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<Paper uid="W97-1313">
  <Title>S ENTENTIAL PRONOUNS IN ENGLISH AND NORWEGIAN</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="88" end_page="88" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
IN FOCUS VS. ACTIVATED
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> According to Figure 1, we would expect sentential it 1 to be used appropriately only when the entity referred to is in the addressee's focus of attention, while 'that' or 'this' can be used whenever the entity is activated, regardless of whether or not it is also in focus. Since higher statuses imply all lower statuses, it should be possible to use the demonstrative pronouns that and this to refer to entities that have the status In Focus; but analyses of naturally * occurring discourse show that these forms are used primarily when the referent is activated, but not in focus. In the statistics presented in GHZ's 1993 paper, only one out of 33 occurrences of demonstrative pronouns in English referred to entities that had the status In Focus. GHZ explain this as the result of interaction of the Givenness Hierarchy with the first part of the Maxim of Quantity &amp;quot;Make your contribution as informative as required(for the current purpose of the exchange)&amp;quot; (Grice, 1975). That is, demonstrative pronouns convey a so-called scalar implieature: a weaker form conversationally implicates that a slxonger form does not obtain.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Thus, just as &amp;quot;I have two children&amp;quot; implicates that the speaker does not have more than two children, using a demonstrative form implicates that the referent of the expression does not have a status higher than activated, i.e. it is not in focus.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="88" end_page="89" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 SENTENTIAL PRONOUNS AND THE
IMPORTANCE OF SUBSEQUENT
MENTION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> According to GHZ, the entities in focus at a given point in the discourse will be that partially-ordered subset of activated entities which are likely to be continued as topics of subsequent utterances. Thus, endties in focus at the beginning of an utterance generally include at least the topic of the preceding utterance, as well as any still-relevant higher-order topics. To the extent that syntactic structure and prosodic form encode topic-comment structure and 1The terms 'sentential it' or 'sentence pronoun' are used to refer to a personal pronoun whose antecedent may be a sentence, or, more generally: a pronoun that refers to a higher-order entity like a fact or a proposition.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> serve to highlight constituents whose referents the speaker wants to bring into focus, membership in the in-focus set is partially determined by linguistic form.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> For example, the subject of a matrix sentence is highly likely to bring an entity into focus, whereas this is not the case for elements in $ubordinate clauses and prepositional phrases (cf. the centering and focusing algorithms of Grosz, Joshi, &amp; Weinstein 1986), Since objects in the world can naturally he referred to with expressions that function as a syntactic subject or object, they can obtain the In Focus status after being mentioned only once. A situation or fact, on the other hand, is typically expressed by a whole sentence the first time it is referred to. The first mention of situations or facts will therefore usually not correspond to expressions that have prominent syntactic functions in the sentence, and we would expect them to be activated, but not yet in focus after being mentioned only once. 2 Reference to higher-order entities with ~m unstressed pronoun, i.e. a form that requires its referent to be in focus, thus typically requires more  than one previous mention. Consider the examples in (2) and 0).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> (2) There was a snake on my desk. It scaredme.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> (3) There was a snake on my desk. That scared me, and it scaredmy office mate too.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5">  In (2), the unstressed pronoun it, which requires its referent to be in focus, is most naturally interpreted as referring to the snake, not to the situation of a snake being on the desk. However, in (3), it is more naturally interpreted as referring to the fact that there was a snake on the speaker's desk. Since this situtation was referred to twice, once in the first sentence and once in the second, it is now in focus and can be referred to with an unstressed pronoun.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> The distribution of sentence it vs. that in naturally occuring discourse also supports the claim that a sentence rarely brings the situation or proposition it refers to into focus.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> 2 Within Centering Theory, which may be seen as modelling the process by which an entity is activated and brought into focus (see Gundel 1997), situations and events introduced by a whole sentence are ranked lower as preferred centers than entities introduced by major NP arguments in the sentence.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="89" end_page="91" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
PROPOSITIONAL ENRICHMENT
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this section we will report on an experiment which examined the influence of some linguistic cues on pronoun resolution in Norwegian. Some results from this experiment have already been reported on in Fretheim &amp; Borthen 1997. We will discuss here only the results concerning the interpretation of the Norwegian unaccented da and accentedda which are the counterparts of English it and that respectively.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> What seems to be the case in the texts that were examinedis that a sentence pronoun with two highly likely referents is linked to the closest antecedent when it is accented (neT) while it is linked to the furthest possible antecedent when it is unaccented (det). At first glance, these results appear to be inconsistent with GHZ's predictions, since it is hard to see why the referent of the more distal antecedent should be more likely to be in focus than the closest one.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The texts were parts of an auditory listening comprehension test on anaphor resolution where reaction time was measured. (5) is one example of the texts the subjects judged. The subjects' task was to decide who was surprised in the last of the three sentences. There were 30 subjects altogether.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  (5) (a) Gro spurte Anne om hun var klar over at Senterpartiets oppslutnlng var synkende.