Discourse in Signed Languages

Referring Expressions in ASL Discourse

96 Referring Expressions in ASL Discourse Laurie Swabey Referring expressions are an integral part of language, whether the language is spoken, written, or signed. Although forms in English such as it, she, that, that frog can refer to many different things, competent native speakers are able to understand these referring expressions correctly. How interlocutors use and comprehend various referring expressions in English and ASL discourse, however, has not yet been fully explained. My original interest in this topic stemmed from my work with adult language learners of American Sign Language (ASL), specifically those studying to become interpreters, who could understand referring expressions effortlessly in their native language but demonstrated consistent difficulties with comprehending and interpreting referring expressions in ASL discourse. ASL–English interpreters frequently omit information about ASL referents in their English interpretations, as Taylor (2002) notes, particularly when more than one person is referenced in the same sentence or when the signer switches between constructed dialogue and narrator mode. Yet, when native signers interact with each other, they are able to easily make sense of referring forms used in ASL, just as native English speakers are able to comprehend referring forms such as it in context, even though the form can be used to refer to countless items. The question of how we explain the ability of interlocutors to understand the use of referring forms, such as it and IX, which can represent many different things, has long been a topic of investigation in a number of disciplines, including linguistics and philosophy. A theoretical framework that provides an explanation of how cooperative speakers appropriately use and understand different forms of reference is the Givenness Hierarchy (Gundel, Hedberg, & Zacharski, 1993). One of the main ideas of this proposal is that different determiners and pronominal forms (e.g., a frog, this frog, the frog, that frog, it) provide information about the cognitive status of the referent. Thus, if a speaker uses a form such as it (to refer to a frog), she is assuming that the addressee already has a This chapter is adapted from The Cognitive Status, Form and Distribution of Referring Expressions in ASL and English Narratives (Swabey, 2002, Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota). Roy_Part 2_Pgs 67-118.indd 96 8/17/2011 1:53:48 PM Referring Expressions in ASL Discourse : 97 mental representation of the frog. It might be that the frog is present in the immediate environment or that it has just been introduced with a phrase such as my frog. Formally defined, cognitive status refers to “the assumptions that a cooperative speaker can reasonably make regarding the addressee’s knowledge and attention state in the particular context in which the (referring) expression is used” (Gundel et al., 1993, p. 275). For example, if a child runs proudly into the house with a frog in a big glass jar, the parent might look at the child and ask, “Where did you get that?” There is liable to be little confusion, in that context, as to what entity that refers to. Native speakers are adept at making judgments about the knowledge and attention state of the person they are interacting with, thus choosing referring forms that are likely to be understood correctly. Using the Givenness Hierarchy (Gundel et al., 1993) as the theoretical framework, this chapter examines the distribution of forms in ASL and English, with the focus on comparing the distribution of forms for the cognitive status “in focus,” which is the highest form in the hierarchy. In order for a speaker to appropriately use a form such as an unstressed pronominal (e.g., it, IX) or zero pro, the referent must be in focus. In the languages studied to date, forms that explicitly signal in-focus status are those with the least phonetic content (Gundel et al., 1993). In other words, a very important piece of meaning in discourse can be expressed in a form that is fleeting (such as he or it in English, eye gaze or indexing in ASL) which, for nonnative speakers, may be difficult to perceive. Furthermore , according to Chafe (1976), given information, which is the knowledge that the speaker assumes to be in the consciousness of the listener at the time of the utterance, can be conveyed in a weaker and more attenuated manner than new information. In ASL discourse, for example, if a signer assumes that the entities being referred to are at the center of attention, these entities are likely to be referred to by forms that explicitly...