Explicit and Emergent Mechanisms of Information Status

Abstract

It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or predictable, and many scholars suggest that an important component of information status is keeping track of what information is in common ground (i.e., what is shared), and what is not. Information status affects both speakers' choices (e.g., word order, pronoun use, prosodic prominence) and how listeners interpret the speaker's meaning (e.g., Chafe, 1994; Prince, 1981). Although there is a wealth of scholarly work on information status (for a review, see Arnold, Kaiser, Kahn, & Kim, 2013), there is no consensus on the mechanisms by which it is used, and in fact relatively little discussion of the underlying representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms. Moreover, a major challenge to understanding information status is that its effects are notoriously variable. This study considers existing proposals about information status, focusing on two questions: (a) how is it represented; and (b) by what mechanisms is it used? I propose that it is important to consider whether representations and mechanisms can be classified as either explicit or emergent. Based on a review of existing evidence, I argue that information status representations are most likely emergent, but the mechanisms by which they are used are both explicit and emergent. This review provides one of the first considerations of information status processing across multiple domains.

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