causality (CLAIM-ARGUMENT) and objective causality (CONSEQUENCE-CAUSE). This study aimed to address this issue in English, where both types of causality are typically expressed using the same connective. Two production experiments were cond…
A multi-method approach to estimating subjectivity of causal connectives: The case of ‘poetomu’ and ‘tak chto’ in Russian
Descriptively Adequate and Cognitively Plausible? Validating Distinctions between Types of Coherence Relations
A central issue in linguistics concerns the relationship between theories and evidence in data. We investigate this issue in the field of discourse coherence, and particularly the study of coherence relations such as causal and contrastive. Proposed inventories of coherence relations differ greatly in the type and number of proposed relations. Such proposals are often validated by focusing on either the descriptive adequacy (researcher’s intuitio…
How subjective are Mandarin reason connectives: A corpus study of spontaneous conversation, microblog and newspaper discourse
Studies in several languages find that causal connectives differ from one another in their prototypical meaning and use , which provides insight into language users’ cognitive categorization of causal relations in discourse. Subjectivity plays a vital role in this process. Using an integrated subjectivity approach, this study aims to give a comprehensive picture of the semantic-pragmatic distinctions between Mandarin reason connectives jìrán ‘sin…
Expectations from relative clauses: Real-time coherence updates in discourse processing
When processing a text, comprehenders use available cues to anticipate both upcoming content and the dependencies that comprise the structure of the growing discourse. In an eye-tracking while reading experiment, we test discourse updating in passages in which dependencies are implicit and the segments convey content that is not required to participate in any coherence-driven inference. This study provides strong evidence of comprehenders' abilit…
Do Spanish causal connectives vary in subjectivity? What crowdsourcing data reveal about native speakers’ preferences
Language users have preferences for the connectives they choose to express causal relations. These choices may depend on the subjectivity involved in the relation. Dutch connectives illustrate this situation clearly: want (‘since/for’) is preferred typically for expressing subjective relations and omdat (‘because’) for objective ones. While various corpus-based studies have revealed a similar pattern in other languages, little attention has been …
A cognitive account of subjectivity put to the test: Using an insertion task to investigate Mandarin result connectives
This article aims to further test the cognitive claims of the so-called subjectivity account of causal events and their linguistic markers, causal connectives. We took Mandarin Chinese, a language that is typologically completely different from the usual western languages, as a case to provide evidence for this subjectivity account. Complementary to the commonly used corpora analyses, we employed crowdsourcing to tap native speakers’ intuitions a…
The Role of Connectives and Stance Markers in the Processing of Subjective Causal Relations
Interpreting subjectivity in causal relations takes effort: Subjective, claim-argument relations are read slower than objective, cause-consequence relations. In an eye-tracking-while-reading experiment, we investigated whether connectives and stance markers can play a facilitative role. Sixty-five Chinese participants read sentences expressing a subjective causal relation, systematically varied in the use of stance markers (no, attitudinal, epist…
Suǒyǐ ‘so’, they are different: An integrated subjectivity account of Mandarin Result connectives in conversation, microblog and newspaper discourse
In this study, we analyze the meaning and use of Mandarin causal connectives kějiàn ‘therefore/it can be seen that’, suǒyǐ ‘so’, yīncǐ ‘for this reason’, and yúshì ‘thereupon/as a result’ in terms of causality and subjectivity. We adopt an integrated approach to subjectivity and analyze the subjectivity profile of a causal construction in terms of three features: the propositional attitude of the consequent, the identity of the subject of conscio…
Vivid elements in Dutch educational texts
Educational publishers often make their expository texts more vivid, by making them emotionally interesting, concrete and imagery-provoking, and proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spatial way. Previous studies have found mixed results regarding the effects of vividness on the attractiveness, comprehensibility, and memorability of educational texts. In order to be able to account for these mixed results, we chart and describe the various ways in…
Causality, subjectivity and mental spaces: Insights from on-line discourse processing
Research has shown that it requires less time to process information that is part of an objective causal relation describing states of affairs in the world ( She was out of breath because she was running ), than information that is part of a subjective relation ( She must have been in a hurry because she was running ) expressing a claim or conclusion and a supporting argument. Representing subjectivity seems to require extra cognitive operations.…
Individual differences in expecting coherence relations: Exploring the variability in sensitivity to contextual signals in discourse
The current study investigated how a contextual list signal influences comprehenders’ inference generation of upcoming discourse relations and whether individual differences in working memory capacity and linguistic experience influence the generation of these inferences. Participants were asked to complete two-sentence stories, the first sentence of which contained an expression of quantity (a few, multiple). Several individual-difference measur…
Cloze testing for comprehension assessment: The HyTeC-cloze
