Introduction Salience Conclusion

. . . .

Salience
A psychological perspective

Siva Kalyan

Australian National University

, Xn
July ,

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .

Kinds of salience

I Trajector
I Prole
I Various sorts of discourse prominence (Langaer : )
I Topic
I Assertion

One would certainly prefer to explicate the notion [of prole]

and relate it to general cognitive phenomena. I must leave
the maer open at this point, however, because none of the
obvious suggestions seems fully satisfactory.

Langaer (: )

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .

Diagnosticity
I the classicatory signicance of features, that is, the
importance or prevalence of the classications that are based
on these features (Tversky : )
I sensitive to the particular object set under study (ibid.)
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I Dierent kinds of salience may be describable as diagnosticity
in dierent kinds of contexts
Siva Kalyan Australian National University
Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .

Assertion
I e relevant context is dened by presuppositions
I Tversky and Hemenway (: ): when listing features
of a subordinate-level category, people oen omit features
belonging to the basic-level category that contains it
I E.g., carburetor is not listed as part of a sedan; it is part of a car
I Subjectsare informative and relevant, but in the context of an
implicit contrast set
I More general features seem to be presupposed, and go
unmentioned
I Miller (: ): in a task where subjects sort nouns
into piles, words with shared presuppositions tend to be sorted
together
I E.g., cook, doctor, and umpire share person as a presupposition,
and are almost always sorted together
I Asserted features (prepares food, treats diseases, rules on a
game) serve a distinguishing (diagnostic) function in this
context
Siva Kalyan Australian National University
Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .
Proling

Profiling: Parts of speech

I For proling, the relevant context may be dened by the

language as a whole
I Miller (: ): words nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbsare sorted by adults
I ey almost never group together words from dierent parts of
spee
I us, part of spee is highly diagnostic in this context
I Consistent with CG denitions of parts of spee as dierent
sorts of proles

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .
Proling

Cluster analysis

(Miller : , rotated)
Siva Kalyan Australian National University
Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .
Proling

Problems

I Not always clear whi part of spee a word belongs to

I is study uses only clear cases
I Testing ildren age yields dierent results
I ematic groupings, e.g. {doctor, needle, suer, weep, sadly} (a
small vignee in itsel, Miller : )
I Could be addressed by sorting phrases (nominals, nite clauses,
prepositional phrases, etc.), whose properties are more
accessible to intuition

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .
Proling

The profiling of arguments

I Bencini and Goldberg (: , ): when sorting transitive,
ditransitive, caused motion, and resultative sentences,
ditransitives are kept together as a cluster most oen
I Gries and Wul (: ) nd similar results with German
learners of English
I What distinguishes the ditransitive from the other
constructions is the presence of a second object (secondary
landmark)
I e present hypothesis suggests that this argument should be
proled
I In Goldbergs (: ) analysis, core arguments are
proled

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Introduction Salience Conclusion
. . . .

Summary

I Dierent kinds of salience may represent diagnosticity in

dierent contexts
I For assertion, the context is dened by presuppositions
I For proling, the context could be aracterized as the set of all
expressions
I ese hypotheses need testing

Siva Kalyan Australian National University

Salience
Thank you!