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The Grammar of Referential Coherence as Mental Processing Instructions

Article in Linguistics · January 1992

DOI: 10.1515/ling.1992.30.1.5

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1/Zero.2

THE STORY OF ZERO

T. Givón

CHAPTER 2: THE GRAMMAR OF REFERENTIAL COHERENCE

AS MENTAL PROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS

1. Grammar, text and mind*

In attempting to understand the grammar of reference and topicality, linguists have

relied heavily on studying the correlations between grammar and communicative context,
typically by studying the distribution of grammar in text. This method has been indispensable
in helping us understand the communicative correlates of grammar.[FN 1] However valuable
as a heuristic, the grammar-in-text method has some inherent drawbacks. Chief among them
is the fact that in actual communicative behavior, grammar does not interact directly with the
text. Rather, it interacts with the mind that produces or interprets the text. What I propose to
do in this chapter is take the next methodological step--re-interpret the grammar of
referential coherence and topicality as mental processing instructions.
I will assume that the grammatical signals used to code referential coherence in
discourse trigger specific mental operations in the mind of the interlocutor. These mental
operations pertain to two well known cognitive domains:
!attentional activation
!memory-file operations such as:
!search of an existing file
!retrieval from an existing file
!input into an existing file
!opening a new file
In many discourse contexts, grammar triggers mental operations in both attention and
memory domains. In other contexts, as in e.g. the introduction of new ('indefinite') referents
into the discourse, no search or retrieval from existing memory files is involved,[FN 2]
though attentional activation, filing the new information in an existing file, or opening a new
file certainly is involved. And more than one kind of attention may be involved in discourse
processing.[FN 3]
In re-interpreting grammatical signals as mental processing instructions, I will make
highly specific predictions about both memory and attention. In many instances, empirical
evidence supporting such prediction already exists. In others, the bulk of empirical testing
is yet to be done, so that my predictions remain tentative hypotheses. The chief merit of such
hypotheses is that they are explicit enough and can, presumably, be tested.
2

The central hypothesis suggested by the grammar-in-text data is this: The grammar
of referential coherence is primarily not about reference. Rather it is about identifying and
activating the mental files ('nodes') where verbally-coded text is stored in episodic memory.
Nominal referents ('topics') serve as the file labels, used to identify, access and activate the
episodic-memory files where incoming information is filed.
The material covered here is indeed complex. To make it coherent, one must begin
by recapitulating, however briefly, three bodies of connected linguistic research:
!The structure of coherent discourse
!The grammar of referential coherence
!The topicality of nominal referents
The hypotheses themselves come relatively late in the chapter, together with a review of the
cognitive literature on attention and memory.

2. The structure of coherent discourse

2.1. Propositions, clauses and information

Something like a mental proposition, under whatever name, is the basic unit of
language-coded information processing and thus, presumably, of mental information storage.
When coded as a verbal clause in actual communication, the mental proposition may only
weakly resemble the full fledged Aristotelian proposition or its Chomskian deep-structure
equivalent. In spontaneous spoken language, the mental proposition often appears as an
elliptic, truncated structure, with zeroed arguments or even a missing verb (see ch. 6).
In spontaneous spoken language, the verbal clause that corresponds to the mental
proposition is best recognized by its intonational-temporal packaging (Eisler-Goldman,
1968; Chafe, 1987; Kumpf, 1987; Givón, 1991; Mithun 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, inter
alia). But whatever their surface form, mental propositions that code some state or event
have been recognized as the basic unit of human communication and discourse processing
(Kintsch, 1974, 1977, 1982a, 1982b; Norman and Rumelhart, 1975; Clark and Clark, 1977;
Schank and Abelson, 1977; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; inter alia).

2.2. Coherent discourse

2.2.1. Multi-propositional coherence

Human communication is most typically not mono-propositional but rather multi-

propositional. Put another way, the thematic coherence of human discourse is multi-
propositional. And coherence over multi-propositional spans means the continuity or
3

recurrence of some elements. The most prominent recurring strands of thematic coherence,
and the ones most conspicuously coded by grammars, are:

(1) Main strands of discourse coherence

a. referential coherence
b. temporal coherence
c. spatial coherence
d. action-routines coherence

In other words, coherent discourse tends to maintain, over a span of several clauses, the same
referent ('topic'), the same or contiguous time, the same or contiguous location, and
sequential action.[FN 4]
The view of discourse coherence suggested here is that continuity or recurrence over
spans of mental propositions is not only a property of the product text, but also of the mind
of the speaker/hearer that produces and interprets the text. is a characteristic of the
hearer/reader. The cognitive correlates of continuity or recurrence in text are mental
accessability or its converse, mental effort. By definition, coherent discourse, with its
multiple recurring strands (1), makes language-coded information mentally more accessible.

2.2.2. Linear and hierarchic structure

Mentally-stored coherent text has both linear and hierarchic structure (Schank and
Abelson, 1977; Mandler, 1978; Hopper 1979; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Simon 1962;
Chase and Simon 1973; Chase and Andersson 1982). While hierarchic structure is most
apparent in narrative discourse, it is not fundamentally different in conversation (Chafe 1997;
Coates 1997; Ervin-Tripp and Küntay 1997; Linell and Korolija 1997). This organization of
both the overtly produced and mentally-stored text in episodic memory probably harkens
back to pre-human event/action sequences and planning routines. But the degree and depth
of hierarchic organization may vary enormously from one communicative genre to another,
and from one specific text to the next.

2.3. The grounding of information

Discourse is produced as an interaction between two perspectives, that of the speaker

and that of the hearer. The interaction occurs in the mind of both interlocutors. Each, in
addition to his/her own perspective, also attempts to construe at least some core facets of the
interlocutor's mind.[FN 5] The grammar of referential coherence is rich in devices used by
4

the speaker to accommodate the hearer's perspective. By using such devices, the speaker aims
to ground the information into the hearer's perspective.

2.3.1. Old and new information

One of the most important aspects of grounding involves the division between old and
new information. By 'old' one means 'assumed by the speaker to be accessible to the hearer'.
By 'new' one means 'assumed by the speaker to be inaccessible to the hearer'.
Propositions/clauses in coherent discourse presumably carry some new information (Grice,
1968/75). But the information in the clause is seldom totally new or totally old. Either
extreme is communicatively and cognitively untenable. Totally old --predictable--
information is useless to the hearer, offering no motivation for attending. Totally new
information is just as useless, offering no grounding point for the information to cohere to.
Propositions/clauses in coherent discourse thus tend to be informational hybrids, carrying
both old and new information.[FN 6]
Not all possible ratios of new vs. old information within the clause are in fact the
observed norm. Rather, there tends to be a systematic skewing of such ratios in connected
natural discourse. This skewing may be expressed as the following probabilistic tendencies
(Givón 1975; DuBois 1987; Chafe 1987):

(2) Constraints on rate of new information flow:

a. A clause in connected discourse tends to contain at least one chunk of new
information.[FN 7]
b. A clause in connected discourse tends to contain only one chunk of new information.

(3) Constraints on rate of old information flow:

a. A clause in connected discourse tends to contain at least one chunk of old
information.
b. A clause in connected discourse tends to contain more than one chunk of old
information".

Constraint (2a) is no doubt motivated by informational goals of the declarative speech

act. Constraint (2b) most likely expresses some cognitive limit on the processing rate of new
information. The motivation for constraints (3a,b) on the flow-rate of old information are less
transparent. The most plausible explanation is given as hypothesis (4) below, formulated in
terms of both text-structure--coherence or grounding--and its cognitive equivalent,
information addressing:
5

(4) HYPOTHESIS: The function of old information

"The chunks of seemingly-redundant old information in the clause serve to ground
the new information to already-stored old information. Cognitively, some of them--
the more prominent topics--furnish the address or label for the storage file in
episodic memory".

2.3.3. The grammar of grounding

The overwhelming tendency in natural human discourse is to make perceptually

salient, temporally-stable entities--most commonly nouns--the old information chunks that
ground new information. As a result, natural human discourse seems to be 'about' such
nominal entities. They are then coded by various grammatical means as the topical referents
in the discourse, and are most commonly the grammatical subjects and objects of clauses.
The typical nominal topic tends to be referring, anaphoric, and definite (Keenan
1976; Givón 1976; Hopper and Thompson, 1983). And while 'definite' is somewhat
language-specific, definite nouns in connected discourse tend to exhibit some universal
characteristics (Chafe, 1976; Givón 2001, ch. 10):
!They are talked about in the subsequent ('cataphoric') discourse.
!They are assumed by the speaker as identifiable to the hearer.
Likewise, referring nouns, traditionally a logical notion, tend in connected discourse
to:[FN 8]
!be important topics in the preceding--anaphoric--discourse; and
!persist as such in the subsequent--cataphoric--discourse.
Non-referring nouns, on the other hand, tend to be overwhelmingly indefinite in natural
discourse, though indefinite noun may be either referring or non referring.[FN 9]
Cross-linguistic distributional studies of the most common elements of verbal clauses
suggest the following statistical tendencies:

(5) Most likely reference (REF) and definiteness (DEF) status of main
clausal-participant types:[FN 10]
a. Verb/predicate: Nearly 100% NON-REF
b. Agent/subject: Nearly 100% REF & DEF
(c) Patient/object: 50%-80% REF & DEF
(d) Dative/benefactive: Nearly 100% REF & DEF[FN 11]
(e) Manner, instrument: Nearly 100% NON-REF
(f) Locative: Nearly 80% REF, DEF
(g) Time: Nearly 100% REF, DEF
6

Clause participants marked as agent, patient, dative-benefactive, place and time in events/
states, particularly the agent, patient and dative-benefactive, are the most topical participants
at the junction in discourse when they are so marked. They are thus the most likely
grounding elements--'file labels'--for the incoming new information to be filed under.

