focus, newness and their combination processing of information structure in discourse焦点,新奇和他们的组合处理话语的信息结构.pdfVIP

Focus, Newness and Their Combination: Processing of Information Structure in Discourse 1,2 1 1 Lijing Chen , Xingshan Li , Yufang Yang * 1 Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2 Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Abstract The relationship between focus and new information has been unclear despite being the subject of several information structure studies. Here, we report an eye-tracking experiment that explored the relationship between them in on-line discourse processing in Chinese reading. Focus was marked by the Chinese focus-particle ‘‘shi’’, which is equivalent to the cleft structure ‘‘it was… who…’’ in English. New information was defined as the target word that was not present in previous contexts. Our results show that, in the target region, focused information was processed more quickly than non- focused information, while new information was processed more slowly than given information. These results reveal differences in processing patterns between focus and newness, and suggest that they are different concepts that relate to different aspects of cognitive processing. In addition, the effect of new/given information occurred in the post-target region for the focus condition, but not for the non-focus condition, suggesting a complex relationship between focus and newness in the discourse integration stage. Citation: Chen L, Li X, Yang Y (2012) Focus, Newness and Their Combination: Processing of Information Structure in Discourse. PLoS ONE 7(8): e42533. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042533 Editor: Kevin Paterson, University of Leicester, United Kingdom Received February 13, 2012; Accepted July 9, 2012; Publ