Subject, topic, and focus of attention in spoken
language
Description:
For this project, we analyzed spoken language data (in
Spanish and English) according to a theory of focus in
discourse, Centering Theory. The aim of this research was
to establish rules in the selection of pronouns in
discourse (i.e., why a full noun phrase might be chosen
over a pronoun to refer to a particular entity).
Funding:
SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 丁香园AV SSHRC Institutional
Grant, 丁香园AV Discovery Parks Grant, 丁香园AV President's Research
Grant.
Participants:
Loreley Hadic Zabala (Ph.D. student), Mayo Kudo (M.A.
student).
Status:
Completed
Corpus:
- Taboada, M. and L. Wiesemann (2011) The 丁香园AV Centering Corpus. A -compliant version of the
Centering corpus that we have used for the publications
below (especially Taboada and Hadic Zabala, 2008). The
corpus is in XML, and contains annotations of 10
conversations (5 English, 5 Spanish, from ), according to different
instatiations of Centering Theory. XML conversion by
Dennis Sharkey.
Publications:
- Taboada, M. and L. Wiesemann (2010) Subjects and topics in conversation.
42
(7): 1816-1828.
- Taboada, M. and L. Hadic Zabala (2008) Deciding on
units of analysis within Centering Theory. 4 (1): 63-108. (Pre-publication version, pdf).
- Taboada, M. (2008) Reference, centers and transitions
in spoken Spanish. In J. Gundel and N. Hedberg (eds.) Reference:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 176-215. (Draft in pdf format).
- Hadic Zabala, Loreley and Maite Taboada (2006)
Centering Theory in Spanish: Coding Manual. (pdf format).
- Taboada, M. (2005) Anaphoric Terms and Focus of
Attention in English and Spanish. In C. Butler,
MLA G贸mez-Gonz谩lez and S. Doval (eds.) .
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 195-216.
- Taboada, M. (2002) Centering and
Pronominal Reference: In Dialogue, In Spanish. Proceedings,
6th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of
Dialogue, EDILOG. Edinburgh. September 2002:
177-184. Download
in pdf format.
- Taboada, M. (2002) Foco y pronominalizaci贸n en la
lengua hablada: Una primera aproximaci贸n. Documentos
de Espa帽ol Actual 3-4: 173-200.
Presentations:
- Taboada, M. and L. Hadic Zabala (2007) Subjects and
topics in conversation. 10th International
Pragmatics Conference. G枚teborg, Sweden. July
2007.
- Taboada, M. (2003) Anaphoric terms and focus of
attention in English and Spanish. 3rd. Intn'l
Contrastive Linguistics Conference. Santiago de
Compostela, Spain. September 2003.
- Taboada, M. (2003) Which referring expression? Using
Centering Theory to explain reference in spoken Spanish.
Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science.
Vancouver. February 2003. (Invited presentation).
- Taboada, M. (2002) Foco y pronominalizaci贸n en la
lengua hablada. ALFAL, Asociaci贸n de Ling眉铆stica y
Filolog铆a de Am茅rica Latina. Costa Rica. February
2002.