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2.2 Accessibility as activation

Assuming that the process of referring is dynamic, constantly changing, and that referents are more or less accessible as the discourse unfolds, different theories of accessibility or salience emerged, as an attempt to capture the correlation between a particular type of referring expression and the discourse features the referent associated with it encodes. In verbal communication, participants keep mental representations of the entities introduced in the discourse (Bransford et al. 1972, Clark and Haviland 1977). These mental representations help discourse participants organize the information at hand by keeping track of the information that was already mentioned and linking the new information to the already established discourse model. Important to note is the fact that it is information that is more or less accessible at a given point in time and not the referring expression per se. In such frameworks, where accessibility is regarded as a gradient category rather than a categorical one, a discourse referent can be more or less accessible. The basic idea behind these approaches is that referring expressions are used to introduce and continue reference to entities with particular referential properties, but also with discourse properties such as an activation level that impacts their accessibility for reference with subsequent anaphoric expressions. Returning now to the difference between definite and indefinite noun phrases, the aforementioned approaches predict that a salient, accessible or activated referent will be introduced by means of a definite noun phrase, whereas non-accessible, non-salient and non-activated referents will be introduced with an indefinite noun phrase.

The term accessibility is used differently in Ariel’s (1990), Lambrecht’s (1994) and Chafe’s (1976) approaches. Ariel uses the term in a more general way as cognitive availability, while for Chafe (1976) and Lambrecht (1994) the term denotes semi-active referents only. Here and throughout this book I use the term accessibility for information more easily retrievable. The approaches to accessibility discussed here propose different (but not necessarily contradictory) explanations for why speakers choose different types of referring expressions. The main aim of this Chapter is to filter out several quantifiable measures of accessibility to be used in Chapters 3 to 5 for measuring the accessibility and the discourse structuring potential of referents headed by this, so’n and pe. While I will describe the main approaches to accessibility to delimit the textual characteristics that contribute to the accessibility of different types of indefinite noun phrases, I will keep an eye on the data to be discussed in more detail in the following Chapters. I will start by discussing the approach to referential management in terms of activation and then present the views on accessibility as topicality and expectancy.

2.2.1 The Accessibility Hierarchy

Starting from the premise that human communication is not an arbitrary exchange between language users in that interlocutors do not switch between different types of referring expressions at random, Ariel (1988, 1990) analyses the systematic patterns behind referring. Cornish (1999) and other linguists proposed a cognitively motivated account of different types of referring expressions, according to which determiners are tied to different cognitive states and/or statuses (i.e. memory locations and attention states). At the heart of the Accessibility Hierarchy (Ariel 1988, 1990) is the interplay between human memory and the types of referring expressions that are responsive to it. Departing form Chafe’s (1976) threefold distinction of activating states (i.e. activated, semi-active and inactive) which, in her view, cannot account for the whole range of data found cross-linguistically, Ariel (1990) advocates in favour of the idea that different types of referring expressions mark different degrees of accessibility of their associated referents. According to this analysis, speakers choose different types of referring expressions to indicate to their addressees the degree of assumed accessibility of their associated referents. In other words, the speaker uses a referring expression to instruct the addressee to retrieve a piece of information from his memory by indicating to him how accessible this piece of information is to him. For Ariel, all types of referring expressions code a different and precise degree of mental accessibility, functioning as markers of accessibility. The prediction made by her theory is that, when an entity is less accessible, the type of referring expression used by the speaker will be more elaborated (e.g. a definite (possibly modified) nominal phrase). And conversely, the higher the accessibility of a referent, the less explicit the type of referring expression chosen by the speaker will be (e.g. a pronoun). What distinguishes Ariel’s approach from Gundel et al.’s (1993) is the observation that for the former, accessibility is affected at any time in the discourse by four important factors, namely: the distance between the anaphor and the antecedent, the competition for saliency between the referents present in an utterance, topichood (i.e. subjecthood) and unity, or whether the antecedent and the anaphor are in the same discourse segment. Recall that for Gundel et al. (1993), the cognitive statuses are encoded as mental representations and are non-negotiable as the discourse unfolds. The Accessibility Theory advanced by Ariel (1988) predicts on the basis of these four factors, the degree of accessibility of a referent at a particular point in the discourse. In turn, the degree of accessibility of a referent will determine the type of referring expression used to pick up that referent. Let us consider example (6), which introduces two referents of different gender, Paul and Ana. According to the Accessibility Theory, the referent associated with the proper name, Paul, is more accessible, as he is mentioned in the immediately following sentence in a topic position (i.e. grammatical subject position). In this case, a pronoun referring back to this referent seems more natural than a full definite noun phrase. The second referent, Ana, is taken up in the immediately following sentence as well. However, as this referent was not introduced in a topical position (i.e. it is realized as a direct object rather than as a subject), the use of a noun phrase to pick this referent up seems more appropriate than referring to it by means of a pronoun.