3. Topicality

3.1. Preamble

The notion of 'topic' has been somewhat murky in linguistics. The Prague School tradition
(e.g. Firbas, 1966, 1974; Bolinger, 1954; Halliday, 1967; Kuno, 1972; inter alia) saw the
clause as divided into a topic and non-topic component, but proposed no grammar-
independent non-intuitive tests for topicality. The topic ('theme') was said to be the element
that is 'talked about', 'old', 'presupposed' or 'given', displaying 'communicative dynamism', or
the 'focus of empathy' in 'functional sentence perspective'.
The subsequent functionalist literature of the 1970s concentrated primarily on the old-
information ('given', 'presupposed') aspects of the topicality, noting how it correlated with
grammatical phenomena such as definiteness, anaphoric pronouns and zeroes, L- and R-
dislocation, and Y-movement; or with semantic notions such as referentiality or individuation
(Hawkinson and Hyman 1974; Keenan 1976; Givón 1976; Timberlake 1978; inter alia).
The text-based work that is the point of departure for this study has focused on two
quantifieable aspects of the topicality of referents, one anaphoric, the other cataphoric;
respectively:[FN 12]
!the referent's accessibility
!the referent's importance
Re-defining these two properties in more explicit cognitive terms is a major focus of this
chapter.

3.2. Topicality and grammar

Grammar is a discretizing phenomenon par excellence, in the sense that a construc-

tion, a word or a morpheme is either present or absent, and either has or doesn't have some
formal properties. If the topical participants in the clause are its nominal arguments--subjects,
objects--then at first glance the clause may have a host of 'topics', all possibly anaphoric,
definite and presupposed, as in:
7

(6 He gave her the book yesterday for her daughter in Chicago

==== === ======= ====== =========== =========
SUBJ DAT PATIENT TIME BENEFICIARY LOCATION

Are all the nominal arguments in (6) 'topical'? And is their topicality perhaps ranked by
degree, with the subject-agent outranking the dative direct-object, which then outranks the
patient, and so on?
Quantified studies of the discourse distribution of grammar, and of the discourse
topicality of clausal participants, suggest a much more sparse, parsimonious discrete
organization. To begin with, the number of nominal arguments in clauses in connected
discourse, particularly oral discourse, seldom exceeds two per clause (DuBois, 1987). Next,
at the level of grammatical organization, most languages code at most three levels of
topicality within the clause (Hawkinson and Hyman, 1974; Givón, 1984a):

(7) Topicality and grammatical case-roles:

SUBJECT > DIRECT OBJECT > OTHERS

The quantified study of the topicality of grammatical subjects and objects in

connected discourse corroborates this discrete organization. Subjects are consistently more
topical than direct objects, and direct objects more topical than indirect objects (Cooreman
1983; Rude 1985; Givón ed. 1983, 1984a; ed. 1997b). In sum, human language seems to
codes by grammar only three discrete levels of topicality:
!main topic = subject
!secondary topic = direct object
!non-topic = all other roles
This suggests that topicality at the clause level may be a restricted commodity, perhaps a
cognitive limiting capacity (Chafe 1987).

3.3. Measuring topicality in discourse

3.3.1. Clause vs. discourse

The grammatical marking of topicality, as noted above, tends to suggest to linguists

that 'topic' is a clause-level function (Dik 1978; Foley and van Valin 1984; Verhaar 1987;
inter alia). This is an unfortunate confusion of the grammatical code what it stands for. At
the level of a single event/state clause, 'topic'--whether it is 'what is talked about' or 'what is
important'--is meaningless. This follows, by definition, from the two fundamental properties
8

that turn atomic propositions into coherent discourse--the fact that human discourse is both
multi-propositional and thematically coherent.
Thematic coherence across a clause-chain means, in measurable practical terms,
continuity or recurrence of the sub-elements of coherence (1), most prominent among them
the referents. Coherent discourse is thus characterized by equi-topic clause-chains. And
'topic' is a meaningful notion only at the discourse level, minimally the chain or the
paragraph. Put plainly and in operational terms,[FN 13] the topic is only 'talked about' or
'important' if it remains 'talked about' or 'important' across a number of successive clauses.

3.3. The discourse-pragmatics of topicality

3.3.1. Preamble

As suggested above, two discourse-pragmatic aspects of topicality turn out to be both

theoretically relevant and methodologically measurable:[FN 14]

(8) Quantifiable aspects of topicality:

a. Referent accessibility, defined in terms of the preceding--anaphoric--discourse
b. Referent importance, defined in terms of the subsequent--cataphoric--discourse

In cognitive terms, referential accessibility (8a) pertains to the speaker instructing the
hearer to mentally search for the referent in the episodic memory of the current text. And
referential importance (8b) pertains to the speaker instructing the hearer to mentally
activate important topics but not unimportant ones.

3.3.2. Referential accessibility: The shared contexts

Any information transacted in discourse has a certain level of predictability, coherence

or accessibility vis-a-vis its context. The accessibility of referents/topics in connected
discourse tends to derive from three main contextual sources:[FN 15]
!The deictically-shared context: the speech situation
!The generically-shared context: cultural knowledge
!The textually-shared context: the preceding discourse
For the purpose of the discussion here, I will take it for granted that ultimately each one of
these contexts is mentally represented by a distinct mental model.[FN 16]
9

3.3.3. The deictic context

The interpretation of personal pronouns such as 'I' and 'you', of time-referents such as
'now' and 'then', of place-referents such as 'here' and 'there', and of deictic demonstratives
such as 'this' and 'that', depends on the shared speech situation. On general grounds, a referent
is more accessible if it is either spatially or temporally nearer the speech-situation, or
perceptually more obvious or salient.

3.3.4. The cultural context

The generic-cultural context is the world view shared by members of the same culture
or speech community. Shared information arising from this contextual source is seldom used
by itself as the source of referential accessibility, though strictly speaking it can be, as in:

(9) a. The sun came out all of a sudden

b. The president fired his chief-of-staff

Most commonly, culturally-shared information is combined with textually-shared

information as an aggregate source of referential accessibility. Thus consider:

(10) a. A friend of mine just got a new job. His father hired him.
b. She showed us this gorgeous house, but the living room was too small.
c. They went into a restaurant and asked to see the menu.

The accessibility of the definite referent 'his father' in (10a) is due in part to 'a friend of mine'
being mentioned in the immediately-preceding text, but also to the shared cultural knowledge
'every person has a father'. Similarly, the accessibility of 'the living room' in (10b) is due in
part to the mention of 'this gorgeous house' in the immediately-preceding text, but also to the
shared cultural knowledge 'a prototypical house has one living room'. And the accessibility
of 'the menu' in (10c) is due in part to the mention of 'a restaurant' in the immediately-
preceding text, but also to the shared cultural knowledge--frame, schema, script--that 'a
typical restaurant has a menu'.
10

3.3.5. The discourse context

3.3.5.1. Preamble: Access to referents in mentally-stored text

When we speak as discourse analysts about the accessibility of referents in the

preceding--anaphoric--discourse context, what we ought to mean in cognitive terms is
probably "searching for referents in mentally-stored text". Some of the factors that are likely
to affect this search are:
!The referential continuity--or its converse, the referential gap--between
the current occurrence of the referent and its last occurrence in the preceding
discourse;
!The referential complexity of the directly preceding discourse, i.e. referential
competition;
!Redundant clause-level semantic information from the current clause (verb,
arguments);
!Redundant thematic information from the preceding discourse.

3.3.5.2. Referential continuity

The sensitivity of grammatical devices to the anaphoric gap (AP) between the current
and last occurrence of a referent in discourse is most evident in the contrast between the use
of unstressed anaphoric pronouns--or zero anaphora--and full definite NPs. As an illustration,
consider:

(11) a. Large anaphoric gap--full DEF-NP:

...The man finished, then left to check his fish-traps. The fire died out slowly.
It was a cold night, the stars were out in force, no wind though, real quiet.
Except for one lonely coyote. (i) After a while the man reappeared...
(ii) ?After a while he reappeared...
b. No anaphoric gap--zero anaphora:
...The man finished and (i) [Ø] left...
(ii) *the man left...
c. No anaphoric gap--anaphoric pronoun:
...The man finished. (i) He packed his gear...
(ii) *The man packed his gear...
11

3.3.5.3. Referential complexity

Referential complexity, and presumably referential competition in the mind of the

hearer, arises from the presence of one or more extra referents in the immediately preceding
context. The mere presence of other referents is not by itself enough to precipitate referential
competition. Those referents must be semantically similar to the current referent in order to
compete with it. That is, they must be just as compatible with the semantic frame of the
current clause. As simple illustrations, consider the use of full definite NPs vs. unstressed
anaphoric pronouns in:

(12) a. I saw Joe. He didn't look well

b. *I saw Joe and Bill. He didn't look well
c. I saw Joe and Bill. Bill didn't look well
d. I saw Joe and Bill. The latter didn't look well

3.3.5.4. Clause-internal semantic information

The effect of clause-internal semantic information on referential accessibility is

intuitively obvious, easy to demonstrate, but hard to quantify. Strictly speaking, this element
of the discourse context is not anaphoric, since what is at issue are the lexical-selectional
restrictions within the clause in which the referent is lodged. In at least some cases, clause-
internal semantic information can make one referent more accessible than the other. As a
simple illustration, consider:

(13) Jack thought about Jill,

a. [Ø] giving birth to their baby
b. [Ø] playing touch football with the gang
c. [Ø] sitting alone on the porch

There is a tendency to interpret the zero anaphor in (13a) as co-referent with Jill, in (13b) as
co-referent with Jack, and in (13c) as perhaps open to both.

3.3.5.5. Discourse-thematic information

Information about the thematic structure, or thematic substance, of the preceding

discourse, up to a considerable hierarchic depth and linear distance, can be used to facilitate
12

referential accessibility. The use of such thematic information often involves generic-cultural
knowledge of stereotypical scenes (frames, schemata, scripts). The use of purely structural
thematic information in referential accessibility has also been demonstrated (Tomlin 1987).
And the interaction with more substantive frame-dependent thematic information has also
been demonstrated by (Anderson et al. 1983).
The strong association between grammatical devices that mark thematic continuity
and those that mark referential continuity has been noted by Carlson (1987; for Sup'ire),
Frajzyngier (1986; for Polish), Li (1988; for Green Hmong) and Hayashi (1989; for English).
The relation between thematic and referential coherence involves one-way conditional
inference:
!referential continuity e thematic continuity
or
!thematic disruption e referential disruption

This type of conditional association characterizes relations of inclusion, and thus reinforces
the idea that referential coherence is a sub-part of thematic coherence (1).

