Prince 81

Question 1

Informational asymmetry

Answer 1

Objective information not portrayed on single plane. Some units convey or represent information that is “older” than others.

Question 2

Three levels of “givenness”

Answer 2

1. Predictability/ recoverability
2. Saliency
3. Shared knowledge

Question 3

Givenness as Predictibility or recoverability

Answer 3

The speak assumes that the hearer can predict or could have predicted that a particular linguistic item will or would occur in a particular position within a sentence.

Question 4

Halliday’s given-new definition in terms of intonation

Answer 4

An intentionally marked or unmarked focus identifies what is new; given is defined as the complement of marked focus.

Question 5

Kuno’s old/new definition in terms of recoverability

Answer 5

An element in a sentence represents old, predictable information if it is recoverable from the preceding context; if it is not recoverable, it represents new, unpredictable information.

Question 6

Parallelism principle

Answer 6

A speaker assumes that the hearer will predict, unless the is evidence to the contrary, that (a proper part of) a new (conjoined?) construction will be parallel/equivalent in some semantic/pragmatic way(s) to the one just processed.

Question 7

Prince’s use of Predictibility / recoverability

Answer 7

A consideration of speakers’ hypotheses about hearers’ beliefs and strategies must be a primitive.

Question 8

Givenness in terms of Saliency

Answer 8

The speaker assumes that the hearer has or could appropriately have some particular thing/entity/…in his/her consciousness at the time of the utterance

Question 9

Givenness as shared knowledge

Answer 9

The speaker assumes that the hearer “knows,” assumes, or can infer a particular thing (but is not necessarily thinking about it).

Question 10

Structural linguistics

Answer 10

Language as static system of interconnected parts

Question 11

Transformational grammar

Answer 11

Chomskyian theory of deep structure and surface structure

Question 12

Prince’s notion of assumed familiarity

Answer 12

Same as notion of Givenness as shared knowledge (?)

Question 13

“the problem” according to prince

Answer 13

What kinds of assumptions about the hearer/reader have a bearing on the form of the text being produced, where that form is not uniquely determined by the “objective” information tha the speaker/writer is attempting to convey?

From the point of view of the hearer/read, what inferences will s/he draw on the basis of the particular form chosen?

Question 14

The solution according to prince (3 parts)

Answer 14

1. A taxonomy of linguistic forms, both morphological and syntactic
2. A taxonomy of the values of Assumed Familiarity
3. An account of the correlation between the two

Question 15

Assumed Familiarity

Answer 15

I.  Assumed Familiarity
   A.  New
        1.  Brand-new
             a.  Unanchored
             b.  anchored
        2.  Unused
   B.  Inferrable
        1.  Non containing
         2.  Containing
   C.  Evoked
        1.  Textually
        2.  Situationally

Question 16

Princes definition of discourse entity

Answer 16

Akin to “discourse referent”: may represent an individual (existent in real world or not), a class of individuals, an exemplar, a substance, a concept, etc.

Question 17

Princes definition of text

Answer 17

Set of instructions from a speaker to a hearer on how to construct a particular discourse model

Question 18

Brand new anchored

Answer 18

A guy I work with

Question 19

Brand new unanchored

Answer 19

A guy a woman works with

Question 20

New unused

Answer 20

Noam Chomsky

Question 21

Inferrable non containing

Answer 21

A driver from a bus

Question 22

Inferrable containing

Answer 22

One of these eggs from these eggs

Question 23

Evoked textually

Answer 23

Susie went to see her grandmother and the sweet lady…

anaphoric?

Question 24

Evoked situationally

Answer 24

Lucky me just stepped in something