FACTORS CONTRIBUTING
TO THE SALIENCE OF REFERENTS
SOFIANA CHIRIACESCU
1. INTRODUCTION
Verbal communication is a complex phenomenon and one of its central components is referring to entities. A
speaker could not utter The dog is barking unless the expression the dog would refer to or would be
correlated according to some system to a certain conceptual or physical entity, in this particular case, a dog.
When referring, speakers have to choose among a multitude of referential expressions which are arranged on
a scale of explicitness or “knowness”, ordered from most definite or determined forms to less specified ones
(Bolinger 1977, Givón 1983, Ariel 1990, Birner & Ward 1998, Abbott 2001). For example, when we want to
talk about a dog, we could refer to it with different types of referring expressions, ranging from highly
elaborated ones, as the dog who suffers from cirrhosis of the liver, to more attenuated ones as Bobi, this dog
or even he. Similar referential options can be made in other languages besides English as well, even though
the types of referring expressions do not always coincide cross-linguistically. Romanian, for example, uses
more clitic pronouns as îl (Masc.Sg.Acc) and o (Fem.Sg.Acc) and zero anaphors where English and German
would use strong pronouns.
This paper concentrates on the inter- and intra-sentential factors that play a role in pronoun comprehension,
as not any type of referring expression can be used at any particular time in a conversation, as examples (1a)
and (1b) show.
(1)
(a)
(b)
Bobi1 barked at Gora2. Bobi1 didn’t want to stop. Bobi1 was aggressive towards Gora2 the
other day as well.
John1 met Peter2 in the park. He?1/2 complained about being very tired.
In the second and third sentence of example (1a), the use of the proper name Bobi seems superfluous,
unmotivated and unnatural as a more attenuated type of referring expression is expected, whereas the
pronoun he in the second sentence of example (1b) is ambiguous, as it could refer to both male individuals
introduced in the first sentence. The question that arises is on what grounds do speakers choose one type of
referring expression over the other so that their hearers can successfully identify the intended referent? More
precisely, given the pool of existing types of referring expressions available within a language, what
assumptions does a speaker have to make while referring so that his/ her listener will be able to identify the
referent he has in mind?
The present paper is structured as follows. In the first part, I will review the four main factors that have been
shown to contribute to the salience of the referents, i.e. givenness, syntactic prominence, semantic
prominence and recency or immediacy. In the second part, I will argue in favour of a differentiation between
the likelihood of pronominalization and the likelihood of subsequent mention (Kehler 2008, Chiriacescu & von
Heusinger 2010).
2. LOCAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE SALIENCE OF REFERENTS
Referential expressions are used to introduce and continue reference to entities with particular referential properties, but
also with discourse properties such as an activation level that affects their accessibility for reference with subsequent
anaphoric expressions. Here and throughout this paper I use the term salience for the property of information more
easily retrievable. In the following, I will review the four discourse factors usually mentioned when discussing the
salience of a referent, namely givenness, syntactic prominence, semantic prominence and recency or
immediacy. These factors most often refer to textual information that holds intersententially rather than
intrasententially. The discussion will follow the arguments presented in the literature, which focuses on
pronoun resolution, as pronouns in English have been sought of as reflecting a high amount of salience.
2.1
Givenness or old information
Many linguistic and psycholinguistic investigations (Chafe 1976, Prince 1981, Greene et al. 1994) showed
that more elaborated types of referring expressions are used for new and unmentioned entities, whereas less
elaborated types of referring expressions are usually chosen for old or given information. The two types of
referring expression in (2), i.e. a girl and she, display exactly this contrast. The first mention of the referent
is made by means of the indefinite noun phrase a girl, whereas the pronoun she in the second sentence refers
back to the subject referent, which represents the amount of given or old information.
(2)
A girl1 went to the seaside this morning. She1 was happy to be finally there.
The contrast between given and new information usually differentiates between the amount of information
that was explicitly introduced in the discourse (in contrast to implicitly introduced or inferred information).
Givenness as a characteristic of discourse referents gives us a superficial motivation for the way speakers
choose between a specified and a less specified type of referring expression. Whether a discourse entity way
explicitly mentioned in the previous discourse or not is neither sufficient nor necessary to describe the
contrast between salient and less salient information. For example, both Mary and John in (3a) are
introduced in the first sentence by means of proper names, which signal given or old information. However,
in the second sentence, a pronoun was chosen to refer back to Mary, whereas the second referent, John, was
mentioned by a more elaborated type of referring expression, i.e. the definite modified noun phrase the sun
tanned boy.
