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Should given information come before new? Yes and no.
1Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. cec@psych.umass.edu
Memory & Cognition
|January 28, 2005
Summary
The given-before-new information processing preference aids double-object sentences but not NP-PP structures. This linguistic finding suggests sentence structure influences how we process definite versus indefinite noun phrases.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- The principle of 'given-before-new' posits that established information precedes novel information in discourse.
- Prior research (e.g., Clark & Clark, 1977) suggested this ordering is a general principle of language use.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the generalizability of the given-before-new preference across different sentence structures.
- To determine if definite-before-indefinite ordering affects sentence processing and acceptability.
Main Methods:
- Two speeded acceptability judgment experiments tested double-object and NP-PP sentences.
- A third self-paced reading experiment examined shifted NP constructions and argument definiteness.
Main Results:
- Definite-before-indefinite ordering facilitated processing in double-object sentences (e.g., (1A) faster than (1B)).
- This facilitation was absent in NP-PP structures (e.g., (1C) vs. (1D)).
- Processing advantages were observed for shifted NPs and when verb arguments contrasted in definiteness.
Conclusions:
- The given-before-new preference is not a universal principle but is construction-dependent.
- Language comprehension is sensitive to production constraints, influencing how definiteness impacts processing.