Prince (1981): Givenness !

1. Prince (1981): Givenness! Questions? Tylers at Stanford dot edu

2. Big themes • Watch out when people talk about given/new—there are all sorts of definitions out there for these. • Prince says: Let’s get rid of shared knowledge and givennessand talk about a hierarchy of assumed familiarity

3. What assumptions about the hearer are relevant? What inferences will the hearer draw based on the forms chosen?

4. Big themes (cont’d) • Some units seem to represent “older” information than others (informational asymmetry) • Given before new • In speech, “new” stuff only appears as a subject when it’s evoked. • In written language, sometimes inferrables are subjects. • You hardly ever have unused/brand-new stuff in subject position.

5. Again but with examples • In speech, “new” stuff only appears as a subject when it’s evoked. • Pardon, would YOU have change for a quarter? • A guy I work with says HE knows your sister. • In written language, sometimes inferrables are subjects. • I got on a bus yesterday and THE DRIVER was drunk. • Hey! ONE OF THESE EGGS is broken. • You hardly ever have unused/brand-new stuff in subject position. • I bought A BEAUTIFUL DRESS. • ROTTEN RIZZO can’t have a third term.

6. Ellen Prince never met my mother

7. Ellen Prince never met my mother

8. An old friend to my mom recently: “Oh, Cheryl, I forgot how you talk.”

10. Rituals • Why does Prince lead off with rituals? • What information do they convey?

13. (And we don’t talk to ourselves) (Much)

14. Three approaches to givenness • Saliency, “in the addressee’s consciousness” • Problem: Everything is equally new in its first mention • I saw your father yesterday. • I saw a two-headed man yesterday • Other problem: what do you do with inferable stuff? • We got some picnic supplies out of the truck. The beer was warm. • Predictability / recoverability • Problem: • Mary paid John and he/*0 bought himself a new coat. • John paid Mary and he/0 bought himself a new coat • Shared knowledge, (the speaker believes the listener accepts as true vs. stuff the listener doesn’t know • Problem: this language implies that there the speaker and the hearer have some overlapping belief sets • BUT! We only need the speaker’s assumptions • NOT an omniscient observer’s Venn diagram

15. We think he thinks they think… • Given: What the speaker thinks the listener already knows and accepts as true • New: What the speaker thinks the listener doesn’t yet know

17. Is this about “activation”? • How do we distinguish/define something “lit up” from something in “background consciousness” from something “in long-term memory but not active”?

18. What do we think of her taxonomy? • Can we answer one of her chief questions? • Are these phenomena binary, continuum, or something else?

20. Packaging of info • “The tailoring of an utterance by a sender to meet the particular assumed needs of the intended receiver. That is, information packaging in natural language reflects the sender’s hypotheses about the receiver’s assumptions and beliefs and strategies.” • Prince (1981: 224) • Certainly sounds INTENTIONAL. How does that work?

21. the girl who made me fall in love with information structure

24. The questionnaire • The manual for the questionnaire is 272 pages long. Its experiments attempt to control for: • New • Accessible • Given • Topic • Focus • Background • But these have subdivisions (focus can be “out of the blue”, informational, contrastive, selective, corrective, etc).

25. The real world makes everything messy • Ambiguity • “I saw a thief with a telescope” • “I shot a possum with a camera” • Weird situations • Collocations that just don’t go together: • Bereavedand penguin • Bicycleand wombat • Pegamoidand ululating

26. I shot a possum with a camera

28. Focus and intonation • What did John show Mary? • John showed Mary [the PICTures] • Who did John show the pictures? • John showed [MARY] the pictures • John only showed Mary the [the PICTures] • John only showed [MARY] the pictures

29. Common ground, presupposition, that stuff, you know • I have a cat, and I had to bring my cat to the vet. • #I had to bring my cat to the vet, and I have a cat.

30. More on focus • Krifka says focus “indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expressions” • Grandpa didn’t [kick the BUCKet], he passed [aWAY]. • Fortunately, Bill spilled [WHITE] wine on the carpet. • (Often metalinguistic)

31. Givenness • It seems to have degrees (since there are degrees of saliency) • Anaphora (pronouns, for example) • Deaccenting, reducing, deleting • Bill went to Greenland, and Mary did __, too. • If you’re a focus, you’re probably not a given, but not always: • Mary only saw HIM

32. Topic and comments • Presupposition: human communication and memory are organized so that they are “about” something. • Databases contain information but they don’t presuppose “aboutness”, do they? • Let’s say you’re keeping a file on Jackie Kennedy. You will file in her entry: • Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis • And although the reverse (AO maried JK) is the same proposition, it would be stored as the entry for Aristotle, not Jackie.

33. How do we distinguish things? • Pitch accentsfocus and topic • Non-intonation languages use F0 changes like boundary tones, register and tone scaling • Word order • Cleft-sentences • Topicalization • Other stuff • Morphological particles • Noun incorporation • Ellipsis

34. Appendix (miscellany)

35. Question • Can we distinguish “topic” and “given”?