Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

The balance between syntax and discourse in Old English 1
The third relevant parameter is the specificity of NP. This parameter is especially
important, as it should allow us to measure the correctness of our hypothesis
that a NP in the high position refers back specifically to an antecedent in the
discourse, while a NP in the mid position is more likely to have a generic reading.
Specificity is here used rather informally, in the sense of ‘uniquely identifiable by
the speaker’; the values are as in (28).
(28) Numerical values for Specificity of NP
1 Specific
2 non-specific
The fourth relevant parameter is the presence and NP-type of the antecedent in the
discourse; the values are as in (29).
(29) Numerical values for Antecedent type
0 None
1 personal pronoun
2 weak demonstrative
3 strong demonstrative
4 definite NP
5 indefinite NP
6 Reflexive
7 Man
8 proper name
Every individual example in the database was coded manually for these parameters.
The numerical values for the parameters were then extracted from the database
in the form of a comma-separated file. The following gives a good idea of the
format (bearing in mind that more parameters were coded than explicated here
for our present purposes)
(30) “coaelhom,ÆHom_19:253”,2810,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,2,2,“subnps-tmp.q”,
“coaelhom”,3
“coaelhom,ÆHom_19:253”,2810,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,3,3,“subnps-tmp.q”,
“coaelhom”,3
“coaelhom,ÆHom_19:376”,2872,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,2,2,“subnps-tmp.q”,
“coaelhom”,3
“coaelhom,ÆHom_19:376”,2872,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,3,3,“subnps-tmp.q”,
“coaelhom”,3
“coboeth,Bo:38.117.31”,2344,0,1,4,3,3,1,1,-1,-1,-1,-1,,,-1,-1,3,3,“subtmp-sn.q”,
“coboeth”,2
“coboeth,Bo:38.124.1”,2471,0,1,4,2,3,1,1,1,1,2,1,26,4,1,1,3,3,“subnps-tmp.q”,
“coboeth”,2