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The main goal of this book is to account for the distribution of the three types of indefinite noun phrases introduced in the previous Section. I argue that English indefinite this, German so’n and Romanian pe-marking share several common characteristics at the semantic and discourse-pragmatic level, which distinguish them from noun phrases headed by the simple indefinite article a/an. First, at the semantic level, the three types of indefinites show a strong and robust affinity for particular referential properties (i.e. fixed reference, wide scope, epistemic specificity). Second, I suggest that any account of indefinite noun phrases that investigates only their sentence-level properties fails to capture their discourse-pragmatic contribution. By analysing larger discourse units (i.e. containing more than two adjacent sentences) in which such indefinite noun phrases occur, I show that compared to their simple indefinite correlates, referents associated with indefinite this in English, indefinite so’n in German and pe-marked indefinites in Romanian are more prone to: (i) be frequently mentioned in the ensuing discourse and to (ii) shift the discourse topic. At first sight, these two discourse effects call for an analysis in terms of accessibility or prominence. Most interestingly, however, the above-mentioned effects appear with a latency of one or two subsequent sentences after the indefinites were mentioned for the first time, in multi-sentence discourses. Furthermore, another argument that cannot be easily accommodated within exsiting models based on accessibility or prominence is the observation that referents introduced in this way show low rates of subsequent pronominalization. Despite being frequently rementioned and showing a high potential to become the topic, referents associated with these expressions are picked up by more lexial material (e.g. definite noun phrases) in the ensuing discourse. Rather than reflecting prominence, I propose that the special indefinite noun phrases function as discourse structuring devices. They are used as higher-level cues and their main function is to establish coherence at a more global level, by pre-activating particular referents. The pre-activating function is a signal to the hearer that the referent introduced in this way will be mentioned next and will eventually become the sentence topic. The findings presented in Chapters 3-5 ask for a reevaluation of the notion of accessibility or prominence. It will become evident by the end of Chapter 5, that the attested discourse structuring effects cannot be explained in terms of accessibility alone. Furthermore, we will see that pronoun production biases and pronoun interpretation biases are not modulated by the same notion of accessibility or prominence, thus a stricter dissociation between production and interpretation preferences is needed.

The special indefinites analysed here do not only facilitate comprehension by functioning as processing signals that help establish local coherence, but also by triggering predictions about the upcoming discourse structure. The findings reported here can be interpreted as evidence for the relevance of anticipation of discourse structure in discourse processing. Language users create specific expectations of discourse structure based on cues in the preceding context. The present investigation also addresses a gap in psycholinguistic research: While there has been a wealth of research on syntactic and semantic processing, few psycholinguistic studies focused on discourse processing. The reason for this exclusion may have been the perception that larger discourse units are too complex and unpredictable.

Many behavioural, neural and psycholinguistic studies suggest that we predict probabilistically at multiple levels and layers of representations (Jackendoff 1987, Tabossi 1988, Levy 2008). The results presented here can be best accommodated in an expectancy-based, forward-looking model of language processing, which assumes that processing is predictive as speakers use different signals to indicate to their hearers what to expect next. However, compared to previous accounts on language expectation or anticipation, the approach introduced in Chapter 2 makes an essential distinction between two main types of expectations, which are triggered by different factors at different levels of linguistic representation. The first type of expectation, which is generally discussed in the literature on pronoun resolution in terms of accessibility, can be derived from structural factors such as a particular syntactic position and a certain argument structure. Based on such factors, hearers make probabilistic expectations about those referents that are more probable to be mentioned next and more likely to be pronominalized. The second type of expectation comes about by discourse structuring devices such as the three types of indefinite noun phrases discussed in this book. Such linguistic devices target larger discourse units in that they indicate which referent will be mentioned over lager discourse segments. It is important to note that the discourse structuring potential is not to be confounded with accessibility or activation, as different types of referring expressions that are associated with a high discourse structuring potential are not necessarily more activated or accessible compared to referring expressions that are not associated with a discourse structuring potential. Moreover, I argue that the expectancy of continuation (i.e. the forward pointing potential) is a property defining (in)definite noun phrases, but that at the same time it is a fine-grained feature that differentiates between several sub-types of such expressions. A referent mentioned for the first time by means of an indefinite noun phrase is more or less prone to be mentioned again in the following discourse. Besides showing referential persistence, indefinite noun phrases associated with a high discourse structuring potential are additionally more prone to become the topic in the subsequent discourse. Moreover, I will show that the three languages under investigation do not differ with respect to the expectations they yield, as both sentence-by-sentence effects and discourse structuring effects are realized. What is different is the formal marking employed by each language for each function and the relative weighting that languages assign to each of them. The main suggestion resulting from the presented evidence is that expectancy operates in parallel at different levels of representation.

On a more general level, this book explores the way in which language users generate expectations at discourse level and how these expectations impact the way the discourse unfolds. It is unanimously accepted that people actively predict upcoming sounds, words, syntactic configurations, or events. Reseach to date has investgated how anticipative processing modulates discourse relations that hold within a sentence or between two adjacent sentences. Whether anticipatory processing takes place in larger discourse units, which linguistic factors or cues guide this processing, how predictions manifest themselves at discourse level and how these global-level predictions interact with sentence-level predictions is still not known up to now. The studies reported in this book target both local (i.e. between adjacent sentences) and global (i.e. between more than two adjacent sentences) discourse processing to investigate how the anticipation of coreference and topic establishment extend to larger discourse units.