TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gotzner, Nicole
A1  - Spalek, Katharina
T1  - Expectations about upcoming discourse referents
BT  - Effects of pitch accents and focus particles in German language production
JF  - International review of pragmatics : IRP
N2  - In the current study, we explore how different information-structural devices affect which referents conversational partners expect in the upcoming discourse. Our main research question is how pitch accents (H*, L+H*) and focus particles (German nur `only' and auch 'also') affect speakers' choices to mention focused referents, previously mentioned alternatives or new, inferable alternatives. Participants in our experiment were presented with short discourses involving two referents and were asked to orally produce two sentences that continue the story. An analysis of speakers' continuations showed that participants were most likely to mention a contextual alternative in the condition with only and the L+H* conditions, followed by H* conditions. In the condition with also, in turn, participants mentioned both the focused/accented referent and the contextual alternative. Our findings highlight the importance of information structure for discourse management and suggest that speakers take activated alternatives to be relevant for an unfolding discourse.
KW  - information structure
KW  - linguistics focus
KW  - pitch accents
KW  - focus
KW  - alternatives
KW  - discourse expectations
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1163/18773109-01401003
SN  - 1877-3095
SN  - 1877-3109
VL  - 14
IS  - 1
SP  - 77
EP  - 94
PB  - Brill
CY  - Leiden
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gotzner, Nicole
A1  - Romoli, Jacopo
T1  - Meaning and alternatives
JF  - Annual review of linguistics
N2  - Alternatives and competition in language are pervasive at all levels of linguistic analysis. More specifically, alternatives have been argued to play a prominent role in an ever-growing class of phenomena in the investigation of natural language meaning. In this article, we focus on scalar implicatures, as they are arguably the most paradigmatic case of an alternative-based phenomenon. We first review the main challenge for theories of alternatives, the so-called symmetry problem, and we briefly discuss how it has shaped the different approaches to alternatives. We then turn to two more recent challenges concerning scalar diversity and the inferences of sentences with multiple scalars. Finally, we describe several related alternative-based phenomena and recent conceptual approaches to alternatives. As we discuss, while important progress has been made, much more work is needed both on the theoretical side and on understanding the empirical landscape better.
KW  - alternatives
KW  - scalar implicatures
KW  - symmetry problem
KW  - focus
KW  - polarity
KW  - sensitivity
KW  - negative strengthening
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031220-012013
SN  - 2333-9691
SN  - 2333-9683
VL  - 8
SP  - 213
EP  - 234
PB  - Annual Reviews
CY  - Palo Alto
ER  -