Weak definite noun phrases: rich, but not strong, special, but not ...

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3.2 Experiment 2Figure 3: Experiment 2, One Token and Two TokenThe results of Experiment 1 indicate that weak <strong>definite</strong>s do <strong>not</strong> presuppose the uniqueness of theirreferent. This raises the possibility that weak <strong>definite</strong>s are in<strong>definite</strong>s masquerading as <strong>definite</strong>s,and that they therefore serve to establish new discourse referents rather than to refer to old ones.Experiment 2 tests this claim in a scene verification task that assesses the acceptability of sentence/picturepairs 6 . Sentences such as (10) and (11) below contain either a weak or regular <strong>noun</strong>paired with either the <strong>definite</strong> or in<strong>definite</strong> article. The conjoined-NP form of the sentences waschosen in order to emphasize the simultaneity of the described activities, so that participants would<strong>not</strong> be confused by seeing both individuals depicted in the same picture. Pictures crucially showeither one or two tokens of the critical <strong>noun</strong> (e.g. bike or bus). Examples are shown in Fig. 3.(10) Dean and Anne rode a/the bike.(11) Jerome and Sandy rode a/the bus.Scenes and sentences were presented simultaneously on a computer monitor. Thirty-three participantswere instructed to rate the appropriateness of the written descriptions for each pictureon a seven-point scale, with seven being the most appropriate. Two participants were excludedfor reversing the scale, as evidenced in their filler ratings. If the critical NP prefers to establish adiscourse entity, two-referent scenes should be rated as less appropriate (compared to one-referentscenes), since the number of entities in the discourse will <strong>not</strong> match the number of referents in thescene. If, however, the NP does <strong>not</strong> serve to establish a discourse entity, this numerical mismatchof referents will <strong>not</strong> exist, and participants will accept two- as well as one-referent scenes.As expected, when only one token of the critical <strong>noun</strong> was pictured, all descriptions were ratedas being highly appropriate (average of 6 or higher). The difference in ratings between one tokenand two token conditions is significant, as shown in Table 1.Thus we focused our analysis on the trials containing pictures with two depicted tokens of the<strong>noun</strong>. For these items, the weak <strong>definite</strong> NPs (rode the bus) had the highest average acceptabilityHowever, first-pass analysis shows a pattern consistent with the behavioral data; when we measure the proportion ofeye-fixations during the region including the repetition of the <strong>noun</strong> and the word immediately following, when peopleare looking at the old token of the <strong>noun</strong> they are more likely to have heard a regular <strong>definite</strong>, and when they arelooking at the new token they are more likely to have heard a weak <strong>definite</strong>.6 Comparing weak <strong>definite</strong>s to in<strong>definite</strong>s using the methodology from Experiment 1 proved to be too difficult giventhe very subtle nature of the phonetic difference between the two unstressed articles in our recordings6
F-value pNoun Type 0.8478 0.357Article 1.0271 0.311Number of Pictures 47.1137 1.42e -11 ***Noun:Article 3.0096 0.083 .Noun:Pictures 13.92 0.0002 ***Article:Pictures 1.708 0.1916Noun:Article:Pictures 2.688 0.1014Table 1: 3-way ANOVA for Experiment 2rating. <strong>Weak</strong> in<strong>definite</strong>s (rode a bus) were somewhat worse, and close behind were regular in<strong>definite</strong>s(rode a bike). The regular <strong>definite</strong>s (rode the bike) were much less acceptable. Mean ratings fortwo-referent scenes are shown in Table 2.Definite In<strong>definite</strong>Regular 3.676 4.242<strong>Weak</strong> 4.828 4.717Table 2: Mean Ratings for Two-Referent ScenesAn Analysis of Variance for the two-referent conditions showed a significant interaction (seeTable 3): the weak/regular <strong>noun</strong>-type distinction matters more when the NP is <strong>definite</strong> thanin<strong>definite</strong>. In other words, <strong>noun</strong>s allowing a weak <strong>definite</strong> reading are generally more acceptablewith two-referent scenes than <strong>noun</strong>s that do <strong>not</strong> have a weak interpretation, <strong>but</strong> this differenceis greater in <strong>definite</strong> than in<strong>definite</strong> NPs. Regular <strong>definite</strong>s are less acceptable with these scenesthan regular in<strong>definite</strong>s are; however, the reverse pattern is true for weak <strong>noun</strong>s, where <strong>definite</strong>sare actually better (albeit <strong>not</strong> significantly) than in<strong>definite</strong>s for describing two-referent scenes.F-value pNoun Type 6.4755 0.01135 *Article 0.056 0.8127Noun:Article 4.249 0.0399 *Table 3: 2-way ANOVA for 2-referent conditionsCuriously, weak in<strong>definite</strong>s are more acceptable with two referents than regular in<strong>definite</strong>s are.We speculate that this marginal difference could be due to the lexical aspect of weak <strong>definite</strong>s: evenwhen paired with an in<strong>definite</strong> article, these <strong>noun</strong>s, in the right context, might be preferentiallyinterpreted as evoking an event rather than an individual. That is, in the sentence “Jerome andSandy rode a bus”, a bus may evoke the activity of bus-riding, rather than an individual discourseentity bus. Additionally, a planned t-test between the weak <strong>definite</strong>s and the regular in<strong>definite</strong>sshows these conditions to be significantly different (t=-2.249, p-value=0.025), giving support tothe claim that weak <strong>definite</strong>s are <strong>not</strong> regular in<strong>definite</strong>s in disguise and might <strong>not</strong> prompt theestablishment of discourse entities to the same extent.7
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