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> (b) Hun fikk ikke noe svar.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> (c) DET kom sore en overraskelse pli heune.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> (a) 'Gro asked Anne if she was aware that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> (b)' She didn't get any answer.' (c) 'That came as a surprise to her.' Average reaction time: 1243ms 30: henne 'her' = Gro and DETfinds its antecedentin the (b) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> 0: henne 'her' = Anne and BET finds its antecedentin the (a) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9">  Even though the interpretation of the sentential pronoun was not directly testedin the experiment, we can infer the interpretations based on how the subject interpreted the feminine personal pronouns. In a minimal pair of texts only contrasting in whether the sentence pronoun is accented or not we get almost opposite results for the two text fragments. In (6), which is exactly like (5) except that det is unaccented,  23 subjects chose Anne as the referentof the feminine pronoun henne, while only 7 subjects chose Gro. (6) (a) Gro spurte Anne om hun var klar over at Senterpartiets oppslutning var synkende.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> (b) Hun fikk ikke noe svar.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> (c) Det kom sore en overraskelse p/t henne.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> (a) 'Gro asked Anne if she was aware that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> (b) 'She didn't get any answer.' (c)' It came as a surprise to her.' Average reaction time: 1859ms 7: henne 'her' = Gro and D ET finds its antecedentin the (b) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> 23: henne 'her' = Anne andDET finds its antecedentin the (a) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="15">  Since the presence vs. abseuse of accenton det is the only difference between the two texts, we can infer that this difference must have to do with what antecedent the accented sentence pronoun DE'/&amp;quot; (that') takes and what antecedent the unaccented det 0t') takes. We can assume that when the subjects choose Anne as the referent of the feminine pronoun, they have selected the antecedent of the sentence pronoun det as being found in sentence (a), while when they choose Gro, they have selected the antecedent of the sentence pronoun as sentence (b). 3 This is so for the following reasons. If it was the fact that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing that surprised one of the women, it should be Anne who was surprised, since Gro would not be surprised by the content of her own utterance. If it was the fact that Anne didn't answer that was surprising, it should be Gro who was surprised by this, not Anne.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="16"> While the distinction between accented and unaccented sentence pronouns almost led to opposite results for (5) and (6), there was a small number of subjects who chose Gro as the referent of henne in the version with the unaccented det. The average reaction time for (6) is also longer than for (5). This may be became Gro is dearly in focus, since she is explicitly referred to in sentence (b). Note, moreover, that according to the Centering algorithm (of. Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein 1986, Walker and Prince 1996) the fact that Gro was explicitly referred to with a pronoun in sentence (b) would necessarily make her the backward 3We cannot be certain from the informants' answers if it is the content of the whole sentence (a) or just the complement of 'aware' that is chosen as the referent of the unaccented det. but aceourding to our intuitions and real world knowledge, it is most probable that it is the content of the complement of 'aware' that would be interpreted as the referent of det.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="18"> looking center, and therefore most likely the referent of henne in sentence (c). Thus, while most subjects accomodated in resolving the referent of henne in order to get a reading which was consistent with their interpretation of the sentence pronoun, a small minority chose the interpretation that was most consistent with refeaence processing principles for the feminine pronoun.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="19"> Further support for the role of accented vs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="20"> unaccented sentence pronouns in determining interpretation of the personal pronouns in these texts comes from examples like (7).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="21">  (7) (a) Gro spurte Anne om hun var klar over at Senterpartiets oppslutning var synkende.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="22"> (b) Hun svarte ikke.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="23"> (c) Det kom sore en overraskelse p~i henne.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="24"> (a) 'Gro asked Anne if she was aware that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing.' (b) 'She didn't answer.' (c) 'It came as a surprise to her.' Average Reaction time: 1196ms 1: henne 'her' = Gro and det finds its antecedentin the (b) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="25"> 29: henne !her' = Anne and det finds its antecedentin the (a) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="26">  In (7), the (b) sentence is changed so that the expressed proposition is the same as in (5) and (6) (Anne did not answer Gro's question), but the pronoun hun ('she') in (b) must be interpreted as referring to Anne. 4 In this case, then, there is no conflict between the status of Anne as the backward looking center (and therefore 'in focus' entity) in (c) and the expected readingbased on the interpretation of the unstressed sentential pronoun. As predicted, 29 out of 30 subjects didin fact interpret the text so that it was Anne that was surprised. That this is at least partly due to the unaccented form of the sentence pronoun in (7) is indicated by (8), which is identical to (7) except that da is accented. For (8), 22 out of 30 subjects chose an interpretation that violates the Centering principle (andpossibly also the expectation that the referent of the unstressed feminine pronoun will be an in focus entity) but is in accordance with the hypothesis that an accented sentence pronoun will be interpreted as referring to a situation or state of affairs that is activated, but not in focus:  4We have assumed that the person who does not answer is necessarily interpreted as Anne. while the person who does not get any answer is necessarily Gro.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="27"> (a) Gro spurte Anne om hun var klar over at Senterpartiets oppslutning var synkende.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="28"> (b) Hun svarte ikke.