(6)	Paul1 met Ana2 in the park. He1/ the boy1 was enthusiastic to meet the girl2/ her2 again.

Based on a vast corpus analysis of English and Hebrew texts, Ariel (1988, 1990) investigated the distribution of different types of referring expressions, which were eventually ranked on a scale of accessibility, as illustrated in (7). The types of referring expressions are ranked on a continuum, ranging from highest accessibility markers at one end, which are the briefest and least informative forms (e.g. zero anaphors, pronouns), to lowest accessibility markers at the other end, which are the most informative and most elaborate forms (i.e. full names, distal demonstratives).

(7)

The Accessibility Marking Scale by Ariel (1990: 73)

Full name + modifier < Full ('namy') name < Long definite description < Short definite description < Last name < First name < Distal demonstrative + modifier < Proximal demonstrative + modifier < Distal demonstrative < Proximate demonstrative < Distal demonstrative < Proximate demonstrative < Stressed pronoun + gesture < Stressed pronoun < Unstressed pronoun < Cliticized pronoun < Reflexive < Gap < Zero

Despite the fact that quantified and indefinite nominal phrases represent one of the most common means to introduce new referents in a given discourse, Ariel (1990) does not include this type of referring expressions on her scale to signal an even lower accessibility than full proper names and definite descriptions. A first reason for their exclusion might be the fact that indefinite descriptions represent new information and thus lack an antecedent. When establishing the accessibility of a referent, its discourse history is of utmost importance for Ariel. More concretely, the two textual characteristics “distance” and “unity” of any anaphoric expression can be determined only in a backward-looking manner, by analysing the preceding discourse in connection with an antecedent. As indefinite noun phrases do not have antecedents, no prediction can be made about their accessibility in terms of distance and unity. A second possible reason for the exclusion of indefinite noun phrases from the Accessibility Marking Scale is the non-referential status sometimes attributed to this type of noun phrases (Russell 1919, Evans 1977, 1980). However, as Lewis (1979: 180) puts it, indefinite noun phrases may nevertheless raise the salience of particular individuals “to pace the way for referring expressions that follow”. In sum, even though Ariel’s theory (2001) cannot make any predictions with respect to the accessibility of a referent introduced by an indefinite noun phrase, we will nevertheless keep in mind that accessibility is a graded phenomenon and that different factors seem to be at work in determining the accessibility of a particular referent. In section 2.3.3 we discuss a number of factors that have been shown to bias language users’ expectations about who will be mentioned next and what referent is more likely to be pronominalized.

Before I introduce the notion I will work with to explain the alternations found with indefinite noun phrases in English, German and Romanian, I will introduce another account to accessibility in terms of topicality, which focuses on entities that are going to be topical in the upcoming discourse. The two models that are discussed in what follows compute the accessibility of a referent by combining the status retained by an entity in the previous discourse with the forward-looking potential of this entity.