Discourse Markers Activate Their, Like, Cohort Competitors

Abstract

Speech in everyday conversations is riddled with discourse markers (DMs), such as well, you know, and like. However, in many lab-based studies of speech comprehension, such DMs are typically absent from the carefully articulated and highly controlled speech stimuli. As such, little is known about how these DMs influence online word recognition. The present study specifically investigated the online processing of DM like and how it influences the activation of words in the mental lexicon. We specifically targeted the cohort competitor (CC) effect in the Visual World Paradigm: Upon hearing spoken instructions to "pick up the beaker," human listeners also typically fixate-next to the target object-referents that overlap phonologically with the target word (cohort competitors such as beetle; CCs). However, several studies have argued that CC effects are constrained by syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and discourse constraints. Therefore, the present study investigated whether DM like influences online word recognition by activating its cohort competitors (e.g., lightbulb). In an eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm, we demonstrate that when participants heard spoken instructions such as "Now press the button for the, like . . . unicycle," they showed anticipatory looks to the CC referent (lightbulb) well before hearing the target. This CC effect was sustained for a relatively long period of time, even despite hearing disambiguating information (i.e., the /k/ in like). Analysis of the reaction times also showed that participants were significantly faster to select CC targets (lightbulb) when preceded by DM like. These findings suggest that seemingly trivial DMs, such as like, activate their CCs, impacting online word recognition. Thus, we advocate a more holistic perspective on spoken language comprehension in naturalistic communication, including the processing of DMs.

Bernd Heine, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva & Haiping Long, The rise of discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xi + 308.

“…Given how complex it is to grasp the discursive functions of DMs in bilingual and monolingual speech, such a concise, well-structured description is a very valuable contribution to linguistics, but also to other fields, such as psychology, and sociology. Further discourse analysis and psycholinguistic work could also have been cited to substantiate and measure some of the claims (Rasenberg, Rommers & Van Bergen 2020, Bosker, Badaya & Corley 2021, but the focused style of the chapter makes it very pleasant to read. As far as the sociological dimension is concerned, I wonder whether it is necessary to use the terms 'socio-economic values' and 'emblematic status', instead of referring to the more established concepts of 'overt and covert prestige' (Labov 1966).…”