Effects of structural prominence on anaphora: the case of relative clauses
نویسندگان
چکیده
In this paper we present a corpus study and a sentence completion experiment designed to evaluate the discourse prominence of entities evoked in relative clauses. The corpus study shows a preference for referring expressions after a sentence final relative clause to select a matrix clause entity as their antecedents. In the sentence completion experiment, we evaluated the potential effect of head type (restrictive relative clauses are contrasted with non-restrictives and restrictives with an indefinite head). The experimental data show that the matrix clause subject referent is strongly preferred as an antecedent, thus strengthening the conclusion that entities evoked in relative clauses are less salient than their main clause counterparts. Some remaining issues are discussed.
منابع مشابه
Relative Importance in English and Persian: Thematization or Tonic Prominence?
There are two common ways to assign relative importance in spoken language: tonic prominence and thematization. The former is expressing the main points of information units in speech (Halliday, 1994), and the latter is putting an element at the beginning of a clause. This study explores how relative importance is realized in English and Persian. It also investigates how advanced Persian learne...
متن کاملThe comprehension of Relative Clauses within Movement-based hypothesis in L1 and L2: the Case of Tati and English
متن کامل
Prosody and Discourse Structure: Issues and Experiments
In this report we summarize the approach of examining structural relations between prosody and discourse semantics by means of experimental phonetics.1 We sketch the computational basis of the project, its methodological setting, and we present the results of three experiments on: • the role of local prominence in disambiguation of focal adverbs • the role of relative prominence in anaphora res...
متن کاملPersian Speakers’ Recognition of English Relative Clauses: The Effects of Enhanced Input vs. Explicit Feedback Types
Despite consensus in focus on form (FOF) instruction over the facilitative role of noticing, controversy has not quelled over ways of directing EFL learners’ attention towards formal features via implicit techniques like input-enhancement or explicit metacognitive feedback and interactive peer-editing on the output they produce. This quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of input enh...
متن کاملThe effect of Code switching on the Acquisition of Object Relative Clauses by Iranian EFL Learners
This study attempted to investigate the impact of teacher’s code-switching on the acquisition of a problematic grammatical structure, namely, object relative clauses, by intermediate EFL learners. Moreover, a secondary objective of the study was to determine the EFL learners’ attitudes and opinions regarding the effectiveness of teacher’s code-switching in their learning of a specific aspect of...
متن کامل