(3)
(a)
(b)
Mary1 went to the seaside and saw John2. She1 was very happy to see the sun tanned boy2.
A girl1 went to the seaside and saw a child2 in the cafe. She1 immediately recognized the
child2 [...].
In the same manner, the two referents in (3b), a girl and a child are introduced in the first sentence by means
of indefinite noun phrases, signalling hearer-new and discourse-new information. Even though both referents
were mentioned in the same way in the discourse, only the first referent, a girl is picked up in the following
sentence by a pronoun. It thus seems that some referents are more prone to be mentioned with reduced and
thus more salient types of referring expressions than others.
Moreover, consider a context in which my addressee knows that I have a dog that suffers of cirrhosis of the
liver. It seems very natural for my friend to ask sentence (4) as a conversation starter, even if the dog was not
mentioned in the present discourse.
(4)
How is he today?
On the basis of shared knowledge or common ground (Stalnaker 1974) between speaker and hearer, the
hearer of sentence (4) would be able to infer the intended referent. Shorter types of referring expressions
depend not only on explicitly introduced referents, but are sensitive to other forms of knowledge (i.e. world
knowledge, situational knowledge, discourse knowledge, among others) as well. It can be concluded that the
dichotomy between given and new information is not sufficient to predict which referent is more accessible
at a given time in the discourse. Nor can this distinction predict which referent will be mentioned again in the
discourse and what type of referring expression will be used for it.
2.2
Syntactic prominence bias or surface features
Many studies showed that arguments encoded in grammatical subject position tend to be perceived as more
prominent or salient than arguments realized as direct objects or obliques (Givón 1983, Brennan et al. 1987,
Gordon et al. 1993, Lambrecht 1994, Arnold 1998). Thus, pronouns and other reduced types of referring
expression (e.g. zero anaphors, clitic pronouns, gaps, etc.) are often used to refer back to the grammatical
subject of a sentence, as in (5b) rather than to the direct object referent as in (5d).
(5)
(a)
Alex called Tom to share in the great news.
(b)
(c)
(d)
He told Tom that he has to take a deep breath first.
?He told Alex that he has to take a deep breath first.
Tom told him that he has to take a deep breath first.
Supporting evidence for the preference to use pronouns for the referents of grammatical subjects is provided
by psycholinguistic investigations as well. Clark and Card (1969) showed that in a sentence memory task,
grammatical subjects are recalled with more accuracy, and Givón (1983) showed that subjects are more
referentially persistent than non-subjects.
Furthermore, the salience of a referent mentioned in subject position is reflected by the grammatical position
of its anaphor. If the subsequent mention of a referent is realized in the same syntactic position (i.e. parallel
position), a pronoun referring to it is preferred (Arnold 1998, Ariel 2001, Kehler et al. 2007). Contrary to
Crawley, Stevenson & Kleinman’s (1990) claim that parallel grammatical functions are irrelevant for
understanding pronouns in discourse; several studies (Sheldon 1974, Gordon et al. 1993, Smyth 1994, Kehler
2002) showed that the interpretation of an anaphora is facilitated if its co-referential antecedent is found in
the same syntactic position. For example, the subject of sentence (5a) is mentioned in the continuation
sentence (5b) in the same grammatical position (i.e. subject), thus a pronoun referent is chosen to refer back
to the same referent. Taking up the direct object referent Tom in sentence (5a) with a pronoun in subject
position, as in (5c) is rendered infelicitous, as the two mentions do not occur in grammatical parallel
positions.
Research in the field (MacWhinney 1977, Gernsbacher & Shroyer 1989, Gordon et al. 1993, McDonald &
MacWhinney 1995) has argued that it is not only the subject position of referents which influences their
salience, but that the linear order of mention impacts the type of referring expression used as well. The first
mentioned referent in a sentence occupies a privileged place within the sentence, independently of its
grammatical function. In many languages, among others in English and Romanian, the first-mentioned
referent and the referent that occupies the grammatical subject position often coincide. For example, the
subject referent Alex in (5a) is the external argument (i.e. the subject of the sentence), and at the same time
the first mentioned referent in the sentence. Despite this correlation, research has shown (Kaiser & Trueswell
2008) that in cases in which these two positions can be kept apart, both forms have an influence upon
reference resolution. Consequently, first mentioned referents tend to be picked up by more attenuated type of
referring expressions, than other referents. Other syntactic constructions that are said to impact type of
referring expression used are topic positions in languages like Japanese (Walker et al. 1998, among others)
and the focus of clefts (Arnold 1998, Almor 1999).
