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<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <Paper uid="C88-1044"> <Title>On the Generation and Interpretation of Demonstrative Expressions*</Title> <Section position="5" start_page="216" end_page="216" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> (6) GIVENNESS IIIERARCIIY: </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> in focus --> activated --> slmred --> identifiable it that, this fllat N the N this N</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="6" start_page="216" end_page="2117" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 40 CRITIQUE OF CLAIMS IN TIlE LITERATURE. </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> Focus Shift. Observations regarding the focus shift functiou of demonstratives follow naturally from the theory outlined above given two additional, but uncontroversial assumptions -- that pronominal it is necessarily unstressed and that the overwhelming majority of definite noun phrases are not only uniquely identifiahle, but shared. As noted above, the prinlary distinction between demonstrative pronouns and unstressed personal pronouns is that the referents of the latter must not only be activated, but in focus.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> A pronominal whose referent is not currently in focus is necessarily stressed (cf. Hirschbcrg and Pierrehumbert 1986).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> Since it is necessarily nnstressed, the only third person singular neuter pronominals available for focus shift are the demonstratives that and this. This accounts for the distribution of that versus it noted by Linde (1979) as well as the uses of that noted by Reichman. Use of that in referring to previous statements (also noted by both these authors) is just a special case of focus shift, since the focus of attention at the point &quot;after a statement is made is typically not the statement itself. However, our data does not support Sidner's (1983) claim that this but not that is used for focus movement. Exatnplcs illustrating the focus shift function of pronominal this and that include the following: (7) K i: And..So what he DID was ...came in, set up the free...</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> 2: and then he nlade wassail, with rum in it'? 3: And..made it in coffee cans and heated it on the stove in the graduate lounge.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> A 4: Oh, gee.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> K 5: And this was the solstice tree.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> lu (7), tile topic and hence the focus of attention in K5 is the tree, which is activated by its mention in K1 thus licensing tile lThere is some confusion in tile literature resulting from the fact that tile term 'focus' has been used in two distinct and at least partly opposite ways (cf Ilaji~.bv~ 1987). We use 'in focus' to refer to tile psychological notion of focus of attention (tlaji~ovgs focUSAl) and 'linguistic focus' to lefer to tile point of linguistic prominence in tim sentence (the comment).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="7"> use of a pronominal. However, since it is not in focus in K2, K3, and A4, the reference to it in K5 constitutes a focus shift and thus requires a slxessed demonstrative form. Note that since the tree was speaker activated, either this or that could be used. (8) N 1: I like the poor dog who was buried six times in one day! K 2: Oh. That must, that must be a story that comes from the Second Minnesota history, 3: because that didn't appear in the, in the ah diary, null 4: so it must have come from somewhere, In (8), the topic and hence focus of K2 is the story.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="8"> Since the story is activated but not in focus in N1 (the focus of attention in N1 is stories that N likes), reference to the story in K2 constitutes a focus shift and thus requires a stressed demonstrative. Note that the story continues to be topic (in focus) in K3 and K4 and that in K3, an unstressed pronominal it could have been used instead of that.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="9"> (9) N 1: &quot;Bob loves Mary&quot;, 2: and someone else wrote &quot;Mary loves Jim&quot; 3: and I wrote &quot;Jim loves Bob&quot;! (laughter) 4: It was three different handwritings, three different people.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="10"> K 5: Yeah, that's good.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="11"> (9) illustrates the use of that to refer to a previous statement or utterance. Since that refers to the topic of K5, the story activated in N1-4 (but not in focus), use of that constitutes a focus shift. The focus shift function of determiner that (cf. Reichman 1984) can be explained as a consequence of Grice's maxim of quantity, specifically don't be more informative than necessary (cf. Grice, 1975). Since the overwhelming majority of definite noun phrases refer to entities that are shared, use of a demonstrative determiner as opposed to the less restrictive definite article in most instances carries little additional information. Thus a demonstrative determiner is generally used only when the signalling of shared familiarity has some additional communicative function. This is the case when there is a shift in focus, as in (10) and (11), since a focus shift always entails a shift in topic and topics are necessarily shared (cf. Gundel 1985).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="12"> In the particular case of (10), there is not enough information encoded in the noun phrase itself to allow the addressee to uniquely identify the referent. Thus a demonstrative (as opposed to a definite article) is required in order to link the referent up with entities shared as a result of immediate discourse context. In (1 lb) on the other hand, the demonstrative functions simply to signal a focus shift and therefore a definite article would be equally appropriate.