Although there are many methods available for assessing text comprehension, the cloze test is not widely acknowledged as one of them. Critiques on cloze testing center on its supposedly limited ability to measure comprehension beyond the sentence. However, these critiques do not hold for all types of cloze tests; the particular configuration of a cloze determines its validity. We review various cloze configurations and discuss their strengths and…
Comprehension Effects of Connectives Across Texts, Readers, and Coherence Relations
Studies investigating the effect of connectives on comprehension have yielded different results, most likely because of differences in methodology and limited samples of texts and readers. We added and removed causal, temporal, contrastive, and additive connectives in 20 authentic Dutch texts. Dutch adolescents (n = 794) differing in reading proficiency filled out four “HyTeC” cloze tests. Connectives were found to affect comprehension on a local…
The linguistic marking of coherence relations: Interactions between connectives and segment-internal elements
Connectives and cue phrases are the most prototypical linguistic elements that signal coherence relations, but by limiting our attention to connectives, we are likely missing out on important other cues readers and listeners use when establishing coherence relations. However, defining the role of other types of linguistic elements in the signaling of coherence relations is not straightforward, and it is also not obvious why and how non-connective…
Connective processing by bilingual children and monolinguals with specific language impairment: Distinct profiles
Production studies show that both Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and bilingual children for whom Russian is a non-dominant language have difficulty distinguishing between the near-synonymous connectives i ‘and’ and a ‘and/but’. I is a preferred connective when reference is maintained, whereas a is normally used for reference shift. We report an eye-tracking experiment comparing connective processing by Russian-s…
Why Are Negative Questions Difficult to Answer? On the Processing of Linguistic Contrasts in Surveys
Previous studies show that respondents are generally more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (e.g., This book is bad. Yes/No) than to agree with positive ones (e.g., This book is good. Yes/No). In the current research, we related this effect to the cognitive processes underlying question answering. Using eye-tracking, we show that during the initial reading of the question, negative evaluative terms (e.g., bad) require more process…
Cognitive complexity and the linguistic marking of coherence relations: A parallel corpus study
Can connective use differentiate between children with and without specific language impairment
The ability of language-impaired children to maintain coherence by using discourse connectives has so far been assessed by quantitative measures. This study is a first attempt to scrutinize the quality of connective use in specific language impairment (SLI). The authors investigate whether Russian-speaking children reveal sensitivity to the subtle discourse-organizational distinctions between the quasi-synonymous connectives i ‘and’ and a ‘and/bu…
Effect of genre on the generalizability of writing scores
In the present study, aspects of the measurement of writing are disentangled in order to investigate the validity of inferences made on the basis of writing performance and to describe implications for the assessment of writing. To include genre as a facet in the measurement, we obtained writing scores of 12 texts in four different genres for each participating student. Results indicate that across raters, tasks and genres, only 10% of the varian…
Advanced learners’ comprehension of discourse connectives: The role of L1 transfer across on-line and off-line tasks
Discourse connectives are important indicators of textual coherence, and mastering them is an essential part of acquiring a language. In this article, we compare advanced learners’ sensitivity to the meaning conveyed by connectives in an off-line grammaticality judgment task and an on-line reading experiment using eye-tracking. We also assess the influence of first language (L1) transfer by comparing learners’ comprehension of two non-native-like…
Connectives as Processing Signals: How Students Benefit in Processing Narrative and Expository Texts
Many young readers fail to construct a proper mental text representation, often due to a lack of higher-order skills such as making integrative and inferential links. In an eye-tracking experiment among 141 Dutch eighth graders, we tested whether coherence markers (moreover, after, because) improve students' online processing and their off-line comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Eye-tracking results show that connectives lead to fas…
Causality and subjectivity in discourse: The meaning and use of causal connectives in spontaneous conversation, chat interactions and written text
Many languages of the world have connectives to express causal relations at the discourse level. Often, language users systematically prefer one lexical item
Toward a taxonomy of coherence relations
Understanding a discourse means constructing a coherent representation of that discourse. Inferring coherence relations, such as cause‐consequence and claim‐argument, is a necessary condition for a discourse representation to be coherent. Despite some descriptively fairly adequate proposals in the literature, there is still no theoretically satisfying account of the links that make a discourse coherent. An adequate account of the relations establ…
The Role of Coherence Relations and Their Linguistic Markers in Text Processing
When readers process a text, they establish a coherent representation by means of coherence relations. This article focuses on the cognitive status of these relations. In an experiment using reading, verification, and free recall tasks, 2 crucial aspects of the structure of expository texts were investigated: the type of coherence relation between segments (problem-solution vs. list) and the linguistic marking of the relations by means of signali…
