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Being up front: narrative context and aspectual choice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

JOSHUA C. FEDDER  and
LAURA WAGNER
JOSHUA C. FEDDER*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
LAURA WAGNER*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
*
†Address for correspondence: Joshua C. Fedder, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 925-321-0156; e-mail: fedder.4@buckeyemail.osu.edu. Laura Wagner, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 614-688-3260; e-mail: Wagner.602@osu.edu
†Address for correspondence: Joshua C. Fedder, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 925-321-0156; e-mail: fedder.4@buckeyemail.osu.edu. Laura Wagner, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 614-688-3260; e-mail: Wagner.602@osu.edu
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Abstract

Readers actively construct representational models of meaning when reading text, and they do so by drawing on a range of kinds of information, from the specific linguistic forms of the sentences to knowledge about how the world works (Ferretti, Kutas, & McRae, 2007; Madden & Zwaan, 2003). The present set of studies focused on how grammatical aspect is integrated into a situation model and how it is connected to other dimensions of model construction. In three experiments, participants were asked to complete sentences with a choice of grammatical aspect form (perfective or imperfective). The test sentences systematically varied four dimensions of the sentence that were linked to grammatical aspect in different ways: telicity and transitivity (both linked through their semantic representations), subject animacy (linked through an inference over semantic representations), and related location information (linked through an inference grounded in world knowledge). In addition, to examine the influence of discourse function (backgrounding vs. foregrounding) on aspectual choice different construction types were varied across experiments – specifically a fronted locative construction and the presence of a generic narrative opener (Once upon a time). The results found that aspectual choice depends on information linked to the semantic representation of grammatical aspect; however, in contrast to previous work (e.g., Ferreti et al., 2007) information grounded in world knowledge (location information) did not influence aspectual choice except when it was integrated in a specialized discourse construction.

Keywords

grammatical aspectdiscoursesituation modeltelicitytransitivity
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 239 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Special thanks to Shari Speer, Simon Dennis, the Psycholinguistics Discussion Group, and the Developmental Language and Cognition Lab.

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