taboada centering spanish p居中西班牙语.pdfVIP

* Reference, Centers and Transitions in Spoken Spanish Maite Taboada Simon Fraser University mtaboada@sfu.ca Abstract We apply Centering theory (Grosz, Joshi, Weinstein, 1995) to two different corpora of spoken Spanish. The goal of the paper is to examine the relationship between Centering transitions and choice of referring expression. The corpus analysis confirms other Centering analyses in typical choice of referring expression. We also find that other choices of referring expression not predicted by Centering are related to spoken language phenomena. 1. Introduction The question that much of the research in anaphora attempts to answer is: how does a speaker choose which referring expression to use? One assumption is that the speaker uses the referring expression that conveys the exact amount of information needed for the hearer to interpret it. Given a possible choice between he, this man, the man, and John , it is plausible that a speaker will choose one that will help the hearer link to the intended referent with the minimum amount of effort. If the conversation has been about John throughout, with no other male referent intervening, he is probably the most common choice. If the speaker uses John instead, she might indicate that the hearer is to pay attention to the referent, or that a new John has been introduced in the conversation. Then, we not only have to account for the most typical realization (i.e., the expected realization), but