2.3 Semantic prominence bias
Particular semantic or thematic roles can also be linked to the salience of a referent, as several studies
showed (Stevenson, Crawley & Kleinman 1994, McDonald & MacWhinney 1995, Arnold 1998, 2001,
Kehler 2002, Kehler et al. 2007). Stevenson et al. (1994) conducted several story completion experiments
and showed that referents with particular thematic roles were prone to be picked up by means of pronouns.
In transitive sentences, for example, in which the semantic roles Source and Goal are realized, discourse
participants often choose pronouns to mention the Goal referent again (given syntactically controlled
constructions). In Stevenson et al.’s study (1994), participants were given story fragment passages like in
(6a) and (6b) and were asked to add a continuation sentence to the initial story.
(6)
(a)
(b)
Goal-Source: Sarah took the cat from Rebecca. She_______
Source-Goal: Sarah passed the salt to Rebecca. She_______
The stories were continued with the pronoun she referring to Sarah rather than Rebecca in (6a), as Sarah is
not only the subject referent, but also bears the thematic role Goal. On the contrary, participants interpreted
the pronoun she as referring to the non-subject Goal Rebecca in sentence (5b). All in all, Stevenson et al.’s
(1994) study showed that the salience or prominence of a referent is influenced by its thematic role in in
addition to their syntactic position.
2.4 Recency
Linguistic and psycholinguistic research (Ariel 1990, Brennan 1995, Chafe 1976, Givón 1983, among
others) noted that recency of mention, or the distance between antecedent and anaphor influences anaphora
resolution. Recency can be measured by taking into account the last 20 clauses or more to the left of the
referent (Givón 1983, du Bois 1987) or only several clauses back, however, many studies acknowledge the
importance of the previous clause in reference resolution in comparison to referents mentioned in two or
three clauses back. Accordingly, recently mentioned referents tend to be picked up by less elaborated types
of referring expressions in the next sentence compared to referents which have been mentioned several
sentences back. In example (7), two referents are introduced in the discourse: Paul and a girl. Recency of
mention affects the referential form used to refer back to the second referent. In sentence (7a), the referent of
the girl is mentioned again in the immediately following sentence, thus a pronoun can be felicitously used to
refer back to her. In (7b), a sentence intervenes between the two co-referential expressions of a girl. Thus, a
lexical noun phrase is preferred for this position.
(7)
(a)
(b)
Paul1 met a girl2 in the park. He1 said to her2 that it would be nice to go and watch a movie.
Pau1 met a girl2 in the park. He1 was enthralled that it was so warm outside. He1 said to ?her2/
the girl2 that it would be nice to go and watch a movie.
Example (7) seems to indicate that if a referent has not been taken up for a longer period of time, its mental
representation looses in activation and referring back to it by means of a more explicit type of referring
expression is preferred. Furthermore, if an entity has not been mentioned for many sentences, other referents
that have been mentioned in the intervening text might compete for the same referential form. In other
words, competing referents might suppress previously mentioned referents (Gernsbacher & Shoyer 1989,
Gernsbacher 1990).
The characteristics discussed above, namely givenness, syntactic and semantic prominence and recency
impact the salience of a referent and thus the type of referring expression used to take it up in the subsequent
discourse. The data presented in Table 1 predict that a referent which conveys given information, which is
mentioned as a subject, bearing the semantic Goal role and which is mentioned in the immediately following
clause tends to be picked up by a less specified type of referring expression. On the contrary, a referent
mentioned in direct object position, which conveys new information and which is not mentioned in the
immediately following sentence will be less salient and will tend to be taken up by more specified types of
referring expressions.
Bias
Givenness
Syntactic prominence
Parallelism
Semantic prominence
Recency
Predictions
Old information> new information
Subject> Object> other
Parallel position> non-parallel position
Goal>Source
Recently mentioned> not recently mentioned
Table 1. Non-exhaustive list of local factors that may impact the type of referring expression
3. REFRENTIAL PERISTENCE
Most linguistic and psycholinguistic studies (Givón 1983, Ariel 1988, Gernsbacher & Shroyer 1989),
considered that the high salience of a referent is mirrored in its referential persistence as well. Thus, they
predicted that introducing concepts with pronouns makes those entities more salient or accessible for the
addressee, the same referents should be referred to more frequently in the subsequent discourse as well.