3.4. Quantified measures of topicality

3.4.1. Measures of referential accessibility

The following text-based measures have proven reliable cross-linguistically:

(14) Text-based measures of referential continuity

(Givón ed. 1983; Watanabe 1989; Givón ed. 1997b)
a. Anaphoric Distance(AD): "The number of clauses (or elapsed time) from
the last occurrence in the preceding discourse"
b. Switch reference(SR):"Whether the preceding clause does have the same
referent as an argument (SS) or does not (DS)".[FN 17]
c. Potential Interference (PI): "The number of semantically compatible referents
within the preceding 1-2 clauses".

The first two measures assess converse aspects of referential continuity. The AD measure
(14a) was originally envisioned as a graduated scale with values from 1-20, but later revised
to percent distribution within more anaphoric discrete distant segments.[FN 18] The SR
measure (14b) yields a discrete binary choice between SS and DS in the preceding clause.
The PI measure (14c) yields either a discrete binary scale (present vs. absent) or a three-point
scale (two present vs. one present vs. absent).
13

3.4.2. Measures of thematic importance

While thematic importance, or relevance, is undeniably a central dimension of

topicality, it is not easy to measure it directly, since it is in principle subjective. Particularly
hard to measure directly is the local--as opposed to global--importance of referents, i.e. their
importance at a particular juncture in discourse. But measuring local importance is critical,
because most grammatical devices used to code thematic importance are sensitive primarily
to local–chain or paragraph level--importance.
However difficult the task, one can make assumptions about overt behavioral features
that may correlate with topic importance, then quantify those. The measures given below
are fairly easy to operationalize under different empirical conditions:

(a) Conscious verbal measures

The global importance of referents may be assessed directly by asking naive judges
to rank-order the nominal referents in a text in terms of their centrality or importance. Within
certain bounds, such rankings tend to be fairly reliable (Huang 1985; Wright and Givón
1987). The global importance of referents maybe also assessed by the frequency of referents
in narratives recalled by naive subjects (W. Chafe, i.p.c.).

(b) Psychometric measures

If it is indeed true that important topics are more closely attended to, better memorized
and retrieved faster, then on-line performance measures of attention and memory may be
used during speech processing to assess, albeit indirectly, the referent's importance
(Anderson, Garrod and Sanford 1983; Gernsbacher and Shroyer 1988; Gernsbacher and
Hargreaves 1988).

(c) Text frequency measures

In typical human discourse, one may assume that the text-frequency of referents
correlates directly to their thematic importance in the discourse. Through frequency
measures, one may assess either the global or local importance of nominal topics. The local
measure of topic persistence (TP) applies to the cataphoric (subsequent) discourse
context.[FN 19] The global measure of overall frequency (OF) counts the total number of
occurrence in the text.
14

(15) Text-frequency measures of thematic importance:

a. Topic persistence (TP)
"The number of times the referent persists as a clausal argument in the
subsequent 10 clauses following the current clause" (Givón ed. 1983;
Cooreman 1983; Rude 1985; Wright and Givón 1987; Thompson 1989;
Watanabe 1989; Givón ed. 1977b).
b. Overall frequency (OF)
"The total number of times the same referent appears as clausal argument
in the discours" (Zubin 1979)

The TP measure (15a) yields a scale of 0-10, although in earlier studies a more compressed
0-3 scale was used.[FN 20] The OF measure (15b) yields an open-ended scale from 0 up.

3.4.3. Some results of text-based quantitative measures of topicality

As illustration of how measures of both referential predictability and referential

importance have been applied to the study of grammar in text, consider first Cooreman's
(1983) work on the relative topicality of agents and patients in active, passive and anti-
passive voices in Chamorro (see also Givón ed. 1997b).

(16) Topicality of agents and patients of semantically-transitive clauses

in the various voices in Chamorro (Cooreman 1983)
mean Anaphoric mean Topic
Distance (AD) Persistence (TP)
(1-20 scale) (0-3 scale)
==================== ================
voice N AGENT PATIENT AGENT PATIENT
======== ==== ======= ========= ======= =========
active 150 1.49 4.25 2.45 0.81
passive 9 6.33 3.33 0.44 1.44
antipassive 7 1.86 20.00 1.29 0.00
================================================

The three English constructions that roughly correspond the active, passive and anti-passive
voice of Chamorro are:
15

(17) a. Active: The man ate the fish

b. Passive: The fish was eaten (by someone)
c. Antipassive: The man ate

In the active voice (17a), the agent is more topical than patient (lower RD, higher TP). In the
passive voice (17b), the agent's topicality is downgraded, and the patient topicality upgraded.
In the anti-passive voice (17c), the patient's topicality is downgraded while the agent's
topicality remains high. Agents, it seems, tend to be highly topical--as long as they remain
the grammatical subjects (17a,c). Patients are lower in topicality--as long as they remain the
grammatical objects (17a,c). Their topicality is higher when they become subjects (17b).
The same quantified measures of topicality were used by Rude (1985) to demonstrate
the higher topicality of the direct object over the indirect object:

(18) Topicality of direct and indirect objects in Nez Perce (Rude 1985)
mean Anaphoric mean Topic
Distance (AD) Persistence (TP)
(scale 1-20) (scale 1-3)
================ ===============
object type patient non-patient patient non-patient
============ ====== ======== ===== =========
DIR.OBJECT 1.7 2.2 2.3 1.5
INDIR. OBJECT 8.3 10.1 0.6 0.4
===============================================

The English constructions that roughly correspond to the Nez Perce ones are:

(19) a. Patient DO: Mary gave the book to John

b. Dative DO: Mary gave John a book
c. Patient DO: John bough the book for Mary
d. Benefactive DO: John bought Mary a book

The quantified measures show that when a referent is coded grammatically as direct object --
patient in (19a,c), dative in (19b), benefactive in (19d)--it is more topical (lower AD, higher
TP).
16

3.5. The non-scalar nature of topicality

3.5.1. Preamble

However important quantified text-based studies have been for our understanding of
the discourse-processing function(s) of grammar, they come with certain costs. They have,
over the years, given rise to systematic artifacts that have, in turn, lead to explanatory models
of the text--rather than of the mind that produces and interprets the text.
One particularly damaging artifact produced by the text-based tradition described in
section 4, and for which I bear some responsible,[FN 21] is the notion that topicality is a
scalar property. The reasons for this distortion are perhaps understandable: Both main aspects
of topicality--anaphoric accessibility and cataphoric importance--are in principle a matter
of degree.
As elsewhere in structured information processing by organisms,[FN 22] it turns out
that scalarity in principle of the underlying mental (or physical) dimensions does not
automatically mean scalarity in fact at the processing level. Cognition, much like grammar,
seems to be a reductive, discretizing process.

3.5.2. Discreteness in grammar

We have already noted that grammars code systematically no more than three levels
of topicality--main topic (subject), secondary topic (direct-object), and non-topic (all others).
In many languages, the grammatical category direct-object does not exist, so that a nominal
participant is either the subject/topic of the clause or is not. In all languages, further, the
statistical association between the grammatical subject and the topical participant is very
robust. In the same vein, grammatical morphemes that code important topics tend to display
only a binary contrast--important vs. unimportant topic.[FN 23] Similarly, in the use of
word-order to code topic importance, one finds mostly a binary distinction between a pre-
verbal (important) and a post-verbal (unimportant) position (Payne 1985, 1989; Givón,
1988).

5.3. Discreteness in cognition

Many of the mental processes involved in referential coherence also seem to be

discrete. For example, attention--either conscious or covert--is a discrete process both
cognitively and neurologically (Posner 1985; Posner and Cohen 1984; Posner and Marin eds
1985; Posner and Petersen 1989).
17

Mental storage in either the working-memory buffer, permanent semantic-lexical

memory or episodic memory is also a discrete choice. And the episodic memory where
coherent text is stored is hierarchically structured (Mandler 1978; Kitsch 1977, 1982a,
1982b; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983), so that a piece of information is filed under either this
node-label or that one. And permanent cultural-semantic memory of conventional frames,
schemata or scripts seems to be likewise hierarchically organized (Schank and Abelson
1977).
One may of course argue that spreading activation introduces, in principle, an
element of scalarity. However, spreading activation most commonly applies to structured--
lexical-semantic or episodic--networks that are already in place (Collins and Loftus 1975;
Anderson 1976). And attention-manipulating grammatical cues involve indefinite referents
during their first introduction into the text, when no memory representation yet exists; it is
just being built (Gernsbacher 1988).

3.5.4. Artifacts of scalarity in text-based measures of topicality

The text-based measure of topicality that had produced the most conspicuous artifact
of seeming scalarity is anaphoric distance (AD), which assesses the gap between the current
and last appearance of the referent in the discourse. The mean AD values for the most
common topic-coding grammatical devices, summarized from studies of many typologically-
diverse languages, are given in (20) below.
18

(20) Comparison of mean referential distance (RD) values with degree

of categorial distribution for common referent-coding devices
(Givón ed. 1983; Givón 1984c; Sun and Givón 1985)
mean RD degree of categorial
construction (# of clauses) distribution
============ =========== =================
a. zero anaphora 1.0 100% at mean
b. unstressed PRO 1.0 95% at mean
------------------------------------------
c. stressed PRO 2.5 90% between 2-3
d. Y-movement 2.5 90% between 2-3
------------------------------------------
e. DEF noun 7.0 25% at 1.0
35% scattered 5.0-19
40% at 20+
f. modified DEF-NP 10.0 55% scattered 5.0-19.0
45% at 20+
------------------------------------------
g. L-dislocated DEF-NP 15.0 60% at 20+
25% at 4-9
13% at 10-19
h. repeated DEF-N 17.0 75% at 20+
18% at 3-8
6% at 15-19
==============================================

Beginning with the first four devices (20a,b,c,d) and the last two (20g,h), their
population distribution is either categorial or near categorial. In contrast, the two mid-
distance devices--definite noun (20e) and restrictively-modified definite NP (20f)--show a
scattered, non-categorial distribution, and nearly half of their membership has no anaphoric
antecedence within the preceding 20 clauses. No specific AD value were obtained for these
grammatical devices. Our old (1983) AD measure is fairly useless for describing them.
However imperfect, the AD measure still serves as a useful heuristic, dividing the
most common referent-coding devices into four distinct groups:
(a) Minimal-gap devices: Devices (20a,b) categorially code maximally continuous,
highly accessible referents.
(b) Short-gap devices: Devices (20c,d) categorially code discontinuous referents
with anaphoric antecedence within 2-3 clauses back.
19

(c) Gap-irrelevant devices: Devices (20e,f) code discontinuous referents whose

grounding is rather heterogenous, most likely a mix of situational, generic and
textual sources.
(d) Long-gap devices: Devices (20g,h) code discontinuous referents with relatively
distant anaphoric antecedence in the text, most likely beyond the current chain.