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="29"> (c) DET kom som en overraskelse ph heune.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="30"> (a) Gro asked Anne if she was aware that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="31"> (b) She didn't answer.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="32"> (c) That came as a surprise to her.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="33">  Average Reaction time: 1675ms 22: henne 'her' = Gro and det finds its antecedentin the (b) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="34"> 8: henne 'her' = Anne and det finds its antecedentin the (a) sentence.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="35"> For all the fragments in (5)-(8), the result is that whenever the sentential pronoun is the tmaccented det ('it') the subjects prefer to interpret henne ('her') as being Anne, which means that det finds its antecedentin the (a) sentence. And whenever the sentential pronoun is the accented DET the subjects prefer to interpret henne as being Gro, which means that DET finds its antecedent in the (b) sentence. But why is it that the further antecedentis chosen when the sentence pronoun is unaccented and the closer one is chosen when it is accented? If the predictions of the Givenness Hierarchy are correct, why is the content of a further antecedent more likely to be in focus than that of a closer one? We believe the answer to this question lies in the enriched interpretation of the second sentence. Even though 'answer' is used intransitively here, there is an implicit object which must be recovered when this sentence is processed, namely Gro's question about whether Anne was aware that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing. Thus, since the fact that the Center Party's popularity was decreasing is a part of the second sentence, this fact is in a sense repeated twice (and must be processed twice), and is therefore in focus at the beglnnitlg of sentence (c). If the second sentence were not connected to the first sentence in this way, we would not expect the same effect for the interpretation of an unaccented pronoun. This is supported by (9). According to our intuitions it is impossible for det in the third sentence of (9) to referto any content connected to the first sentence. It is more likely that det has the second sentence as its antecedent, but then the text is not fully coherent. This indicates that the implicit content of the second sentence in (5), (6), (7), and (8) is crucial for bringing the content of some fact presented in the first sentence of the text into foctgs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="36">  (9) (a) Gro spurte Anne om hun var klar over at Senterpartiets oppslutning var synkende.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="37"> (b) Dakom Jan plutselig inn i rommet.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="38"> (c) Det kom sore en overraskelse p&amp; heune.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="39"> (a) 'Gro askedAnne if she was awarethat the Center Party's popularity was decreasing.' (b) 'Then Jan suddenly came into the room.' (c) 'It came as a surprise to her.'</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="91" end_page="91" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
THE SALIENCE PROMOTING ROLE
OF EXTRALINGUISTIC CONTEXT
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> From the examples considered so far it appears that one-time-mention is not enough to bring a situation into focus. However, speakers do often accept an unaccented Norwegian da or English it used immediately after a higher-order entity has been introduced, and has therefore been mentioned only once (see Fretheim 1997). We will consider here some of the clearer cases of this type.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Imagine an interviewer suddenly placing a microphone in front of a startledlinguist: (10) A: What do you think of the fact that linguists usually eamless than computer scientists? B: It's terrible! B': That's terrible! According to the native speakers of English we consulted, both B and B' are appropriate answers to A's question. One possible analysis of (10) while maintaining the predictions in the Givenness Hierarchy, would be to say that we accommodate and this is why (10A-B) is acceptable. But if this is our explanation, we would not be able to explain why  (1 lb) does not sound as good as (10A-B).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> (11) (a) I have heardthat linguists earn less than computer scientists, and that's terrible.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> (b) .9.91have heardthat linguists earn less  than computer scientists, and it's terrible. We believe the difference between (10) and (11) resides in the fact that some contexts are more salience-promoting than others. A question in an interviewing-situation can have the effect of establishing a discourse topic right away because the topic chosen by the interviewer is generally timely and/or the interviewee alreadyknows something about it.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> It might appear that the difference between (10) and (11) is attributable to the fact that the situation in question is presented as part of an NP in (10) but not in (11); however, note that in Norwegian we get exactly the same effect even though the fact in (10) is not presentedinside an NP: &amp;quot;Hva synes du om at lingvister sore regel tjener mindre penger enn dataingeni0rer?&amp;quot; (lit. 'What do you think of that linguists usually earn less money than computer scientists,9') Also the next example suggests that the salience of a higher-order entity can be promoted nonlinguistically. We assume that the difference in acceptability between (12A1-B-A2) and (12A1-B-A2') can be attributed to the fact that the proposition expressed in (12B)is activated, but not in focus. (12) AI: Why didn't you come to the rehearsal yesterday? B: I thought I told you. I hadto help Peter move.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> A2: Ah, that's true.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> A2': ??Ah, it's true.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> In (13), in contrast, it is fully appropriate to use it. (13) A: Why didn't you come to the rehearsal yesterday? B: I thought I told you. I hadto help Peter move. (Pause)It's true! Note that (13A-B)is only coherentff there is a pause right before B's third utterance. And B's insistence on the truth of what he says will be a result of B believing that A does not believe him. This may be 'activated' through a skeptical look from A, for instance. With no such pause or exchange of looks B's answer wonldnot sound natural. (13) thus shows that cognitive status can be raised by extralinguistic means.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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