Grammar and discourse prominence: The effects of grammatical status and focus on change blindness in written Danish

TY - ABST

T1 - Grammar and discourse prominence

T2 - 5th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference

AU - Christensen, Marie Herget

AU - Kristensen, Line Burholt

AU - Boye, Kasper

PY - 2014/7/29

Y1 - 2014/7/29

N2 - The distinction between grammatical and lexical items is a cornerstone in linguistic theory. In a recent, usage-based theory, Boye & Harder (2012) accounts for this distinction in terms of discourse prominence: grammatical items are by convention discursively secondary (background), while lexical items have the potential of being primary (foreground). The present paper tests psycholinguistic implications of this theory. It was hypothesized 1) focalized, primary items receive more attention than non-focalized, secondary ones, and thus – in accordance with Boye & Harder (2012) – 2) that lexical items receive more attention than grammatical ones. These hypotheses were tested in a reading experiment which employed the change blindness paradigm (Rensink et al. 1997). 32 adult speakers of Danish read 40 target sentences (and ten filler sentences). Each sentence was presented twice to each participant – for the second presentation, which occurred a few seconds after the first presentation, a target word in the sentence was omitted. The participants were instructed to report whether they had noticed any differences between the two versions. The stimuli were constructed using a 2x2 design, contrasting 1) focal and non-focal items as well as 2) lexical and grammatical ones. Focalization was manipulated by means of Danish focus particles like også (‘also’) and præcis (‘excactly’); lexical and grammatical items were distinguished in accordance with the diagnostic tests given in Boye & Harder (2012). The results of this experiment support hypothesis 1, but not 2: participants exhibited a significantly greater (>.001) change blindness towards grammatical items than towards lexical items, while there was no significant difference between focalized and non-focalized items. This suggest that at least in Danish, the lexicon-grammar contrast is a more important cue to discourse prominence (foreground vs. background status) than focalization (by means of focus particles). BOYE, K. & HARDER, P. 2012. A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language, 88, 1-44. RENSINK, R. A., O'REGAN, J. K. & CLARK, J. J. 1997. To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science, 8, 368-373.

AB - The distinction between grammatical and lexical items is a cornerstone in linguistic theory. In a recent, usage-based theory, Boye & Harder (2012) accounts for this distinction in terms of discourse prominence: grammatical items are by convention discursively secondary (background), while lexical items have the potential of being primary (foreground). The present paper tests psycholinguistic implications of this theory. It was hypothesized 1) focalized, primary items receive more attention than non-focalized, secondary ones, and thus – in accordance with Boye & Harder (2012) – 2) that lexical items receive more attention than grammatical ones. These hypotheses were tested in a reading experiment which employed the change blindness paradigm (Rensink et al. 1997). 32 adult speakers of Danish read 40 target sentences (and ten filler sentences). Each sentence was presented twice to each participant – for the second presentation, which occurred a few seconds after the first presentation, a target word in the sentence was omitted. The participants were instructed to report whether they had noticed any differences between the two versions. The stimuli were constructed using a 2x2 design, contrasting 1) focal and non-focal items as well as 2) lexical and grammatical ones. Focalization was manipulated by means of Danish focus particles like også (‘also’) and præcis (‘excactly’); lexical and grammatical items were distinguished in accordance with the diagnostic tests given in Boye & Harder (2012). The results of this experiment support hypothesis 1, but not 2: participants exhibited a significantly greater (>.001) change blindness towards grammatical items than towards lexical items, while there was no significant difference between focalized and non-focalized items. This suggest that at least in Danish, the lexicon-grammar contrast is a more important cue to discourse prominence (foreground vs. background status) than focalization (by means of focus particles). BOYE, K. & HARDER, P. 2012. A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language, 88, 1-44. RENSINK, R. A., O'REGAN, J. K. & CLARK, J. J. 1997. To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science, 8, 368-373.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Grammatical status

KW - sentence processing

KW - change detection

KW - Danish

M3 - Conference abstract for conference

Y2 - 29 July 2014 through 31 July 2014

ER -