This grouping is coherent within a cognitively-based framework described below, where

topicality is taken to be a discrete process of attentional activation.

4. The cognitive interpretation of the grammar of reference

4.1. General orientation

In this section I will show how the grammatical devices that code referential cohe-
rence in various discourse contexts can be interpreted as mental processing instructions. The
interpretation will be given in terms the hearer's perspective.
The two main dimensions of topicality that emerged out of text-based studies--
importance ('relevance', 'topicality') and accessibility ('continuity')--fare rather differently
under our cognitive re-interpretation. Referential importance corresponds to attentional
activation. When a referent/topic is activated, it serves as the address or file-label under
which incoming information is files. That information, packaged in the same clause with the
activated referent, is then stored in an episodic memory file that is 'labeled' by that referent.
Only one referent/topic can be active per clause. Most commonly the active topic is
the clause's grammatical subject.[FN 24] Such activation must therefore be a limited
capacity. And this in turn points toward some sub-part of the attentional system as the most
likely cognitive capacity involved. The functional motivation for the limited capacity of
referent/topic activation ought to be transparent: It insures unambiguous filing of incoming
information in a well-marked single file.
Attentional activation of a file's referent/topic label makes the file itself accessible.
And accessing, or activating, a file means that it is now open to receive incoming
information. Coherent text is organized hierarchically, with lower file-nodes nested under
higher ones. The activation process we will deal with here involves, primarily, the accessing
of the lowest hierarchic level, the one that directly governs clauses/propositions. In text, this
node-level is the thematic paragraph or clause-chain.[FN 25]
Since the norm in coherent discourse is that several chunks of new information are
filed successively in the same file, one may assume that continued activation of the
currently-open file is the default ('unmarked') case.
20

The second major cognitive domain where the grammar of referential coherence
operates is memory. Here, various grammatical clues signal the type of memory search that
must be undertaken. This is the cognitive equivalent of referential-accessibility. Grammar-
cued memory searches involve both working memory and episodic memory. Nodes/files
are searched for and activated through their label, the currently active ('important')
referent/topic. The purpose of memory search is to identify some currently-inactive file that
is already in storage and re-activate it.
The fact that memory searches are predominantly searches for co-referents does not
mean that the grammar--and its corresponding cognitive operation--are about co-reference.
Rather, it is a natural consequence of referents/topics being used as file-labels.

4.2. Major attentional activation options

4.2.1. Overview

There are four major options for manipulating the attentional system by the grammar
of referential coherence:

(21) Major attentional-system operations:

a. continue activation of the currently-open file
b. terminate activation of the currently-open file
c. activate a currently inactive file; either
(i) open/activate a brand new file; or
(ii) re-open/re-activate an already-existing file

Broadly speaking, the operations that underlie the de-activation (21b), search, and
activation (21c) of referents are close analogs of Posner's (1984) three components of visual
attention. Our "terminate activation" operation (21b) stands for Posner's "disengage". The
various search procedures implicit under (21c-ii) stand for "move". And activation (21c)
stands for "re-engage". These major activation options correspond, broadly, to the major
types of referent-tracking grammatical devices (20). The options are represented below as
a series of binary choices.
21

(22) HYPOTHESIS: Major grammar-coded referential activation options:

U = 'unmarked' = default
M = 'marked' = non-default

REFERENT
[noun phrase]

[U] [M]
CONTINUE CURRENT DEFER DECISION ON
ACTIVATION ACTIVATION
[anaphoric PRO] [full-NP]
[zero anaphora] [stressed PRO]

[M] [U]
IMPORTANT: UNIMPORTANT:
TERMINATE CURRENT CONTINUE CURRENT
ACTIVATION ACTIVATION

[M] [U]
ACTIVATE ACTIVATE
EXISTING FILE NEW FILE
[definite] [indefinite]

4.2.2. Assignment of default activation status

The choice of default ('unmarked') status for the various binary nodes in (22) is
motivated by three types of consideration: (a) grammatical considerations of code quantity;
(b) cognitive consideration of mental effort; and (c) discourse-distribution considerations
of relative frequency. We will deal with each major mental operation in order.
22

4.2.2.1. The default status of continued activation

As noted earlier above, two grammatical devices specialize in signaling continued

activation of the currently active referent/file--anaphoric/unstressed/clitic pronouns and zero
anaphora. The reasons for considering continued activation the default choice are as follows.

(a) Code quantity

Zero anaphora and unstressed pronouns are the smallest code units in the grammar of
referential coherence. Stressed pronouns, names, full nouns and various noun-phrase types
are all much larger. The iconicity principle that underlies this cross-language generalization
is:[FN 26]

(23) The code-quantity principle:

"Information that is already activated requires the smallest amount of code".

(b) Mental effort and/or complexity

Principle (23) may be translated into cognitive terms as:

(24) Code-quantity, mental effort, memory and attention:

a. The activation of an inactive referent requires more mental effort.
b. The processing of a larger code sequence requires more mental effort.
c. Larger--more salient--coding is more effective in activating attention.
d. Therefore, referents that are already active require minimal coding.

(c) Text frequency

We noted earlier that high multi-propositional coherence, thus equi-topic chains, is
the more frequent norm in human discourse. That is, continued activation of the currently-
active referent is the statistical norm. To illustrate the predominance of anaphoric pronouns
and zero over full NPs in coherent oral text, consider the following text-frequencies from
spoken language.
23

(25) Text frequency of anaphoric subject pronouns or zero vs. definite

NPs in spoken Ute, spoken English and two spoken Pidgins
(Givón, 1983b; 1984c)[FN 27]

pronouns
or zero DEF nouns TOTAL
========== =========== ==========
N % N % N %
===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====
Ute 288 93.5 20 6.5 308 100.0
English 540 74.4 185 25.6 725 100.0
Spanglish 109 68.9 54 31.1 163 100.0
Filipinglish 132 73.3 48 26.7 180 100.0
===========================================

4.2.2.2. The activation status of non-continuous referents

Larger size referent-coding devices--stressed pronouns, names, nouns or larger NPs --

do not automatically signal the de-activation of the current active referent. Only important
('topical') new referents get activated, to then serve as file labels for incoming information.
Unimportant referents are not activated, and don't serve as file labels. Rather, they are
themselves filed as new information.
The grammatical devices that code a referent as non-continuous signal deferred
activation decision. The deferral is necessary in order to settle first two crucial properties
of the referent:
!its importance/topicality
!its definiteness status
The thematic importance of a new referent determines whether the currently- active file will
continue or terminate as address for incoming information. The definiteness status of an
important referent determines whether the file to be activated is a new one (indefinite) or an
existing one (definite), with the latter requiring a search for its network connection across the
mentally-stored text.
24

4.2.2.3. The default status of unimportant referents

The assignment of the default ('unmarked') value to unimportant referents is supported

by all three requisite considerations.

(a) Code-quantity
The morphemes coding thematic importance status, for both indefinite and definite
NPs, tend to be either additive, thus contrasting with zero,[FN 28] or larger, as in the English
contrast between 'a' and 'this', or the Bemba contrast between the CV- and VCV- noun
prefix.[FN 29]

(b) Mental effort

If the referent is unimportant, the currently-active file is not de-activated, but rather
remains active. This means that a smaller number of mental operations is called for in the
processing of an unimportant referent.

(c) Discourse frequency

In connected discourse, unimportant referents are much more numerous than
important ones. This is to be expected, since importance must be linked to saliency, and
saliency--figure vs. ground--translates, in information-theoretic terms, into low frequency.
To illustrate this systematic frequency bias, consider the frequency distribution of
indefinite referents in the total indefinite population in text, as a function of their cataphoric
topic persistence (TP)--in number of recurrences within the next 10 clauses following their
introduction into the narrative--in spoken American English. As noted earlier, the TP
measure correlates reliably with thematic importance.
25

(25) Frequency distribution of indefinite referents according to their

topic persistence (TP) (Wright and Givón 1987)[FN 30]

TP N %
====== ====== ======
0 80 53.3
1 21 14.0
2 12 8.0
----------- ---------- -----------
sub-total: 113 77.3
====================
3 3 2.0
4 5 3.3
5 4 2.6
6 4 2.6
7 5 3.3
8 6 4.0
9 3 2.0
10 4 2.6
10+ 3 2.0
---------- --------- -------------
sub-total: 37 22.7
======================
TOTAL: 150 100.0
======================

Less persistent referents, with TP-values 0-2, comprise 77.3% of the total sample. More
persistent referents, with TP-values >2, comprise only 22.7% of the total sample.

4.2.2.4. The cognitive status of indefinite referents

In cognitive terms, the grammatical marker of 'indefinite' signals that no search need
be undertaken--neither in the episodic memory of the current text, nor in a situation-based
file, nor in a generic-based file. In most languages, the grammar of indefinite reference also
signals whether an indefinite referent is thematically important/topical or not.[FN 31] As an
illustration of such a grammatical contrast, consider the use of the unstressed indefinite
articles 'a' and 'this' in colloquial American English:
26

(26) a. Unimportant indefinite:

'...He passes a bum, then two prostitutes, and some highschool kids and all kinds
of other people, not that he's paying much attention, he just keeps going and
thinking...'

b. Important indefinite:
'...So next he passes this bum and boy, the guy was real ragged, [Ø] run down and
all, [Ø] was not even begging, just [Ø] sitting there; so he stops and gives him a
dollar and the next thing you know the guy is screaming...'

