Cognitive Status and Subject Reference in Spanish Written Discourse

Abstract Speakers make assumptions regarding the informativeness and saliency of referents in discourse and about their addressee’s cognitive status (memory and attention) regarding those referents. These assumptions, in turn, determine the forms (e.g., pronouns, NPs) speakers use when referring to entities. Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2). 274–307 proposed a set of implicationally related cognitive statuses in the Givenness Hierarchy that predict the forms speakers use to refer to entities in discourse. Greater levels of attention and memory predict the use of phonetically minimal referential forms and lesser levels predict more phonetically elaborate forms. Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla tested the predictive power of the Hierarchy for referring expressions in Spanish oral film-retell narratives. Results showed that speakers use the most minimal forms possible (e.g., null pronouns) even when the hierarchy predicts more elaborate forms. Assuming writers make fewer assumptions regarding readers’ level of attention and memory, the present study examines whether the revised Hierarchy proposed by Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla is valid for predicting referring forms in Spanish written film retell narrative discourse. The data corroborate that participants select subject forms as predicted, but also reveal an increased use of definite NPs, suggesting that the Hierarchy has a stronger predictive power for oral narratives where attention and memory play a greater role in referent identification.