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The mental timeline in discourse organization and processing
Descriptive
TitleInfo
Title
The mental timeline in discourse organization and processing
Name
(type = personal)
NamePart
(type = family)
Lee
NamePart
(type = given)
Choonkyu
NamePart
(type = date)
1984-
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Choonkyu Lee
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author
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Stromswold
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Karin
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Karin Stromswold
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Advisory Committee
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chair
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Musolino
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Julien
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Julien Musolino
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Advisory Committee
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internal member
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Stone
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Matthew
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Matthew Stone
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Advisory Committee
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internal member
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Gillies
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Anthony
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Anthony Gillies
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Advisory Committee
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outside member
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Rutgers University
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degree grantor
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Graduate School - New Brunswick
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school
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Text
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theses
OriginInfo
DateCreated
(qualifier = exact)
2012
DateOther
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2012-10
CopyrightDate
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2012
Place
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(type = code)
xx
Language
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(type = code)
eng
Subject
(authority = RUETD)
Topic
Psychology
Subject
(authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Narrative inquiry (Research method)
Subject
(authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Language and languages--Usage
Subject
(authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Discourse analysis
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Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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ETD
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Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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rucore19991600001
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ETD_4163
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http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000066885
PhysicalDescription
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electronic resource
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Extent
xiv, 127 p. : ill.
Note
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Ph.D.
Note
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Includes bibliographical references
Note
(type = vita)
Includes vita
Abstract
(type = abstract)
Early language research has revealed important insights into the building blocks
of language, such as morphosyntactic features and rules and truth-conditions of sentences. Once we situate language in real-life use, however, a wide range of factors come into play. Language interacts not only with the surrounding linguistic context but also with the situational context, our mental representation of content, and our background knowledge. The discourse-level interaction among linguistic and extralinguistic factors is relevant to both sides of the communication – the speaker, in choosing and organizing linguistic expressions, and the listener, in selecting among different possible structures and meanings for the linguistic input. The question I address in this dissertation is ‘how we keep track of time when we use language.’ My specific interests are (1) whether story time in narrative discourse is one of the critical dimensions that are dynamically updated as discourse progresses, and 2) how fine-grained our time representation is for discourse – whether it is simply an ordering of temporal points and intervals for the events and states described in the
discourse, or a timeline where duration is preserved in greater detail. In order to elaborate on these issues, I discuss results from my narrative production experiment and my narrative comprehension experiment. In the production study, based on wordless picture books, two kinds of linguistic expressions were found much more frequently after longer intervals in story time compared to shorter intervals: (1) explicit temporal marking with lexical or phrasal markers of topic time (e.g., when, the next morning, etc.); and (2) proper names in referring back to previously mentioned characters. In the comprehension study, based on short “two-minute mysteries,” longer duration in temporal adverbials in the stories tended to lead to longer reading times. I conclude that magnitudes such as duration in story content are preserved in our linguistic encoding and have observable impact on our linguistic decoding, and extend the situation-model framework of discourse comprehension (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan, 1999) to discourse production. My findings thus support an account of communication as alignment of situation models (Pickering & Garrod, 2006).
of language, such as morphosyntactic features and rules and truth-conditions of sentences. Once we situate language in real-life use, however, a wide range of factors come into play. Language interacts not only with the surrounding linguistic context but also with the situational context, our mental representation of content, and our background knowledge. The discourse-level interaction among linguistic and extralinguistic factors is relevant to both sides of the communication – the speaker, in choosing and organizing linguistic expressions, and the listener, in selecting among different possible structures and meanings for the linguistic input. The question I address in this dissertation is ‘how we keep track of time when we use language.’ My specific interests are (1) whether story time in narrative discourse is one of the critical dimensions that are dynamically updated as discourse progresses, and 2) how fine-grained our time representation is for discourse – whether it is simply an ordering of temporal points and intervals for the events and states described in the
discourse, or a timeline where duration is preserved in greater detail. In order to elaborate on these issues, I discuss results from my narrative production experiment and my narrative comprehension experiment. In the production study, based on wordless picture books, two kinds of linguistic expressions were found much more frequently after longer intervals in story time compared to shorter intervals: (1) explicit temporal marking with lexical or phrasal markers of topic time (e.g., when, the next morning, etc.); and (2) proper names in referring back to previously mentioned characters. In the comprehension study, based on short “two-minute mysteries,” longer duration in temporal adverbials in the stories tended to lead to longer reading times. I conclude that magnitudes such as duration in story content are preserved in our linguistic encoding and have observable impact on our linguistic decoding, and extend the situation-model framework of discourse comprehension (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan, 1999) to discourse production. My findings thus support an account of communication as alignment of situation models (Pickering & Garrod, 2006).
Location
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NjNbRU
Note
(type = statement of responsibility)
by Choonkyu Lee
Identifier
(type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T3639NH0
Genre
(authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights
RightsDeclaration
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The author owns the copyright to this work.
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Name
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Lee
GivenName
Choonkyu
Role
Copyright Holder
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Permission or license
DateTime
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2012-06-25 16:19:56
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Name
Choonkyu Lee
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Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
AssociatedObject
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License
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Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
Copyright
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Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
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Permission or license
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