There is a strong statistical correlation in spoken American English between the use
of the indefinite 'this' and the topic persistence (TP) measure of the referent. This may be
seen in the following quantitative results:

(27) Mean topic persistence (TP) of the indefinite 'a' an 'this'

in spoken English (0-10 scale; Wright and Givon 1987)

grammatical code average TP value

============== =============
'this'-subject 6.95
'this'-object 2.40
'a'-subject 1.54
'a'-object 0.56
==============================

As noted earlier, topic persistence in the subsequent discourse is a reliable if indirect

heuristic measure of local thematic importance. Referents coded as important by the
grammar continue to be talked about, i.e. remain mentally activated. In cognitive terms, the
grammatical signal 'important indefinite' instructs the hearer to open and activate a file for
the referent. The cognitive interpretation of the grammar of indefinite reference may be
summarized as follows:
27

(28) HYPOTHESIS: Indefinite grammatical marker as

mental processing instructions:

a. FULL NP ===> Defer activation decision; then

b. if INDEF ===> Do not search for an existing file; then
c. if UNIMPORTANT, then
(i) do not open a file
(ii) do not activate
(iii) file as new information in the current active file.
d. if IMPORTANT, then
(i) Open a new file in episodic memory;
(ii) activate;
(iii) Start filing incoming information in new file.

4.3. The cognitive status of definite referents

4.3.1. Overview

As noted above, any activation decision for both definite and indefinite NPs must be
deferred in order to determine first the thematic importance/topicality of the referent. In
addition, two major cognitive operations are specific only to definite NPs:
!determining the source of definiteness;
!searching the storage space for an existing file.
Before delving into the considerable complexity of these operations, let us consider briefly
the markedness status of definite referents.

4.3.2. Markedness of definite referents

The choice of non-default ('marked') status for definite (vs. indefinite) referents is not
overwhelming, given that both are full-NP and are marked (non-default) vis-a-vis continuing
reference. The grounds for this choice are as follows:

(a) Code quantity

Some languages have only one marked article, the definite, contrasting with an
unmarked (zero-marked) indefinite. This is attested in Biblical Hebrew, as well as in older
stages of English, German, French and Spanish prior to the development of the numeral 'one'
as marker of important/referring indefinites. However, other languages present the opposite
28

situation, with the referring--important--indefinite marked and the definite unmarked

(Mandarin Chinese; Li and Thompson 1975). The grammatical evidence for markedness is
thus inconclusive.

(b) Cognitive considerations

Both definite and indefinite full NPs require deferred activation decision, pending
determination of the thematic importance of the referent. In both, important referents are
activated, which automatically de-activates the currently-active file. Important definite
referents, however, trigger two additional, complex mental operations--choice of the source
of definiteness and referent search. This makes them cognitively more complex than
indefinites, thus the 'marked' status.[FN 32]

(c) Text frequency

Both indefinite and definite full-NPs are relatively rare in text, as compared to
anaphoric pronouns and zero. Text frequency data do not support the assignment of 'marked'
status to either.

4.3.3. Important vs. unimportant definites

Grammatical cues that signal thematic importance have been discussed in some detail
above. We noted that determining the thematic importance of a referent must precede all
activation decisions, for both definites and indefinites.
On the whole, definite NPs are more likely to code important than unimportant
referents. But some languages employ special grammatical morphemes to code important
definites,[FN 33] just as most languages do for indefinites. In many languages, the main
device used to code the importance of definite NPs, and also of indefinites, is word-order,
with more important referents fronted.[FN 34] For example, in almost all languages the
direct object, which is more topical, precedes the indirect object.[FN 35]

4.3.4. Summary: Cognitive processing instructions for definite referents

The cognitive interpretation of the of the grammar of definite reference may be

summarized as follows:
29

(29) HYPOTHESIS: The grammar of definite reference

as mental processing instructions:

a. If DEF NP ===> Defer activation decision; then

b. If UNIMPORTANT, then
(i) do not open a file
(ii) do not activate
(iii) file as a chunk of new information in the currently-active file.
c. If IMPORTANT, then
d. Determine the source of definiteness among the disjunctive options:
(i) Situational ('deictic') working memory or attention
(ii) Generic ('cultural') semantic memory
(iii) Textual ('discourse') episodic memory; then
e. Search for antecedent co-referent in the appropriate mental file; if found, then
(i) retrieve;
(ii) re-activate;
(iii) Start filing incoming information in the re-activated file.

4.4. Determining the antecedent source of definite reference

As noted earlier, there are three major contextual sources where the antecedence of
definite NPs most commonly arises; that is, where they are grounded. The speaker takes
advantage of these sources as the grounds for assuming that the referent is accessible to the
hearer. These three sources are the current speech situation, the shared cultural knowledge,
and the mentally represented text. In cognitive terms, the three translate into three mental-
representation domains in the mind of the hearer; respectively (Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968):
!the mental model of the current speech situation (working memory/attention)
!the permanent semantic-cultural memory (lexical-semantic memory)
!the episodic memory of the current text (episodic memory)
Presumably, the accessing of information from each of these three domains is
radically different. At the moment I see no overwhelming grounds for determining the
relative markedness of the three domains. The immediate speech situation may be assumed
to be accessible automatically at any given communicative moment, perhaps due to being
under the current focus of attention.[FN 36] Permanent semantic/cultural memory is
automatically activated by the vocabulary.[FN 37] In contrast, coreference-searches in
30

episodic memory are triggered by highly specific grammatical cues. If any markedness-based
ordering among the three major search-types exists, the most likely order is:

(30) HYPOTHESIS: Order of mental operations involve in

determining the source of definiteness:
a. Scan for grammatical clues that signal situation-based reference; then
(i) If found, initiate relevant search;
(ii) if not found, then
b. Scan for grammatical cues that signal culture-based reference;
(i) if found, initiate relevant search;
(ii) if not found, then
c. Initiate search for text-based reference.

Situation-based searches will not be discussed further here. We will confine ourselves to the
other two domains.

4.5. Searches for culture-based reference

4.5.1. Levels of culture-shared reference

Grammatical clues are only minimally involved in marking a definite referent as being
grounder in shared cultural knowledge. For this reason, no attempt will be made here to
describe the search and retrieval mechanism beyond a certain level of generality. The
culturally-shared generic context that is relevant for referent tracking falls under three main
types, in terms of the hierarchic level of shared information. Only one of these types
correlates with specific grammatical clues, and even there only partially. Further, the three
types overlap to some degree. Still, it may be useful to consider them separately. They are:
!the global cultural context
!specific conventional frames ('scripts', 'schemata')
!possession and/or parts-of-whole relations
We will consider them in order.

(a) Globally-shared generic reference

Global culturally-shared information is, presumably, always available to all members
of a cultural group.[FN 38] Typical examples at various levels of generality are:
31

(31) Globally-shared generic reference:

a. The sun came out all of a sudden
b. The president fired his chief-of-staff
c. They went to the cemetery
d. That year, the river didn't thaw till May
e. So they told me to call the sheriff
f. The Gods must be angry

(b) Frame-based generic reference

A cultures is much like a biological organism. Its generically-shared knowledge,
presumably stored in the permanent semantic memory, is hierarchically organized, with
smaller sub-frames ('nodes') fitting into larger frames, and those into larger meta-frames, etc.
When a particular frame is activated during discourse, most commonly by the vocabulary,
its sub-frames, including potential referents, are automatically also activated (Anderson,
Garrod and Sanford 1983; Yekovich and Walker 1976; Walker and Yekovich 1987).
Most commonly, frame-based referential access is used in a mixed system, interacting
with text-based access. Text-base reference is presumably established first; vocabulary items
then trigger access to cultural frames; and spreading activation triggers access to sub-frames.
As illustrations of such an interactive system consider:

(32) Referential access through cultural frames:

a. My boy missed school today. He was late for the bus
b. She showed us this gorgeous house, but the living room was too small
c. He went into a restaurant and asked the waiter for the menu

The access to referents through cultural frames is not restricted to definite reference,
nor even to referring nominals. Sub-frames evoke, through spreading activation, their entire
sub-universe, though to varying degrees. As an illustration, consider the various referring and
non-referring entities that can be evoked by 'restaurant':

(33) She went into a restaurant, sat down and waited.

a. Eventually a waiter came over
b. No waiter was anywhere to be seen
c. She could have used some food, she thought
d. She was hungry
e. She needed a warm place to hide
f. She didn't have much money on her
g. It was nice to hear some human voices
32

(c) Whole-part reference

Whole-part reference is a special restricted case of frame-based reference. In this
case, the frame itself--the whole--is a text-based referent. The whole then evokes --activates--
its parts, its relations, or its possessions. As illustrations, consider:

(34) Whole-and-part-based reference:

a. She grabbed the fish and chopped off its head
b. John just got a job working for his father
c. The house was a mess, the roof leaked
d. Mary is upset, her kids keep flunking highschool
e. My wife called and said...
f. The table is missing a leg

4.5.2. Interactive parallel searches

As noted above, the accessing of culture-based reference is rarely triggered by

grammatical clues. Still, a possessive signal, the most common grammatical clue to a partly-
frame-based reference, may signal text-based reference. Thus contrast:

(35) a. Frame-based possession:

John was born in 1962. His father was a banker.
b. Text-based possession:
John had a cat, a dog and two canaries. One day his dog ran away.

The activation of cultural frames by the vocabulary is automatic (Yekovich and

Walker 1986; Walker and Yekovich 1987). What triggers the choice of a particular frame for
a particular referent-search remains unclear.
The interaction between frame-based and text-based activation has been studied
experimentally by Yekovich and Walker (1986) and Walker and Yekovich (1987). They
observe:
"...central concepts...are available as antecedents regardless of the text's features. In
contrast, peripheral concepts depend on the text for their availability..." (1987, p.
673; italics added)
It is thus likely that two parallel searches for reference--text-based through episodic
memory, frame-based through permanent semantic memory--are simultaneously triggered
in most cases. The search is presumably terminated when either one of the two reaches
conclusive referent identification.[FN 39]
33

4.5.3. Hierarchic node-structure and frame-based activation

Spreading activation in lexical-semantic memory presumably proceeds in all

directions, i.e. toward both higher and lower nodes within a semantic domain. This is easy
to demonstrate with traditional linguistic data of relevance or evocation relations. Thus
consider:[FN 40]

(36) a. Activation of a higher node by a lower node:

My uncle trained as an internist, though he hates medicine
b. Activation of a lower node by a higher node:
My uncle has always hated medicine, but wound up training as an internist

In spite of the potential for multi-directional activation, the aspect of vocabulary-triggered

spreading activation that concerns us here most is automatic downward spreading activation,
from a frame ('higher node') to its sub-frames ('lower nodes').