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="13"> (10) a. John, this speech was a magnificent triumph for the President. He showed he could stay awake for twelve whole minutes. He showed that he could speak every word off of his teleprompter, even the long ones. But the speech doesn't have any chance of putting the scandal behind him, because the scandal is not about mistakes, as he said, and it's not about mismanagement, as the Tower Commission said. It is about a betrayal of principles, it's about lying, and it's about breaking the law.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="14"> b. And those issues remain. \[McLaughlin 3/6/87\].</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="15"> (11) a. These incredibly small magnetic bubbles are the vanguard of a new generation of ultradense memory-storage systems.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="16"> b. These systems are extremely rugged: c. they are resistant to radiation and are nonvolatile.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="17"> Contrast. The contrastive function of demonstratives, like the focus shift function, is related to the fact that contrast is marked by stress and pronominal it cannot carry stress. Moreover, contrast may be just a special case of focus shift, since a eontrastive noun phrase always brings into focus other entities with which it is being contrasted, as illustrated in (12): (12) a. In both cycle steal mode and DPC, the attachmeni feature...responds with a condition code.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="18"> b. For commands that do not require interrupts (that is, commands executed under DPC), the eonditi~m code provides current device status information.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="19"> c. For commands that require executiou in cycle steal mode followed by an inten'upt request, this first condition code provides information concerning acceptance of the command by the attachment feature.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="20"> d. Upon interrupt servicing by the processor, the at tachment feature provides a second condition code and an interrupt word.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="21"> Thus, the referent of thisfirst condition code in (12c) is already in focus since it is also the topic of (12b). However, ,,dnce the use of this noun phrase brings into tbcus contrasting condition codes (cf. a second condition code in (12d)) it is not only contrastive, but constitutes an implicit focus shift as well Proximity. The speaker-activated condition on this predicts correctly that both this and that can comment upon a speaker's own prior remark as in examples (7) and (10) respectively, but only that can be used to comment upon the remarks of another speaker, as illustrated by example (9).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="22"> The same condition also explains why this is used for extralinguistic objects relatively close to the speaker and that for those relatively further away as in (13), and why the interval de ~ noted by determiner this includes speech time, while that tends to be associated with some time prior to speech time as in (14) This is so because speaker-activated means not only linguistically activated but activated within the speaker's context space. (13) N: This tastes like water. This tastes like THAT! Waita minute--the stuff that's $1.99 for two quarts hastes a- the same as one that's $2.07 for a fifth.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="23"> (14) K: There he was that hairy hound from Buo dapest/Never leaving us alone./Never have I ever known/a ruder pest Special Effects. As seen in the diagram in (6), each of the referential statuses is also correlated as a necessary condition for a different type of definite reference. Since the statuses are implicationally related, reference with a particular form will generally imply appropriateness of reference with all forms associated with a status higher on the hierarchy, but not vice-versa. Thus, pronominal that in (13) may be replaced with that wine and these systems in (llb) can be replaced with the systems. However, not all cases of the N are replaceable with that N, as illustrated in (2) and (3); and not all cases of that N are replaceable with that., as illustrated in (3) and (4).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="24"> The maxim of quantity would dictate that speakers will use the strongest possible form, i.e. will signal the most information as is relevant regarding the givenness status of the entity in question. The same maxim predicts that speakers would not use a stronger form than necessary in a given situation, i.e. they will not signal more information than is appropriate. Violation in either direction will often result in a special effect or implicature, as in (15), where the use of this as opposed to the equally appropriate the conveys an effect of solidarity: (15) Gov. D (from videotapel: I've got the energy to ran this marathon, the slrength to run this country, the experience to manage our government, and the values to lead our people. \[McLaughlin, 3/20/871 We already noted that use of a demonstrative determiner often has a special effect, such as signalling a topic shift, because virtually all definite NPs are also shared, and thus demonstrative determiners do not normally convey much more infommtion than would be conveyed by the definite article. Similarly, in cases where the referent is not activated, determiner that acts as an ove~ signal to the addressee to search long term memoxy for the referent, as in (16): (16) A: Yet* can get those little magic fi~ger jnbbies ihat tell you when ~o water ~t. They're only $10 or soumthing.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="26"> The distdUt~tion of demonstrative types difli.qs acco, ding to gem:e, as ~;cen in Table 1 (See lfedheyl,, flnthCOming, ibr more (m these gC/ we~.) Thus, ti>r example, the relative percentage of pronontinal that appears to be gJ,:atcr ill multi-pmticipant oral communication d~an in written comntuni~atkm. The casual co,lversatiom; *,rid electronic specification documents represent the r,=sl~ctive c~.iremes on tiffs sca/e~ ~ha~ ~hat N this this N Total Other Speaker's Remarksdeg A large proportion of pronominal that in the casual conversations is due to its use for refer.. ence to an immediately preceding contribution of another conversational pardcipm~t. For an example see 0) above.