The Influence of Topic Status on Written and Spoken Sentence Production

Bibliographic Data

ID11273503
AuthorsH Wind Cowles, Wind Cowles (0000-0001-9489-0750, University of Florida, corresponding author), Victor S Ferreira (0000-0001-5694-974X, University of California San Diego)
Year2012
Volume49
Issue1
Pages1-28
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Processes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-853X • E-ISSN: 1532-6950
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0163853x.2011.635989
PMID22408281
PMCIDPMC3293154
OpenAlexW2059121527
LanguageEN
Citations received41
References cited27

Four experiments investigate the influence of topic status and givenness on how speakers and writers structure sentences. The results of these experiments show that when a referent is previously given, it is more likely to be produced early in both sentences and word lists, confirming prior work showing that givenness increases the accessibility of given referents. When a referent is previously given and assigned topic status, it is even more likely to be produced early in a sentence, but not in a word list. Thus, there appears to be an early mention advantage for topics that is present in both written and spoken modalities, but is specific to sentence production. These results suggest that information-structure constructs like topic exert an influence that is not based only on increased accessibility, but also reflects mapping to syntactic structure during sentence production

Information Structure · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Production (economics · Referent · Sentence · Word (group theory · Computer Science · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence

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