Coherence relations in a cognitive theory of discourse representation
The classification of coherence relations and their linguistic markers: An exploration of two languages
Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations in context
This article discusses a distinction present in many theories of relation categorization: the Source of Coherence, which distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic relations. Existing categorizations of both relations and connectives show a reasonable consensus on prototypical examples. Still, there many ambiguous cases. How can the distinction be clarified? And to what extent does it depend on the context in which relations occur? A more preci…
Responsible subjects and discourse causality. How mental spaces and perspective help identifying subjectivity in Dutch backward causal connectives
The acquisition order of coherence relations: On cognitive complexity in discourse
Connectives as Processing Signals: How Students Benefit in Processing Narrative and Expository Texts
Many young readers fail to construct a proper mental text representation, often due to a lack of higher-order skills such as making integrative and inferential links. In an eye-tracking experiment among 141 Dutch eighth graders, we tested whether coherence markers (moreover, after, because) improve students' online processing and their off-line comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Eye-tracking results show that connectives lead to fas…
Subjectivity and prototype structure in causal connectives: A cross-linguistic perspective
Cognitive complexity and the linguistic marking of coherence relations: A parallel corpus study
Causal Coherence Relations and Levels of Discourse Representation
This study focused on the cognitive representation of causal coherence relations linguistically marked with the connective because. This article investigated whether these local causal relations are represented both at the level of the textbase and the situation model. Following earlier studies investigating the psychological validity of levels of discourse representation, this study used a sentence recognition paradigm in which the connective us…
Coherence Marking, Prior Knowledge, and Comprehension of Informative and Persuasive Texts: Sorting Things Out
Coherence plays a central role when readers construct meaning from a text. Previous research has shown how coherence marking affects text processing and representation. However, this effect seems to depend on reader's prior knowledge of the text content: Low knowledge readers benefit from coherence marking, whereas high knowledge readers benefit from a more implicit text (CitationMcNamara & Kintsch, 1996). Because this interaction was not consist…
Advanced learners’ comprehension of discourse connectives: The role of L1 transfer across on-line and off-line tasks
Discourse connectives are important indicators of textual coherence, and mastering them is an essential part of acquiring a language. In this article, we compare advanced learners’ sensitivity to the meaning conveyed by connectives in an off-line grammaticality judgment task and an on-line reading experiment using eye-tracking. We also assess the influence of first language (L1) transfer by comparing learners’ comprehension of two non-native-like…
Causality in verbs and in discourse connectives: Converging evidence of cross-level parallels in Dutch linguistic categorization
Discovering domains – On the acquisition of causal connectives
Comprehension Effects of Connectives Across Texts, Readers, and Coherence Relations
Studies investigating the effect of connectives on comprehension have yielded different results, most likely because of differences in methodology and limited samples of texts and readers. We added and removed causal, temporal, contrastive, and additive connectives in 20 authentic Dutch texts. Dutch adolescents (n = 794) differing in reading proficiency filled out four “HyTeC” cloze tests. Connectives were found to affect comprehension on a local…
Why Are Negative Questions Difficult to Answer? On the Processing of Linguistic Contrasts in Surveys
Previous studies show that respondents are generally more likely to disagree with negative survey questions (e.g., This book is bad. Yes/No) than to agree with positive ones (e.g., This book is good. Yes/No). In the current research, we related this effect to the cognitive processes underlying question answering. Using eye-tracking, we show that during the initial reading of the question, negative evaluative terms (e.g., bad) require more process…
Causality and subjectivity in discourse: The meaning and use of causal connectives in spontaneous conversation, chat interactions and written text
Many languages of the world have connectives to express causal relations at the discourse level. Often, language users systematically prefer one lexical item
Causal connectives in discourse: A cross-linguistic perspective
Agree or Disagree? Cognitive Processes in Answering Contrastive Survey Questions
Survey designers have long assumed that respondents who disagree with a negative question (“This policy is bad.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale) will agree with an equivalent positive question (“This policy is good.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale). However, experimental evidence has proven otherwise: Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative questions than to agree with positive ones. To explain these response effects for contrastive questions…
Accessibility in Text and Discourse Processing
