1. Accenting and Information Status
Julia Hirschberg
CS 6998
11/20/2018

2. Issues What sorts of information status are useful to distinguish?
Given/new
Contrast
Topic/comment
Theme/rheme
Are all these different? How are they related? Over what domains are they defined? How do they relate to other linguistic phenomena?
11/20/2018

3. Defining Given/New Halliday: Given: Recoverable from context
New: Not recoverable
Prince ‘81:
New: Brand-new or unused
Given: evoked (textually or situationally) or inferable
Prince ‘92:
11/20/2018

4. Discourse-old, discourse-new Hearer-old, hearer-new
11/20/2018

5. Brown ‘83: How does accent related to given/new?
Speech elicitation in lab
Scottish English
Prince ‘81 derived categories
Results:
Brand-new information accented
Note: new entity/old expression
Inferable information accented
Evoked information deaccented
11/20/2018

6. Bard’99: Givenness, deaccenting and intelligibility
Speech elicited in lab
Glasgow English Map Task
Given: repeated mention (within dialogue vs. across dialogue)
Does structural similarity --> deaccenting --> less intelligibility (Terken & Hirschberg ‘94)
Weird definition of deaccenting (includes difference in boundary tone)
11/20/2018

7. Deaccenting rare in repeated mentions (within and across dialogues)
Results:
Deaccenting rare in repeated mentions (within and across dialogues)
Second mentions less intelligible whether deaccented or not (tho more change when deaccented)
Structural difference doesn’t account for deaccenting
But same structure repetitions rare
11/20/2018

8. Conclusion: Lab experiments don’t generalize?
11/20/2018

9. Next Week Read emotion articles (linked from syllabus)
Bring 3 discussion questions to class
Projects:
Project status report and annotated bibliography due after spring break
11/20/2018