Lexical and contextual cue effects in discourse expectations: Experimenting with German 'zwar...aber' and English 'true/sure...but'

Abstract

Existing literature shows that readers and listeners rapidly adjust their expectations about likely discourse continuations through discourse markers, as well as through other linguistic and extra-linguistic cues. However, it is unclear whether (i) the facilitative effects of various (extra-)linguistic cues differ in quality and (ii) whether the effects interact with one another in any principled manner. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments on concessive constructions in German and English wherein optional lexical and/or contextual cues appeared ahead of the concessive discourse marker. The results demonstrate that readers can use both types of cues to anticipate the upcoming discourse relation. Our study thus provides novel evidence for expectation-driven accounts of discourse processing and elucidates the functions of discourse signals. Furthermore, the results also show that the role that a type of cues plays is subject to cross-linguistic variation.

Limits to the Rational Production of Discourse Connectives

“…These discourse expectations are not only abstract concepts (which may be more difficult to juggle in memory), but they also are not present in the visible context of the interaction. The results from Yung and Demberg (2018) and pretest 3 demonstrate that speakers can choose connectives in order to avoid misinterpretations on the side of the listener, pretest 2 further demonstrated that the stimuli do give rise to expectations, and earlier work has provided ample evidence that listeners generate discourse expectations during comprehension (Sanders and Noordman, 2000;Rohde et al, 2011;Canestrelli et al, 2013;Rohde and Horton, 2014;Xiang and Kuperberg, 2015;Scholman et al, 2017;Van Bergen and Bosker, 2018;Schwab and Liu, 2020;Köhne-Fuetterer et al, 2021). However, there is no direct evidence that speakers also simulate the discourse expectations that listeners would generate.…”

“…However, the sensitivity to such contextual signal was shown to vary between different people: while some showed very high sensitivity, others seemed to ignore the signal, or not be able to take it into account Scholman et al (2020). Furthermore, Schwab and Liu (2020) found that contrasting information in the context, e.g., "he likes to run outdoors. He has a treadmill in the living room..." facilitates the processing of a concession relation.…”

“…In particular, we test people's discourse connective production choice in a setting where the possible interpretations of the listener are not limited to a specific set and are not explicitly available to the speaker. Instead, we manipulate discourse expectations of the listener, since people are sensitive to various signals in the context and build up expectation about the upcoming coherence relation (Lascarides et al, 1992;Kehler et al, 2008;Rohde et al, 2011;Rohde and Horton, 2014;Scholman et al, 2017Scholman et al, , 2020Schwab and Liu, 2020). In this more natural setting, showing that people prefer unambiguous DCs when there is a higher risk of misinterpretation by the listener (because the expectation is not in line with the actual ending) would substantially strengthen the empirical evidence for the rational account.…”

Lexical and Structural Cues to Discourse Processing in First and Second Language

“…Scholman et al (2020) focused on list signals (e.g., a few, multiple) and found that participants produced list continuations when prompted by the signal, and that this sensitivity was especially strong for participants with a high exposure to print. Schwab and Liu (2020) looked at the true. .…”

“…In natural language, this type of repetition frequently occurs in contrastive relations, although it is not exclusive to contrast (e.g., subordination environments, Sturt et al, 2010 ). The effect of non-connective cues on processing has only recently been investigated with native speakers (e.g., Grisot and Blochowiak, 2019 ; Crible and Pickering, 2020 ; Schwab and Liu, 2020 ) and shows interesting interactions with the connective already present in the relation. These studies focus on single pairs of connectives (e.g., and vs. but ), and comparisons across various types of connectives are still lacking.…”