Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T21:37:40.244Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coding Episode Boundaries with Marked Structures: A Cross-Linguistic Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Ming-Ming Pu  and
Gary D. Prideaux
Ming-Ming Pu
Affiliation:
Northern State University
Gary D. Prideaux
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The notion of markedness has played an important role in linguistic theorizing for decades. Originating in Prague School phonological theory, it has also found an important place in morphology, syntax, and semantics (Andersen 1989). In general terms, markedness theory claims that when alternative forms are available, such as alternative construction types or paraphrases, one member of the set, the unmarked member, is more prototypical, is more frequent, has a wider distribution, etc. Within the psycholinguistic literature, it has been argued that the unmarked member of a set will typically be both cognitively and structurally less complex, and hence easier to process than its marked counterpart, a factor which also suggests that, all things being equal, the unmarked member should be acquired earlier than the marked member (e.g., Slobin 1973).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 283 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, Elyse 1991. Why ‘Because’? The Management of Given/New Information as a Constraint on the Selection of Causal Alternatives. Text. 11:323–339.Google Scholar
Andersen, Henning 1989. Markedness Theory — The First 150 Years. Pp. 11–46 in Markedness in Synchrony and Diachrony. Tomic, Olga M., ed. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bever, Thomas G. 1970. The Cognitive Basis for Linguistic Structures. Pp. 279–362 in Cognition and the Development of Language. Hayes, John R., ed. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Black, John B., and Bower, Gordon H. 1979. Episodes as Chunks in Narrative Memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 18:109–118.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L., ed. 1980. The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural and Linguistic Aspects of Narrative Production. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Chao, Yuan Ren 1968. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert, and Clark, Eve 1977. Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert, and Haviland, Susan E. 1977. Comprehension and the Given-New Contract. Pp. 1–40 in Discourse Production and Comprehension. Freedle, Roy O., ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia, E. 1993. Grammar in Interaction: Adverbial Clauses in American English Conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A. 1987. Morpho-Syntactic Markedness and Discourse Structure. Journal of Pragmatics. 11:359–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gernsbacher, Morton Ann 1990. Language Comprehension as Structure Building. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, T. 1983. Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Cross-Language Study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, T. 1987. Beyond Foreground and Background. Pp. 173–188 in Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Tomlin, Russell S., ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1990. Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction, Vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1992. English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction, Vols. I and II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanett K., Houlihan, Kathleen, and Sanders, Gerald A. 1988. On the Functions of Marked and Unmarked Terms. Pp. 285–301 in Studies in Syntactic Typology. Hammond, Michael, Noravcsik, Edith A., and Werth, Jessica, eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimball, John 1973. Seven Principles of Surface Structure Parsing in Natural Language. Cognition. 2:15–47.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N., and Thompson, Sandra A. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mandler, Jean M., and Johnson, Nancy S. 1977. Remembrance of Things Parsed: Story Structure and Recall. Cognitive Psychology. 9:111–151.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D. 1989. Text Data as Evidence for Language Processing Principles: The Grammar of Ordered Events. Language Sciences. 11:27–42.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D. 1994. Episode Boundaries in Written Narratives. Paper presented at the Organization in Discourse Conference, University of Turku, Finland.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D., and Baker, William 1986. Strategies and Structures: The Processing of Relative Clauses. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D., and Hogan, John T. 1993. Markedness as a Discourse Management Device. Word. 44:397–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pu, Ming-Ming 1994. Discourse Organization and Anaphora in Spoken and Written Chinese Discourse. Pp. 333–352 in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics. Ho, Dah-an and Tseng, Chiu-yu, eds. Taipei, Taiwan.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1973. Cognitive Prerequisites for the Development of Language. Pp. 175–208 in Studies of Child Language Development. Ferguson, Charles A. and Slobin, Dan I., eds. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I., and Bever, Thomas G. 1982. Children Use Canonical Sentence Schemas: A Crosslinguistic Study of Word Order and Inflections. Cognition. 12:229–265.Google Scholar
Tai, James H.-Y. 1985. Temporal Sequence and Chinese Word Order. Pp. 49–72 in Iconicity in Syntax. Haiman, John, ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tang, T.C. 1988. Studies in Chinese Syntax. Taipei, Taiwan: Student Books Co.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. 1985. Grammar and Written Discourse: Initial vs. Final Purpose Clause in English. Pp. 55–84 in Quantified Studies in Discourse. Givón, T., ed. Text. 5 (1/2).Google Scholar
Tomlin, Russell, S., and Pu, Ming-Ming 1991. The Management of Reference in Mandarin Discourse. Cognitive Linguistics. 2:65–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A., and Kintsch, Walter 1983. Strategies in Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar