Language Use and
Understanding
BCS 261
LIN 241
PSY 261
CLASS 5: GIVEN AND NEW
INFORMATION
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presentation
Given vs. New
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Given = information that is known
New = information that is not known
… the ball. Give me the ball.
… the ball. Give me the bat.
What does it mean for
something to be known?
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Prince (1992)
DISCOURSE-GIVEN vs. HEARER-GIVEN
 INFERRABLE
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Here’s a house. The door is yellow.
Linguistically given
Visually given
Given recently, not so recently
Linguistic marking of
Given/New
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Determiners (the vs. a)
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Too
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Elizabeth tells awful jokes too
Relative clauses
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I’m going to adopt the / a dog.
The jokes Horace tells are awful.
Clefts
It was me who ate the pie.
 What I ate was the pie.
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Anaphor = a linguistic term that corefers
with something mentioned earlier
Antecedent = the given information that
was mentioned earlier
This is my dog. He’s a labrador.
Give me the candle. The candle is the
one on the left.
How does given/new affect
language processing?
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Production:
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Speakers tend to place given information
before new (e.g., Arnold et al., 2000)
Comprehension:
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Listeners try to identify what given information
the novel linguistic input relates to.
Haviland & Clark (1974)
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The Given-New Strategy: The speaker’s
purpose is to provide information to his
audience, the listener’s goal is to extract the new
information and integrate it with old information
already in memory.
Predictions by Given-New Strategy
1. If the Given Information matches
something in context, that is, if it has an
Antecedent, the listener will be quick to
respond that he understands the
sentence.
2. If the Given Information does not have a
matching Antecedent, the listener will be
slower to claim he comprehends the
sentence.
Experiment 1
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Purpose: To test the predictions claimed by Given-New
Strategy
Procedure: Pairs of context & target sentences are
presented to subjects sequentially. The sentence pairs
are grouped into 2 types:
Direct Antecedent Pair
e.g. We got some beer out
of the trunk. The beer
was warm.
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Indirect Antecedent Pair
e.g. We checked the picnic
supplies. The beer was
warm.
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• Comprehension time of target sentence are measured
•(“Press the red button as soon as you understand what
•the second sentence means”)
Results:
Direct condition faster than Indirect
Direct Antecedent Pairs: 835 ms
Indirect Antecedent Pairs: 1016 ms
Why?
Is it reference to given information?
Or repeat of same noun phrase?
Experiment 2
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Purpose: To test if the results from exp. 1 are
due to the repetition of a noun
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Direct antecedent: We got some beer out of the
trunk. The beer was warm.
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“some beer” is the antecedent of “the beer”
Indirect antecedent: Andrew was especially fond
of beer. The beer was warm.
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“beer” is NOT the antecedent of “the beer”
Results
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Comprehension time:
Direct Antecedent Pairs: 1031ms
Indirect Antecedent Pairs: 1168ms
Subjects responded on an average
137ms faster towards the direct
antecedent.
Repetition of the critical noun is not
enough to account for the
comprehension time difference.
Experiment 3
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Purpose: To investigate the model with various
types of presupposition & what effect of negation
has on the process
Presupposition: used adverbs e.g. still, either,
again, too
Negative Antecedent: Given information is
expressed in negation in the context sentence.
(subjects had to deduce the meaning and
therefore required a longer comprehension time)
Experiment 3
DA: Last Christmas Eugene became absolutely
smashed.
IA
Last Christmas Eugene went to a lot of
parties.
NA: Last Christmas Eugene couldn’t stay sober.
… This Christmas he got very drunk again.
Additional manipulation for DA pairs:
lexical repetition
no lexical repetition
Predictions
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Comprehension times for DA should be shortest
among the 3 pairs, since both IA and NA require
an extra inference. No direct relationship
between IA and NA.
Results
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Comprehension time:
DA = fastest for all 4 adverbs
IA, NA = roughly equal for all the adverbs
except ‘either’ (where IA was slower)
No difference between DA pairs with
surface repetition and without
Conclusion
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Sentences are comprehended w.r.t. the context
and past knowledge
Given-New Strategy -- listeners syntactically
break sentences into Given & New information,
and then attempt to add New information to
memory using the Given information as a pointer
to some Antecedent already in memory.
If no Antecedent is present, listeners must build
some sort of bridging structure, treat all
information as new and begin construction or a
new structure, or attempt to recompute what is
Given and what is New in the sentence.
Issues
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“Given” is not always defined syntactically
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The dog I’m going to buy
Or is defined late in the utterance
Last Christmas Eugene became smashed.
 This Christmas he got drunk again.
 This Christmas he got drunk instead.
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How is information defined as given or
new?
Discussion Questions
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Is given information more readily available in working
memory stores? . . . There is no need to search memory stores
because it seems that all relevant information is readily
available (Elizabeth Riina)
On p 518 the researchers posit that the subject will treat the
first sentence as new info, and set up a memory structure for it
which he can then use to process the second sentence. Are the
sentences/concepts/vocabulary simply being stored in short
term memory? This would suffice for the duration of the
experiment, but if that is true than what types of
memories/knowledge is being accessed as the antecedent for
the given information? (Heather McLendon)
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When I transcribed the conversation with my
friends I noticed there was a lot of word
repetitions when we spoke. Is this repetition
of words the redundant information that
becomes the prerequisite for understanding
and communication, or do the speech
repetitions in common conversations serve
another purpose? (Maryrita Maier)
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They stated in the "discussion" section of the
paper that the subject will take the first
sentence in the pair as new information and
then take the second sentence in the pair and
find an antecendent for it. Does this mean that
the subject needs two antecendents; one for the
first sentence and one for the second sentence?
(Jessee Blake)
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Would an experiment testing this strategy
using spoken language carry the same results?
(Anthony Shook)
As I read the examples of sentence pairings I
was struck foremost by how artificial they
sounded . . . I wonder how applicable the
results of the study are to more natural
language patterns. I also wonder if any of the
delayed response times could be due simply to
the awkward construction (Heather
McLendon)
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They made the assumption that the subjects were
comprehending the sentences with respect to the
contect because of how they structured their
experiment. However, is there a way that they could
have directly tested for that so that they would not
have needed to make that assumption? (Jessee Blake)
How was the content of the sentences controlled?
(Elizabeth Riina)
Do you think the reaction time for direct antecedents
would change significantly if the sentences dealt with
content the students were already familiar with, ie: a
particular class they are in or a schoolwide event?
(Jessica DeSisto)
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What about when the listener is not reminded
of the Given information directly preceding a
piece of New information, but that New
information is still relevant to something the
listener already knows? Would that be
considered an inference? Why? (Nicole
Dobrowolski)
Is the Given information referred by Haviland
and Clark the same as prior knowledge?
(Maryrita Maier)
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How would the Given-New strategy work if
the New information were believed to be
false? (Nicole Dobrowolski)