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="27"> As noted above, pronominal and determiner this require that the referent be speaker-activated. Thus we would expect to find that used extensively in any nmltiple-participant discourse, such as casaal conversation. While, we do have five exceptions to this gene,:alization, where this is used to refer to an entity activated by tt,: addressee, all of these are clarification questions re questing re:,'erent identification, perhaps conveying polite intention to not iaten'upt, as in (17): (17) iq: So yesterday I finished up the day's work and put it in gear and nothing happened. The cable for the trmlsmission ....</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="28"> M Is this your car? N: No. Truck. The old, beat up, lousy van I have to drive.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="29"> E~g~'aling~dstie ~'efereneeo While tile linguistic or extralinguistk status of the referent is irrelevant for predicting the form of a 1err,ring expression, this status does differ across genres. For obvious reasons, extraiinguistic reference occurs primarily in face-to4ace interaction, (18) is an example showing the use of tha* ~ for shifthag tile focus onto an extralinguistic entity, fblk~wed by subsequent reference using it'. Note that activation is accomplish~.,d here by a gesture: (18) 1( Wt,at is that, Beethoven whaL on that teeshirL N 1 think iUs the Ninth, isn't it.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="30"> K. Number Three. lafler reading it\] N. Oh it is.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="31"> Renfinder thatdeg Since determiner that does not require actiw~tlon of the referent, but only that it be shared, it can be used to rote, to entities that art: not present in the irrmmdiate discourse context, as in (19).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="32"> (19) K: I realized something that seems significant to me ahout George.. that in the, in the fall, he... as everyone else, he wears ....</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="33"> N: \[Clothes.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="34"> A: \[!.eaters.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="35"> K: No. \[Those ldnd of tennis shoes that are expensive,: A: \[Boots.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="36"> N: Adidas.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="37"> A: \[Adidas.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="38"> K: \[Adidas, ok.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="39"> As notcd above, that N is sometimes used as an explicit signal to the hearer to search memory for the referent. One would expect such signals to be most common in interactions between individuals with shm'ed personal experiences, so it is not smprising that they would occur fi'equently in castml conversations between family menlbers. Typically such phrases include a relative clause specifying additional information to aid in the search and are often embedded in a request for confirmation that the referent gas indeed been located.. Since the referent is shared but not activated, it frequently occurs in left-dislocated constructions which have tile lunction of introducing or reintroducing a topic into the discourse. (eL Keenan and Schieffelin. 1976)</Paragraph> <Section position="1" start_page="2117" end_page="2117" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 5.2 Televised Discussions. The televised discussion </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> was a videotaped episode of The McLaughlin Group (initial transcript obtained from the Federal News Service). This genre is similar to the casual conversations in being spoken and multi.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> pmticipant, but differs in degiee of fi)rmality and spontaneity and m awareness of an audience. Four journalists participate in a sttucttned discussion about current affairs under tile control of a moderator As shown in Table 3, most of demonstratives are pronominal that, as extxzctcd in interactive discourse.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> that that N this flds N Total Discourse topic this. The televised discussions are distinguished from the casual conversations by the frequent use of this to refer to non-speaker activated entities. Such uses contradict our claim that this&quot; must be speaker-activated. To account for such examples, we suggest that a distinction be made between inclusive and exclusive speaker space, in the case of local discourse segments, speaker space often excludes the addressee, but with higher-level discourse topics, which are often shm'ed, speaker space includes the addressee. In such cases, which are characteristic of highly sl'uctured interactions, this' may be used for something which was not initially activated by the speaker. In (20), reference is made to the explicit discourse topic of' tlm segment, Gorbachev's decision not to cancel the smnnfit: (20) G: The business of trying to play Kremlinologist on this decision, I think it's simpler than that. I really think that Reagan looked very, very vulnerable at that time. It was the thing for Gorbacbev to do, and he just misread it. \[McLaughlin, tO/30/87,21\]</Paragraph> </Section> <Section position="2" start_page="2117" end_page="2117" type="sub_section"> <SectionTitle> 5.3 Planned, non-interactive genres. Tables 4-6 show </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> the distribution of demonstratives in newspaper stories (New York Times &quot;Week in Review&quot; section, 6-11/87); a University of Minnesota administrative planning document; and an electronic specification document supplied by Control Data Corporation.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> A characteristic of these non-interactive, written genres is a relatively high percentage of determiner this. This may be partly attributable to the fact that everything that is activated is speaker activated. In addition, there are malay time expressions with this in the newspaper articles and metadiscourse references such as this document in the planning document. Unlike the discourse-topic use in the televised discussions, referents of determiner this in the written genres are typically activated in tile immediately preceding sentence and constitute a focus shift.