Accessibility is one of the most important challenges at the intersection of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of text and discourse processing. Linguists have shown how linguistic indicators of referential coherence show a systematic pattern: Longer linguistic forms (like full lexical NPs) tend to be used when referents are relatively low accessible, shorter forms (pronouns and zero anaphora) are used when referents are highly accessible. …
Individual differences in expecting coherence relations: Exploring the variability in sensitivity to contextual signals in discourse
The current study investigated how a contextual list signal influences comprehenders’ inference generation of upcoming discourse relations and whether individual differences in working memory capacity and linguistic experience influence the generation of these inferences. Participants were asked to complete two-sentence stories, the first sentence of which contained an expression of quantity (a few, multiple). Several individual-difference measur…
The Perception of Fluency in Native and Nonnative Speech
Where native speakers supposedly are fluent by default, nonnative speakers often have to strive hard to achieve a nativelike fluency level. However, disfluencies (such as pauses, fillers, repairs, etc.) occur in both native and nonnative speech and it is as yet unclear how fluency raters weigh the fluency characteristics of native and nonnative speech. Two rating experiments compared the way raters assess the fluency of native and nonnative speec…
The Forewarning Effect of Coherence Markers in Persuasive Discourse: Evidence From Persuasion and Processing
Several studies showed how coherence markers, like connectives and lexical cue phrases, influence the processing and representation of informative text. Although discourse analysts have repeatedly argued that coherence markers influence the processing of persuasive text as well, there is hardly any empirical evidence for this idea. This article reports on 2 experiments investigating the possible forewarning effect of coherence marking: When coher…
The Role of Connectives and Stance Markers in the Processing of Subjective Causal Relations
Interpreting subjectivity in causal relations takes effort: Subjective, claim-argument relations are read slower than objective, cause-consequence relations. In an eye-tracking-while-reading experiment, we investigated whether connectives and stance markers can play a facilitative role. Sixty-five Chinese participants read sentences expressing a subjective causal relation, systematically varied in the use of stance markers (no, attitudinal, epist…
Teacher Education and the Chief State School Officers
Sanders reports on the recent survey of chief state school officers to assess state policies that influence the quality of teachers and teaching. The recommen dations developed as a result of the survey focus on issues, trends, and strategies for attracting, preparing, licensing, and retraining competent persons for the teaching profession. Twenty-one of the recommendations are presented with the intent of guiding state educational policy and str…
Toward a taxonomy of coherence relations
Understanding a discourse means constructing a coherent representation of that discourse. Inferring coherence relations, such as cause‐consequence and claim‐argument, is a necessary condition for a discourse representation to be coherent. Despite some descriptively fairly adequate proposals in the literature, there is still no theoretically satisfying account of the links that make a discourse coherent. An adequate account of the relations establ…
Coherence relations in a cognitive theory of discourse representation
Assessment and licensure of beginning teachers, and the Ohio experience
HE RELEASE of the reform manifesto, A Nation at Risk (National Commission, 1983), caused states, local education agencies, and the federal government to redouble their efforts to improve public education in the United States. Key among those efforts have been attempts to strengthen the quality of the teaching force. Many states are now searching for new ways to enhance the quality of beginning teachers, and new attention is being given to the pot…
Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations in context
This article discusses a distinction present in many theories of relation categorization: the Source of Coherence, which distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic relations. Existing categorizations of both relations and connectives show a reasonable consensus on prototypical examples. Still, there many ambiguous cases. How can the distinction be clarified? And to what extent does it depend on the context in which relations occur? A more preci…
The classification of coherence relations and their linguistic markers: An exploration of two languages
Domains of use or subjectivity? The distribution of three Dutch causal connectives explained
Domains of use or subjectivity? The distribution of three Dutch causal connectives explained
The Role of Coherence Relations and Their Linguistic Markers in Text Processing
When readers process a text, they establish a coherent representation by means of coherence relations. This article focuses on the cognitive status of these relations. In an experiment using reading, verification, and free recall tasks, 2 crucial aspects of the structure of expository texts were investigated: the type of coherence relation between segments (problem-solution vs. list) and the linguistic marking of the relations by means of signali…
Text representation: Linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects
This book brings together linguistics and psycholinguistics. Text representation is considered a cognitive entity: a mental construct that plays a crucial role in both text production and text understanding. The focus is on referential and relational coherence and the role of linguistic characteristics as processing instructions from a text linguistic and discourse psychology point of view. Consequently, this book presents various research method…
Subjectivity in causal connectives: An empirical study of language in use