4.5.4. Centrality, relevance and frame-based activation

Walker and Yekovich (1987), in studying the activation of central vs. peripheral
concepts, noted that more central, relevant, or frame-specific sub-nodes are activated more
strongly, or faster, than peripheral sub-nodes. Their observations are directly applicable to
the activation of sub-frames ('lower nodes') by their governing frame ('higher node'). One
may thus assume that more important, central sub-frames are more accessible as antecedents
in frame-based referent searches. For example, a restaurant frame should activate 'cook' and
'waiter' faster and more intensely than 'busboy', which is less central, or 'janitor', which is less
frame-specific. Examples (33) above made a similar point.
The efficacy of downward activation of sub-frames, and thus their use in reference
searches, is not solely the function of the generic centrality of sub-parts within the frame.
Specific text-based relevance considerations may also intervene to enhance or suppress
frame-based activation. For example, when the restaurant text extols the food quality, the
cook automatically gains stronger activation. When it extols the tables' cleanliness, the
busboy gains stronger activation. This is another area when frame-based and text-based
activation interact.
34

4.6. The processing of text-based definite referents

4.6.1. Preamble

We turn now to the last, most complex and most explicitly grammar-triggered domain
of reference, the processing of text-based definite referents. The processing steps we have
assumed thus far are reproduced from (29) above:

(29) HYPOTHESIS: Definite grammatical markers as mental processing instructions:

a. DEF NP ===> Defer activation decision; then

b. If UNIMPORTANT, then
(i) do not open a file
(ii) do not activate
(iii) file as a chunk of new information in the current active file.
c. If IMPORTANT, then
d. Determine the source of definiteness among the three disjunctive options:
(i) Situational ('deictic') working memory or attention
(ii) Generic ('cultural') semantic memory
(iii) Textual ('discourse') episodic memory
e. Search for co-referent in the appropriate mental space; if found, then
(i) retrieve;
(ii) re-activate;
(iii) Start filing incoming information in re-activated file.

In this section I will try to elaborate on the processes subsumed under (29e), especially as
they apply to the search for text-based referents in episodic memory. I will deal in order with
three major grammar-cues search types:
!short-distance searches
!long-distance searches
!specifically-guided searches

4.5.2. Short-distance text-based searches: Within the currently activated node

Two major grammatical devices, both contrastive, code definite, important referents
that are currently inactive but whose text-based antecedent is found most typically within 2-3
clauses back (see TP measurement summaries in (20) above):
35

!Stressed pronouns
!Y-moved NPs
Typically, referent coded by these contrastive devices find their text-based antecedence
within the currently active chain/paragraph, the currently active lowest thematic node. Being
the node-level that directly governs verbal clauses, this is the file labeled by topical/
important referents. The two grammatical devices thus signal both the de-activation of the
current thematic node and the activation of a new node--for which the referent marked by a
stressed pronoun or Y-movement is the new activated topic, or file label. As illustrations of
the use of stressed pronouns in text, recall:[FN 41]

(37) a. Bill came by. He's... (default-continuity = unstressed pronoun)

b. *Bill and Mary came by. He's ... (bad switch-reference)
c. Bill and Mary came by. HE is... (good switch reference = stressed pronoun)
(i) *and she's... (bad switch-reference)
(ii) And SHE is... (good switch-reference = stressed pronoun)

The text-based antecedent of a stressed pronouns is often found within the preceding clause,
but is not the active topical referent of that clause. That antecedent cannot be an anaphoric
pronoun or zero. Thus compare:

(38) a. Bill came in, he looked tired.

(i) He's an actor and [Ø] works late.
(good continuing activation = unstressed PRO)
(ii) *HE is an actor and [Ø] works late.
(bad continuing activation = stressed PRO)
b. Bill came in first. He was tired. Mary came next.
(i) SHE wasn't (good contrast = stressed PRO)
(ii) *She wasn't. (bad contrast = unstressed PRO)

What these examples suggest is that stressed pronouns are used in discourse contexts where
another referent has been active for a short time only--1-2 clauses--and is now being de-
activated. The referent coded by the stressed pronoun had been the one-before-last active
topic, and is now being re-activated after only a short gap of absence.
Y-moved ('contrastive') referents are also stressed, a fact that--as in stressed
pronouns--indicate counter-expectancy. Their text-based antecedent is found typically 1-3
clauses back. The Y-moved referent may be either a stressed pronoun or a full NP. Thus
consider:
36

(39) A man and a woman came in and asked for something hot.
(i) To the MAN they offered tea; to the WOMAN they...
(ii) To HIM they offered tea; to HER they...
(iii) *To him they offered tea; to her they...

The Y-moved referents in (39) are logically referring; but Y-movement can also be
used with generic referents. When this is the case, the generic text-based antecedent may be
implicit rather than explicit. And the search for that antecedent must again combine frame-
based and text-based procedures. As illustrations, consider:

(40) a. Referring Y-moved topic:

They offered lunch. I finished my sandwich right away. The SALAD I didn't touch.
b. Generic Y-moved topic:
Speaking of vegetables, I love tomatoes. POTATOES I hate.[FN 42]

Lastly, if contrastive grammatical devices typically find their text-based antecedent

within the current thematic node (chain/paragraph), it stands to reason that these devices can
not be used to refer backward across paragraph boundaries. This is borne out by examples
such as:

(41) a. ...So the woman did all the weeding in the garden while the man loafed.
And so it went all winter long.
(i) The following spring, we saw the woman...
(ii) *The following spring, the WOMAN we saw...
(iii) *The following spring, we saw HER...

The cognitive interpretation of stressed pronouns and Y-movement as instructions for

text-based searches in episodic memory may be summarized as follows, with (29e) again
being the point of departure:

(42) HYPOTHESIS: Short-distance text-based search instructions:[FN 43]

If STRESSED PRO or Y-MOVED, then
(i) Skip back over the currently active referent;
(ii) Identify the nearest previously-active referent within the current active
paragraph/chain node;
(iii) activate.
37

4.5.3. Long-distance text-based searches outside the currently active

chain or paragraph

In the grammar of referential coherence, several devices subsumed under definite-NP

trigger searches for text-based referents that:
!are currently inactive;
!were locally-important, thus active, earlier;
!were active in a thematic node preceding the currently activated chain/paragraph.
These devices are used, typically, in paragraph initial contexts, and trigger referent searches
beyond the initial boundary of the current paragraph.
The range of grammatical devices that can signal such long-distance searches is wide.
Some are limited to spoken language. Others are used only in the written genre; others yet
may be used, with more or less the same function, in both oral and written discourse. Three
devices that are used mostly in spoken discourse are:
!left-dislocation
!repetition
!pausing before the referent
Typical text-derived if out-of-context examples are:[FN 44]

(43) a. L-dislocation:
...My dad, all he ever did was farm and ranch...
b. Repetition:
...our home, our homestead was 50 miles south of Grants...
c. Pausing:
...and of course the hunters started going there, and then...
then the predators started...

As noted earlier above (20), 73% of L-dislocated referents in spoken English narrative
find their text-based antecedent 11-20 clauses back; 76% of repeated referents find their text-
based antecedent 20-plus clauses back; and 86% of the referents preceded by a pause find
their text-based antecedent 20-plus back. Such typical anaphoric distances support the
suggestion that these three devices are used primarily to retrieve an inactive referent across
the current thematic chain/paragraph boundary. In the case of L-dislocation, it may also be
safe to assume that the text-based antecedent is to be found within the directly preceding
thematic paragraph.
38

The suggestion that L-dislocation (or NP fronting) is used systematically as a

paragraph-initial device, signaling both referent re-activation and the opening a new
thematic unit, comes from a number of sources. For example, pre-verbal subjects in Early
Biblical Hebrew are used both to bring a non-active referent back into the discourse and to
open a new thematic paragraph (Givón 2015, ch. 9). Fronted subjects in Tagalog show a
strong statistical association with paragraph initial contexts, a preceding period (as against
comma or zero punctuation) and switch-subject (Fox 1985). L-dislocated referents in Italian
conversation seem to have a strong association with the turn-initial position, i.e. with
switching to a new speaker (Duranti and Ochs, 1979).[FN 45] A strong association between
L-dislocation and the paragraph-initial position in English conversation has been also noted
by Geluykens (1985). Finally, Payne (1985) notes that fronted NPs in Papago tend to be
important, persistent topics.
The cognitive interpretation of L-dislocation as an instruction for text-based search
in episodic memory may be summarized as follows, with (29e) again taken as point of
departure:

(44) HYPOTHESIS: Long-distance text-base search instructions:[FN 46]

a. If L-DISLOCATED, then
(i) Skip back over the currently active paragraph-node; then
(ii) proceed to search back within the nearest previously-active paragraph; then
(iii) Select the previously-active, important referent within that node; then
(iv) activate.

