The cataphoric use of spoken stress in narratives

This study investigated the effects of introducing a concept into discourse either marked with spoken stress or in an unstressed form using a story continuation paradigm. Participants first listened to informal narratives and then continued them. The final phrase of the narratives introduced a new concept. If that concept had been introduced in a stressed form, participants referred to it more often and sooner. Also, there was a tendency towards using a higher proportion of pronominal references as opposed to NP references. These results closely resemble the findings of Gernsbacher and Shroyer, who, using the same experimental procedure, investigated the effect of marking a concept with the unstressed, indefinite article this as opposed to a/an. The two studies together support the notion of a common cataphoric function of the two linguistic devices; they mark concepts the speaker is likely to refer to again.