However, in a sentence-continuation experiment investigating the discourse prominence of differentially
marked direct objects in Romanian (Chiriacescu & von Heusinger 2010), it was shown that the two textual
characteristics of a referents should be kept apart. Pe-marked direct objects were (i) referentially more
persistent and (ii) tended to shift the current discourse topic (i.e. to become the grammatical subject) in the
subsequent discourse more often compared to their unmarked counterparts, however, despite these two
tendencies, which might point to the high salience of the pe-marked referents, the results of the same
experiment showed that there was no difference in the type of referring expression used to take up the two
referents. More concretely, both pe-marked and unmarked direct objects were mentioned by more explicit
types of referring expressions. This finding indicates the non-prominence of both types of direct objects.
Similar contradictory findings were reported in an experiment conducted by Stevenson et al. (1994) and in
Arnold’s (2001) Source-Goal experiment. Arnold, for example, found out that most references to the subject
(81%) of the sentence were pronominalized, whereas only 21% of references to the objects were mentioned
as pronouns. Rather unexpected, however, was the observation that the Goal referent was more likely
(85,6%) to be mentioned in the next continuation sentences than the Source (i.e. the subject) referent.
Such results point towards an explanation in which the likelihood of a referent to be mentioned again
and its probability to be mentioned with a particular type of referring expression in the subsequent discourse
should be kept apart. Indeed, in trying to account for Stevenson et al.’s (1994) seemingly contradictory
experimental results, Kehler et al. (2008) sketch out an explanation which differentiates between two types
of expectations, namely an expectation towards the subsequent mention of a referent and an expectation
concerned with the type of referring expression that a speaker would use to take up that referent again.
Kaiser (2010) observed a similar distinction that pertains to the likelihood of pronominalization on the one
hand and the likelihood of subsequent mention on the other hand.
These findings indicate that, from a discourse structuring point of view, a referent can be
characterized by at least two distinct dimensions, namely referential persistence on the one hand, and the
type of referring expression used to refer back to it, on the other hand. While it does not correlate with
pronominalization, pe-marking in Romanian indicates the referential intention of the speaker to take up the
referent again and thus impinge the hearer to expect more information about the referent marked in this way.
Recent psycholinguistic research has convincingly shown that statistical regularities are observed at different
levels of linguistic output, as for example at the phonetic level (Saffran et al. 1996) and at the syntactic level
(Elman 1993). All these studies bring favourable evidence for the fact that hearers identify frequency
patterns in order to predict what is likely to occur in the following context.
4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, I reviewed four factors that are mentioned in the psycholinguistic literature as indicators of
high salience. It was noted that a referent which represents old information (as opposed to new information),
which was/ will be mentioned more often, in a syntactic prominent position (e.g. subjects vs. direct objects,
the focus of clefts, etc.) and in a semantic prominent position (e.g. the Stimulus referent in a transitive event
with Stimulus and Experiencer roles) is associated with a high salience and generally correlates with the
speaker’s referential choice (in this case presumably a pronoun). Furthermore, based on several experimental
investigations, it was shown that the readiness to pronominalize a particular referent might not coincide with
its referential persistence value, which might be low. These findings strongly suggest two different, although
related, notions of salience: (i) a referential device for structuring the subsequent discourse and (ii) an
activation status that interacts with other competing concepts.
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FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE SALIENCE OF REFERENTS
(Abstract)
Referential expressions are used to introduce and continue reference to entities with particular referential properties, but
also with discourse properties such as an activation level that affects their salience for reference with subsequent
anaphoric expressions. This paper reviews different factors discussed in the linguistic and psycholinguistic literature
that contribute to the salience of referents. The picture that emerges by the end of this paper is that the referential
persistence of a referent and the type of referring expression used to refer back to the same referent might point in two
different directions. This view questions traditional approaches to salience that considered both factors as equal
indicators of a referent’s salience.
Institut für Linguistik/ Germanistik
Universität Stuttgart
Keplerstr. 17
D- 70174 Stuttgart
[email protected]