SEMANTIC STRUCTURE, INFORMATION-STRUCTURE, AND INTONATION IN DISCOURSE PRODUCTION

It has been suggested that parts of objects previously mentioned in discourse can be treated by speakers as given information. Comprehension experiments have shown that not all properties of objects are conceptually equivalent, some being central and others peripheral. It was hypothesized that this difference could affect speakers' treatment of a part as given or new information. In two experiments subjects produced utterances containing objects and parts. In the first experiment it was found that subjects put stronger accent on peripheral than central parts, indicating that the central parts were more likely to be treated as given. In the second experiment it was found that context affected treatment of peripheral parts only. These results suggest that some sources of discourse givenness can be specified in terms of relations in semantic conceptual structures. © 1990.