It is implicit in both hypotheses (42) and (44) above that searches for anaphoric
antecedents proceed linearly through the stored text. This is true for each level of the
hierarchically-organized storage: Clauses within the chain node, chain nodes within the
paragraph node, etc. That text-based reference searches are strongly guided by the hierarchic
structure of text in episodic memory has been suggested by Mandler (1978), Thorndyke
(1978), Black and Bower (1979), Schank and Abelson (1979), van Dijk and Kintsch (1983)
and Walker and Yekovich (1987), inter alia.
39

4.5.4. Specific item-guided text-based searches

4.5.4.1. Modifier-guided searches

Some grammatical cues subsumed under definite-NP seem to carry added specific
information that guides the search for a text-based antecedent, above and beyond the referent
noun itself. Typically, these are definite NPs with a restrictive modifier. The modifier may
be an adjective, a relative clause, an ordinal, or a possessor; as in, respectively:

(45) a. Adjective: The red book got lost

b. Relative clause: The woman you brought over yesterday
c. Ordinal: Their third child
d. Possessor: John's house

The mean anaphoric distance of such modifiers is relatively high--14 clauses for subject NPs
with restrictive REL-clauses (spoken Spanish; Bentivoglio 1983). But the frequency
distribution of the NP population is not categorial, with AD values scattered all across the
1-to-20 scale (see (20) above. It is thus reasonable to assume that restrictive modifiers do not
direct the text-based antecedent search in terms of a specific distance, in terms of either
clauses or chains/paragraphs. Rather, the specific modifier itself must guides the search
through the text-storage space, presumably till a match is found
A restrictive modifier such as those in (45) above, when used in a text-based
antecedent search,[FN 47] presumably supplies information about some specific event/state
in the preceding text where the antecedent is to be found. For lack of any argument for a
structured, hierarchy-guided search, one may suggest, tentatively, that the specific
information carried by the restrictive modifier guides a linear search through the stored text.
That is:

(46) HYPOTHESES: Modifier-guided text-based search instructions:

a. Proceed backwards linearly through the stored text, at whatever hierarchic level,
utilizing whatever short-cuts or heuristics available;
b. Look out for a double match, whereby:
(i) The current referent's modifier matches some text-stored state/event; and
(ii) that stored state/event is associated with--'filed under'--a file-label matching
the current referent (head noun).
c. When such a double-match is found, activate the matching referent.
40

4.5.5. Deixis-guided text-based searches

Stressed demonstratives such as 'this' and 'that' are not used only to direct situation-
based referent searches, but also to guide text-based searches.[FN 48] As illustrations,
consider:

(47) a. So I told him all about it and at the end he too agreed. So we parted
as friends. And THAT, believe it or not, was all that happened...
b. ...THAT is all I'm going to tell you. Now THIS is what I want you to do...
c. ...THAT was the news, Monday, October 15. THIS is Walter Cronkite, bidding
you goodnight...
d. ...So in the end he did escaped. THAT was Joe alright...

Typically, such anaphoric uses of 'that' and cataphoric uses of 'this' brackets a wide--and
hard to delimit--thematic chunk of the stored text. The chunk may be an NP (e.g. 'this' in
(47c) and 'that' in (47d)), a clause, a paragraph, an episode or a whole story.
When 'that' is used in such a capacity in English, most typically the reference is made
at the beginning of a new thematic node, so that the search proceeds backwards across the
thematic boundary, and the antecedent is the entire immediately-preceding thematic node.
'This' is more often used cataphorically, alerting the hearer to a thematic node that is about
to begin. One may thus characterize these deictic referent-coding devices as signaling a short
distance search at the chain/paragraph node level.

4.5.6. Name-guided text-based searches

Proper names such as 'Joe', 'Mom', 'Rosinante', 'Pittsburgh' etc. are a sub-category of
definite-NPs, and are used to trigger text-based searches for a currently-inactive antecedent.
At first glance, a name seem to give no clue as to the storage location of its antecedent.
However, there are grounds for suggesting that a name is associated with the top node in the
hierarchic episodic-memory structure of the current text; and further, that the 'current text'
subsumes--whenever relevant--the speaker's or hearer's own life. Typically, only globally
important referents are given a proper name, and such referents are relevant to the entire
text. Whether this means that name-guided searches direct the hearer toward the top node in
the hierarchic storage structure of the current text remains to be seen.
41

5. Discussion

The hypotheses proposed above, about the cognitive processes cued by the grammar
of referential coherence, are tentative and speculative. Their main advantage is that they are
explicit enough to be empirically testable, and that they attempt to interpret the data of
grammatical form, communicative function and text-distribution of grammar, all taken
together, as clues to the mind that produces and interprets the text (Givón 1995, ch. 7).

5.1. Nominal referents as thematic node labels

I have suggested above that the grammar of referential coherence is involved,

primarily if not exclusively, in identifying the storage files/nodes in which incoming
language-coded information is stored in episodic memory. The referents ('topics') may thus
be viewed as the file labels. When they are activated, the file is accessed and is open to
receive incoming information. Thus:

(48) GENERAL PRINCIPLE:

"A file can only be accessed and opened if its label is activated".

7.2. Node activation and the deployment of attention

7.2.1. Activation, de-activation and re-activation

New incoming information can only be stored in an activated file. The default choice
for filing incoming information is continued activation--filing information in the same
active file. When incoming information is addressed to an existing but currently-inactive
file ('definite'), that file must be first re-activated before more information can be stored in
it. When the information is addressed to a new file ('indefinite'), one that hasn't yet been
integrated into the storage structure, that new file is by definition inactive, and must be first
opened, i.e. activated. The activation of an indefinite referent involves two distinct
processes:
!opening the file to receive information
!grounding the new file into some specific location in the pre-existing storage
structure
42

Existential-presentative constructions, the most common device cross-linguistically for

introducing important indefinite referents into the discourse, usually include relevance
markers that instruct the interlocutor about where to integrate the new open file in the pre-
existing storage structure of episodic memory.[FN 49]
The activation of a currently-inactive file automatically triggers the de-activation of
the currently-active file. This automatic procedure suggests:

(49) GENERAL PRINCIPLE:

"Only one file is open at any given time".

Principle (49) is the consequence of a happy bio-functional conspiracy, dictated most likely
by:
!the limiting capacity of an attentional sub-system; but
!the need to insure unambiguous filing of incoming information.

7.2.2. The gating function of importance or relevance

The activation of referents as file labels, both existing and new, depends crucially on
the determination of the referent's importance or relevance. Referents that are deemed--
either through grammatical coding or through other means, inferences or heuristics--to be
unimportant, are neither activated nor used as file-labels. Rather, they are themselves filed
as new information in the currently active file. Since importance and relevance are often
unmarked by the grammar, and since they require conscious context-scanning judgement,
one may conclude that conscious attention fills a similar role in the processing of language-
coded information as it does elsewhere (Schneider 1985):

(50) GENERAL PRINCIPLE:

"Conscious attention gates or assigns priority to incoming information".

7.2.3. Correlation with attention studies

There are several reasons why it is attractive to identify the file-node activation and
de-activation system in discourse processing with some sub-system of attention. First, like
other attentional sub-systems, referent activation seems to be a narrow channel or limiting
capacity (Posner and Warren 1972; Schneider and Shiffrin 1977). Second, like other
43

attentional sub-systems, in particular the parietal visual attention, it seems to involve both
activation ("engage") and de-activation ("disengage") operations (Posner and Cohen 1984;
Posner 1985; Posner and Badgaiyan 1998). Third, like other attentional sub-systems (Posner
1985; Nissen and Bulemer 1987), grammar-cued discourse processing seems to involve
covert attention. Forth, as in other attentional sub-systems, consciousness retains higher
priority-assignment functions ('gating'; Schneider 1985).
That the processing mind is not aware of the on-line workings of grammar of may be
taken for granted. Grammatical clues in discourse processing decay rapidly after the message
has been decoded, and are not retained in episodic memory (Gernsbacher 1985, 1988, 1989).
They function either in the initial construction of episodic text-storage or in guiding searches
through it.
Finally, as Posner and Petersen (1989) and Posner et al. (1988) have noted in their
studies of the posterior visual attention system, a neural a mechanism (or 'structure') may first
evolve for one task (spatial object recognition) but later get adapted for another--though
similar--task (word recognition). The general functional parallelism between the covert
posterior visual attention system and our referent activation system suggests that this may be
another case of such neurological re-adaptation (Givón 2002, chs 4,5; Givón 2009, ch. 11).

7.3. Searches in mental storage space

Following the cognitive literature, we may assume that two hierarchically structured
mental storage systems are strongly implicated in referent searches:
!Permanent semantic memory (Atkinson & Shiffring 1968;
Anderson, Garrod and Sanford 1983; Yekovich and Walker 1986;
Walker and Yekovich 1987; inter alia).
!Episodic memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968; Kintsch 1977,1988a, 1988b;
Schank and Abelson, 1977; Mandler, 1978; Thorndyke 1978;
van Dijk and Kintsch 1983; inter alia)
We may also assume that a third mental representation system is also involved:
!Mental model of the current speech situation.

Before the search for a currently-inactive important definite referent can proceed, one of
these three representational system must be identified as the antecedent of the definite
reference.
It is suggested, though by no means fully established, that situation-based reference
is accessed first, and either confirmed or rejected. This is likely because the mental
representation of the current speech situation is probably always active at any given speech-
time, perhaps as the current focus of attention and/or working memory.
44

7.4. Role of the working-memory buffer

It is generally conceded that in formation, including language-coded information,

must be first held in some working-memory buffer in order to be entered into longer-term
episodic memory (Kintsch 1970; Jacoby 1974; Shiffrin and Schneider 1977; van Dijk and
Kintsch 1983; Gathercole and Baddeley 1993; Ericsson and Kintsch 1995). The capacity of
the buffer is ca. 1-2 clauses, meaning ca. 5-7 seconds, and it is vacated continuously on a first
in, first out basis (Jarvella 1971,1979; Glanzer and Razel 1974; Glanzer et al. 1981; Swinney
1979).
From our perspective, what is crucial is that language-coded information is stored in
the buffer verbatim, with propositional boundaries clearly coded (Jarvella 1979; Glanzer et
al. 1981; Fletcher 1981; Levelt and Kelter 1982). Such verbatim storage insures that
grammatical clues are kept intact in the buffer till the clause's storage-location in episodic
memory is resolved--given that grammatical information is not preserved in episodic memory
(Gernsbacher 1985). The 1-2 clause capacity reported for the buffer is compatible with the
constricted one-clause-at-a-time processing rate suggested by Givón (1975), Du Bois (1987)
and Chafe (1987). There are, finally, intriguing indication that the language processing rates
of ca. .250msecs per word and ca. 1-2 seconds per clause (Swinney 1979) piggybacked on
the pre-linguistic processing rates of visual objects and events and, perhaps, motor routines
(Barker and Givón 2002; Givón 2002, chs 4,5).

7.5. Narrative vs. conversation

The cognitive hypotheses outlined above were developed through the study of,
primarily, narrative discourse. Are they applicable to the mental processing of referents in
conversation? As a product, recorded on tape or paper, conversational ('collaborative text')
may be defined as "a text produced by more than one speaker" (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs,
1986; Clark and Schaeffer, 1987; Goodwin, 1981, 1984; 1988; inter alia. Trditional
Conversational Analysis (e.g. Sachs et al. 1974) concerned itself primarily with the social
dynamics of turn-taking, over-emphasizing the competitive aspects of conversation. Later
work suggested a much more collaborative process of producing a coherent joint text
(Keenan-Ochs 1975; Lewis 1979; Goodwin 1981; Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs 1987; Givón,
1984c; Chafe 1997; Coates 1997; Dickinson and Givón 1997; Ervin-Tripp and Küntay 1997;
Linell and Korolija 1997).
At the moment, most of the interesting cognitive questions about how joint,
collaborative text production is processed in the mind of the two (or more) interlocutors are
yet to be tackled experimentally, let alone answered; questions such as:
45

!How is the jointly-produced text processed through working memory?