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> that that N this this N Total 'Fable 6. Demonstratives in specification document Informative this. A use of determiner this expressions which is found exclusively in the non-interactive genres is to informatively redescribe a referent. In the newspaper stories, these are typically redescriptions of topical referents (already in focus) which would have been specifiable with an unstressed pronoun if the extra material had not been included, as in (22). Although speakers generally use the strongest possible form of referring expression, here a weaker form is being used for a special reason, namely to introduce new information in the noun part.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> (22) Nearly lost in the polemic was Judge Kennedy himself. That was ironic, because in many ways this former small-city lawyer with the stable marriage and three attractive children and the fine reputatiou appears to personify just those values that made the image of Ronald Reagan so attractive after the convulsions of the 1960's and 1970's. \[New York Times, 11/15/87, 4:ll Informative this is used in the electronic specification document for obligatory demonstrative reference to the referent of a heading which is activated but not yet in focus, as in (24).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> Note that here an unstressed pronoun would not be possible.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> 1The rows n-0, n-I and n-2+ refer to the distance between the demonstrative expression and its antecedent.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="6"> (24) Pg_!I~ The attachment leaturc sends this inbound tag to the Series/1 channel controls to indicate a poll capture for interrupt se~wicing or nonburst cycle steal servicing. It is not used to signal a burst transfer.</Paragraph> </Section> </Section> <Section position="7" start_page="2117" end_page="2117" type="metho"> <SectionTitle> 6. IMPLICATIONS FOR ALGORITItMS </SectionTitle> <Paragraph position="0"> The previous sections Woposed constraints on demonstratives and discussed their use in different genres. This section outlines components of a natural language system that would capture the relevant notions of shared familiarity, activation and form; and explores possibilities for incorporating these into current dis~.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="1"> course-processing algorithms. 1 Shared familiarity. At minimum, a computational rrtodel of shared familiarity requires maintenance of a user discourse his-. tory in which a record is maintained of all entities referenced in conversations with a particular user. Thus, for any entity in its knowledge base, the natural language system knows whether/bat entity has been discussed before (shared familiarity) or not (familiarity unknown). Only in the former case can a definite demonstrative expression be used. The recognition of discourse units (e.g. speech acts of Allen 1983) and the aelations between them, e.g. conversational moves (Reichman 1985), rhetorical predicates (McKeown 1985, Mann and Thompson 1986) are also important in demonstrative resolution. These require a sophisticated user model which keeps a record of beliefs and intentions of discourse participants. While such a model could be incorporated into existing discourse structure frameworks (e.g.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="2"> Grosz and Sidner 1986), no specific proposals to account for shared familiarity have yet been advanced (but see Sparck Jones 1986).</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="3"> Activation. An adequate model of activation must isolate that subset of shared entities which is activated at any given point in the discourse. This subset includes entities referenced in the immediately preceding sentence, entities present in the immediate spatio-temporal context of the discourse, and beliefs and intentions relevant to the cmTent discourse segment. Many currem discourse algorithms which function at the local level of discourse structure can be used to model activation due to the immediately preceding sentence. For example, Haji~ov~i (1987) points oat that elements in McKeown's (1985) potential focus list can be equated with activated elements. Similarly, in the current centering paradigm (Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein 1986, Brennan, Friedman and Pollard 1987) elements in the set of forward looking centers can also be considered activated. At the global level, Sidner and Grosz (1986) describe a model of discourse structure which indicates currently activated beliefs and intentions at any * given point in a discourse.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="4"> In Focus. Elements in focus are those which are most highly activated. 2 These always include at least the topic of the sentence, any high-level topics (including those not overtly represented in the sentence), and under certain as yet poorly understood conditions, the referent of the linguistic focus. In the cut'-. rent centering paradigm, the topic of the sentence is equated to the backward looking center (ef. Joshi and Weinstein 1981). In this l Kryk (1987) presents an algorithur for demo~lstrative interpretation in Polish and English based on Sidner's 1983 algorithms. Kryk's algorithm, bowever, does not appear to be explicit enough to serve as a basis for implementation. Moreover, some of the algorithm's predictions, for example that the demonstrative that is never used fbr non-copresent extralinguistic reference whereas non-copresent this is u,':ed only for exla'alinguistic reference, are inaccurate.</Paragraph> <Paragraph position="5"> 2Although our notion of activation is similar to Haji~ovlt (1987), it differs in that she considers the linguistic f~us to be more highly activated tha~t the topic. We feel that our assumptions about tiegrces of activation me more compatible wifli the fact, noted also by llaji~&quot;ovfi, that topic maintains iir~ activation longer than does the referents of the linguistic focus.</Paragraph> </Section> class="xml-element"></Paper>