The linguistic categories apparent in people’s everyday language use provide us with interesting insights into the working of the mind. In this article we study the way in which Dutch speakers categorize causally related events by expressing them with the connectives dus ‘so’ or daarom ‘that’s why’. These two connectives both express volitional and epistemic causal coherence relations. Their overlapping contexts of use raise the question of why t…
Levels of Representation in Discourse Relations
Accessibility in Text and Discourse Processing
Accessibility is one of the most important challenges at the intersection of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies of text and discourse processing. Linguists have shown how linguistic indicators of referential coherence show a systematic pattern: Longer linguistic forms (like full lexical NPs) tend to be used when referents are relatively low accessible, shorter forms (pronouns and zero anaphora) are used when referents are highly accessible. …
Differences in Process and Process-Product Relations in L2 Writing
This study examines whether writers vary how they write under influence of the changing task situation when writing in a second language (L2) and, if so, whether differences in the way they write are related to variations in text quality. Twenty first year students wrote four texts each in their L2 (English) under think-aloud conditions. The analysis focused on four cognitive activities: Reading the assignment and sources, Planning, Generating id…
Coherence Marking, Prior Knowledge, and Comprehension of Informative and Persuasive Texts: Sorting Things Out
Coherence plays a central role when readers construct meaning from a text. Previous research has shown how coherence marking affects text processing and representation. However, this effect seems to depend on reader's prior knowledge of the text content: Low knowledge readers benefit from coherence marking, whereas high knowledge readers benefit from a more implicit text (CitationMcNamara & Kintsch, 1996). Because this interaction was not consist…
The Forewarning Effect of Coherence Markers in Persuasive Discourse: Evidence From Persuasion and Processing
Several studies showed how coherence markers, like connectives and lexical cue phrases, influence the processing and representation of informative text. Although discourse analysts have repeatedly argued that coherence markers influence the processing of persuasive text as well, there is hardly any empirical evidence for this idea. This article reports on 2 experiments investigating the possible forewarning effect of coherence marking: When coher…
Causality in verbs and in discourse connectives: Converging evidence of cross-level parallels in Dutch linguistic categorization
The acquisition order of coherence relations: On cognitive complexity in discourse
The emergence of Dutch connectives; how cumulative cognitive complexity explains the order of acquisition
Before they are three years old, most children have started to build coherent discourse. This article focuses on one important linguistic device children have to learn: connectives. The main questions are: Do connectives emerge in a fixed order? And if so, how can this order be explained? In line with Bloom et al. (1980) we propose to explain similarities in the development in terms of cumulative cognitive complexity: complex relations are acquir…
Parental input and connective acquisition: A growth curve analysis
In this study, the influence of parental input on the acquisition of discourse connectives was investigated. Three factors were hypothesized to play a role in contributing to the course of language acquisition: first, an increase in age, and hence, an increase in conceptual abilities; second, short-term frequency effects (effects of parental input in the space of one recording); and third, long-term frequency effects (effects of the cumulative pa…
How grammatical and discourse factors may predict the forward prominence of referents: Two corpus studies
One of the ways in which discourse coheres is by means of repeated reference to entities. Theoretical accounts of referential coherence propose heuristics for the interpretation of referential expressions, which are especially important when there is more than one potential antecedent. One of the most explicit accounts is provided by Centering Theory (Grosz et al., Computational Linguistics 21: 203–225, 1995). Using features such as grammatical s…
Discovering domains – On the acquisition of causal connectives
Agree or Disagree? Cognitive Processes in Answering Contrastive Survey Questions
Survey designers have long assumed that respondents who disagree with a negative question (“This policy is bad.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale) will agree with an equivalent positive question (“This policy is good.”: Yes or No; 2-point scale). However, experimental evidence has proven otherwise: Respondents are more likely to disagree with negative questions than to agree with positive ones. To explain these response effects for contrastive questions…
Absolutely relative or relatively absolute? The linguistic behavior of gradable adjectives and degree modifiers
Causal Coherence Relations and Levels of Discourse Representation
This study focused on the cognitive representation of causal coherence relations linguistically marked with the connective because. This article investigated whether these local causal relations are represented both at the level of the textbase and the situation model. Following earlier studies investigating the psychological validity of levels of discourse representation, this study used a sentence recognition paradigm in which the connective us…
Psychology (54 works) · Linguistics (50 works) · Computer Science (40 works) · Mathematics (28 works) · Cognitive psychology (27 works) · Philosophy (27 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (26 works) · Epistemology (20 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (19 works) · Philosophy (19 works)