!How is it stored in episodic memory as a unified coherent structure?
!How is the turn-taking interactional dynamics integrated with the joint text?
Evolutionary consideration suggest that there aren't two separate mechanisms for processing
text, one for single-perspective narrative, the other to perspective-switching conversation.
But the actual work to resolve these issue is yet to be done.
46

Footnotes

*
As the footnote to the original paper (Givón 1992) noted, I am indebted to Wally Chafe,
Herb Clark, Morti Gernsbacher, Chuck Goodwin, Walter Kintsch, Mike Posner and Sandy
Thompson for many valuable comments and suggestions. The research on which this report
is based was supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
the Office of Naval Research, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The
Fullbright-Hayes Foreign Exchange Program and the Duetsche Forschung Gemeinschaft.
1
See e.g. Givón (ed. 1979), Chafe (ed. 1980), Givón (ed. 1983), inter alia.
2
Opening of a new memory-file ('node', 'unit') is presumably triggered by the grammar-cued
indefinite NP.
3
The cognitive literature recognizes at least two levels of effort-demanding attention,
conscious and covert (Posner 1985; Posner and Petersen 1989; Posner et al. 1988; Nissen and
Bullemer 1986).
4
This is, of course, reminiscent of Aristotle's (Rhetoric) three unities.
5
For a more extensive discussion of Theory of Mind and how grammar is deployed as an
instrument of both coding and cuing the perspective of one's interlocutor during on-line
communication see Givón (2005).
6
Wittgenstein (1918) described the two extreme bounds of information processing, from a
logician's perspective, as tautology (unmotivated information) and contradiction (incompati-
ble information). All this pertains only to informational motivation (Grice 1968/1975). It is
entirely possible that redundant information may have legitimate and systematic affective or
interactive functions.
7
The exact definition of 'chunk' of information within the clause remains to be settled. Most
commonly, a 'chunk' corresponds to the lexical word that codes either the subject or object
noun, the verb, an adjective or an adverb.
8
See discussion in Wright and Givón (1987) or Givón (2005, ch. 5).
47

9
That is, there is a one-way conditional relation between the two notions: REF e INDEF. See
discussion in Givón (2001, ch. 10).
10
See text-frequency counts in Greenberg (1974) for Russian, as well as in Givón (1979, ch.
2) for English.
11
Dative-benefactives tend, at the frequency level of 90%-100% cross linguistically, to be
coded grammatically as direct objects (Givón 1984a).
12
Givón (1979, ch. 2; ed. 1983; 1988).
13
Quantified text-based measures of topicality, of both accessibility and importance, takes
this for granted, as a matter of definition.
14
These two facets of topicality are reminiscent of the two main senses of the Praguean
'theme'--being given information and the being talked about, respectively.
15
Referential accessibility may also depend on any specific information available the hearer
about the speaker's goals, intentions, personal preoccupations, life history or what not. Such
information is seldom systematic or measurable, but it does interacts with the three main
sources of referential predictability. Thus between intimates, the clause "I knew he would
find it!", uttered with no visible situational, generic or textual antecedence, may have
perfectly accessible referents.
16
Most of the specific details of the 'mental models' (or 'mental representation') involved in
the representation of the speech situation, the shared generic knowledge, or the shared text,
have yet to be worked out. While one may not be enamored with some current versions (cf.
Johnson-Laird, 1984), it is important to insist that the knowledge bases upon which language
processing is predicated are internal, subjective entities. This includes the interaction
between speaker and hearer (see section 8. below).
17
Strictly speaking, SS is traditionally 'same subject' (rather than 'same referent') and DS
'different subject'. In practical terms, since the subject of the clause is the most common
recurrent referent, the discrepancy between computing the measure either way is relatively
minor.
48

18
Originally in Givón (ed. 1983), revised in Givón (ed. 1997b). The counting for AD was
initially terminated, arbitrarily, at 20 clauses back, with all values 20 or above entered into
the 20+ column.
19
The referential accessibility measures discussed above already assess the anaphoric
persistence of referents. Further, if any persistence measure is to apply to both definites and
indefinites, only the cataphoric discourse context can be measured, since indefinites have no
anaphoric antecedence.
20
Givón (ed. 1983), Cooreman (1983), Rude (1985).
21
Beginning with Givón (ed. 1983) and running to ground most recently in Givón (1988).
22
Most conspicuously in visual and auditory perception, where the multi-dimensional
universe is reduced instantaneously into a small number of discrete dimensions.
23
See Wright and Givón (1987) and Ramsay (1985). The contrast may be between the
numeral 'one' and its absence (Creoles, Hebrew), the unstressed ex-demonstrative 'this' vs.
the indefinite article 'a' (English), the presence vs. absence of the prefix-initial vowel
(Bemba) or the presence vs. absence of a classifier (Jacaltec). So far, no language has been
found with a three-way (or higher) contrast.
24
In much less common discourse contexts, a non-subject coded by some other referent-
marking device, such as L-dislocation, Y-movement or an inverse construction, may be the
topic.
25
A similar process is assumed for higher levels of the hierarchy. That is, in order to file a
lower-level file/node under a governing higher node, that governing node must be first
activated.
26
The more general form of this principle, as given in Givón (1983a, 1985a) is: " The more
predictable or the less important the information is, the less code quantity will be assigned
to it". This principle predicts a wide range of linguistic phenomena, such as the systematic
size difference between lexical and grammatical morphemes, the use of stress to attract
attention or convey counter-expectancy, the reduced size of verbal morphology in more
predictable--less finite--semantic/pragmatic environments (verb complements, equi-subject
adverbs, chain-medial SS-clauses), and many others.
49

27
The full noun category in Spanish-English and Filippine-English pidgins includes both
definites and indefinites, which are hard to distinguish grammatically do to paucity of
articles.
28
This is the case when that morpheme is the numeral 'one', as in Old English, Old German,
Old French, Spanish, Modern Hebrew, Mandarin, Turkish, Creoles etc.; or when a noun
classifier is used to mark important referents, as in Jacaltec (Ramsay 1985).
29
The shorter CV- noun prefix in Bemba codes unimportant or non-referring referents; the
longer VCV- prefix codes important or referring referents. The initial vowels of the VCV-
forms were probably earlier demonstrative pronouns. In Bantu, such morphemes are
automatically also noun-classifiers.
30
The text comprised of 6 narratives told by 4 boys 8-12 years old.
31
For an extensive discussion of the cross-language evidence, and the pragmatics of
reference, see Wright and Givón (1987) or Givón (2005, ch. 5). The three most common
morphological devices for coding important definites are the numeral 'one', a de-stressed
demonstrative (Wright and Givón 1987), or a noun-classifier (Ramsay 1985). A very
common syntactic device is the existential-presentative construction.
32
In Givón, Kellogg, Posner and Yee (1985) we noted that, in contrast to both indefinites and
anaphoric pronouns under identical conditions, definite NPs exhibited a processing delay
before a response to a secondary probe was registered. At the time, we interpreted the delay
to indicate a search for the source of definiteness.
33
For example, in spoken American English, the unstressed 'that' seems to code more
important definite referents, (contrasting with 'the'), paralleling the contrast between the
unstressed 'this' and 'a' (Wright and Givón 1987). In Krio, an English-based Creole, the
suffixal -ya-so ('here-so') marks important definites, contrasting with the definite articles da
'the' or dis 'this' (Givón 1985b).
34
Payne (1985); see discussion in Givón (1988) and Gernsbacher and Hargreaves (1988).
35
Givón (1984a, 1988).
50

36
I know of no experimental evidence concerning the cognitive representation of the speech
situation. However, the extremely high topicality of 'I', 'you', 'here', 'this' and 'now' suggests
that their referents are automatically activated at any speech situation, i.e. under the current
focus of attention.
37
See Posner et al. (1988); also further discussion below.
38
The sharing of information among members of the cultural group is a matter of degree,
since a culture is, to paraphrase Wallace, an organized diversity. The boundary between
'culture' and 'sub-culture' is flexible, and the centrality of culturally-shared information is also
a matter of degree, as is membership in the group or its various sub-groups.
39
What is implicit in this framework of parallel, interactive search is that our earlier
assumption--that determining the source of definiteness and searching for reference are two
distinct processes--may not hold. At least for referents that are not situation-based, memory
search may be a necessary sub-component of deciding the source of definiteness.
40
For an extensive discussion of such evocation relations, see Givón (2005, ch. 5).
41
In the following examples, italics is used to indicate co-reference, and boldface to indicate
contrastive stress.
42
With special acknowledgement of Paul Postal, who for some reason considered this
construction to be Yiddish-specific, hence "Y-movement".
43
It stands to reason that at some level the search instructions triggered by stressed pronouns
and Y-movement diverge.
44
From Givón (1983b).
45
In at least some types of conversation, where the 'turns' taken by each participant are
thematically disjointed, the turn-initial position is an analog of the paragraph boundary in
narrative.
46
We again do not proceed in the elaboration of these processing instruction past the point
where the function of repetition and pause diverges from that of L-dislocation.
51

47
A noun modified by 'first' may not have text-based antecedence. Thus: "The first thing I'm
gonna tell you is...". Similarly, restrictive REL-clauses may also be used to modify referring
indefinite or a non-referring nouns, as in, respectively: "A man I hadn't seen in years came
into my office yesterday and..."; "I never met a man I didn't like".
48
This functional extension most commonly results in the diachronic reanalysis of such
demonstratives, eventually de-stressed, as definite or indefinite articles.
49
Most commonly, the equivalent of an extra clause is attached to the presentative device,
containing grounding information of this type. Typical examples are: 'There's a man that's
been looking for you...', 'There's someone I want you to meet...', 'There was a woman in the
room who couldn't keep quiet...', 'A man with long blond hair came in yesterday and...'
(Givón 1988).
52

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