scholarly journals Children mix direct and indirect speech: evidence from pronoun comprehension

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANZISKA KÖDER ◽  
EMAR MAIER

ABSTRACTThis study investigates children's acquisition of the distinction between direct speech (Elephant said, “I get the football”) and indirect speech (Elephant said that he gets the football), by measuring children's interpretation of first, second, and third person pronouns. Based on evidence from various linguistic sources, we hypothesize that the direct–indirect distinction is acquired relatively late. We also predict more mistakes for third person pronouns compared to first and second person pronouns. We tested 136 Dutch-speaking children between four and twelve in a referent selection task and found that children interpret pronouns in direct speech predominantly as in indirect speech, supporting our hypothesis about a late acquisition of the direct–indirect distinction. In addition, we found differences between I, you, and he that deviate from a simple first and second vs. third person split. We discuss our results in the light of cross-linguistic findings of direct–indirect mixing.

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-557
Author(s):  
FRANZISKA KÖDER ◽  
EMAR MAIER

AbstractChildren struggle with the interpretation of pronouns in direct speech (Ann said, “I get a cookie”), but not in indirect speech (Ann said that she gets a cookie) (Köder & Maier, 2016). Yet children's books consistently favor direct over indirect speech (Baker & Freebody, 1989). To reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings, we hypothesize that the poor performance found by Köder and Maier (2016) is due to the information-transmission setting of that experiment, and that a narrative setting facilitates children's processing of direct speech. We tested 42 Dutch children (4;1–7;2) and 20 adults with a modified version of Köder and Maier's referent selection task, where participants interpret speech reports in an interactive story book. Results confirm our hypothesis: children are much better at interpreting pronouns in direct speech in such a narrative setting than they were in an information-transmission setting. This indicates that the pragmatic context of reports affects their processing effort.


1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Perrin

The categories of DIRECT SPEECH and INDIRECT SPEECH may be distinguished by differing policies of pronoun reference. Direct speech takes its pronoun orientation from the clause in which it is immediately embedded: for example, in the following sentence: (I) John Said to Peter, ‘I Can see you’, the first person pronoun I refers to the participant who is identified as speaker in the preceding clause (John said to peter) and the seconf person you refers to the participant identified as addressee. Of the two clauses involved, the second or embedded clause (‘I can see you’) May conveniently be referred to as the quotation content. The first or main clause may be referred to as the Reporting Clause; this correspondes ti the use of the term Margin in recent studies from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Lowe, 1969; Pike, 1966; Pike & Lowe, 1969) from which the inspiration for this paper has been taken. Any third person reference in the quotation content in direct speech must refer to a participant who is neither speaker nor addressee in the reporting clause.


2020 ◽  
pp. 156-182
Author(s):  
Terry Walker ◽  
Peter J. Grund

This chapter explores speech representation structures in Early Modern English that exhibit a mixture of direct speech and indirect speech. Drawing data from an Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760 (ETED), we chart the frequency and characteristics of different types of speech representation that overlap between direct and indirect speech (such as the mixture of third-person and first-person reference, and the use of reporting expression + that + direct speech representation). We show that accounting for such uses as “slipping,” free indirect speech, and/or signs of a system under development is less convincing. Instead, we argue that the mixture should be seen as exploitation of speech representation resources for various sociopragmatic and communicative purposes, such as disambiguating voices and shifting responsibilities for the speech report. The chapter thus contributes to the broader goal of enhancing our understanding of the sociopragmatics of speech representation in the history of English.


1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Andersen

In Mabaan, a Western Nilotic language, indirect speech is characterised by the following three features. Firstly, verbs are inflected in a special way, having an indirect mode as opposed to the direct mode of direct speech. Secondly, in pronominal morphemes a distinction is made between forms that refer to a third person reported speaker (third person forms) and forms which have other third person referents (fourth person forms), a distinction which is coextensive with the use of the indirect mode. Thirdly, third person pronominal forms are identical to the third person pronominal forms used in direct speech, while fourth person pronominal forms are different and, thus, anti-logophoric. Taken together, these features make Mabaan typologically unusual.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Arni Rahmah Wasdili ◽  
Iman Santoso

The tittle of this research is An AnalysisDeixis in “Nom nom’s Entourage” Manuscript on We are Bare BearsMovie Seaso. Deixis is one of branch from pragmatics that shown relation between language and context in that language it self. The aim from this research is to know and identify the type of deixis in Nom nom’s Entourage movie season. That have some steps to collecting the data firs is watching the We Are Bare Bears movie season with Nom nom’s Entourage title. Second is reading the script of that movie. Third, selecting and collect the data. Fourth is classifying the type of deixis and the last is produce the conclution. This research using descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data. The result from this research is that have five type of deixis there are person deixis, time deixis, place deixis, social deixis and discourse deixis. Person deixis divided to three part there are firs person as speaker, second person as hearer and third person as other, with 195 word in that movie. Time deixis shows a certain period of time, consist of 10 word in that movie. Place deixis describe the location in a conversation, consist of  26 word in that movie. Social deixis is show how the social differences when talking with other, consist of 18 word in that movie. Discourse deixis is show deitic expressions which point to prior succeeding parts of the discourse with 4 word in that movie. Keywords:  Pragmatics, Deixis, Movie


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 129-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Strangmann ◽  
Anneke Slomp ◽  
Angeliek van Hout

While Dutch welke ‘which’-questions are structurally ambiguous, number agreement cues can disambiguate them. Despite such agreement cues, children misinterpret object questions as subject questions (Metz et al. 2010, 2012; Schouwenaars et al. 2014). We investigated if adding another cue, specifically, topicality in a discourse context, helps the interpretation of which-questions in two groups of Dutch children (5;5, n = 15 and 8;5, n = 21). Using a referent-selection task, we manipulated number on the verb and postverbal NP to create unambiguous wh-questions. Moreover, the questions were preceded by a discourse which established a topic, relating either to the wh-referent or the postverbal NP referent. Nevertheless, both 5- and 8-year-olds misinterpreted object questions as subject questions, ignoring the number and topicality cues to resolve the (local) ambiguity of which-questions. Our results confirm the effect of a subject-first bias in children’s interpretation of wh-questions. We conclude that topicality, in combination with number agreement, is not strong enough to overrule this subject-first bias.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Vinsca Sabrina Claudia ◽  
Ani Rakhmawati ◽  
Budi Waluyo

<em>The research aims to explain and describe (1) speech acts in the dialogue collection of  drama text Geng Toilet; (2) the principle of politeness in the dialogue collection of drama text Geng Toilet; (3) the relevance collection of drama text Geng Toilet as a teaching material for drama text in High School. The method use in this research is descriptive qualitative. The result of the research indicates the result of the research indicates the speech act in the collection of the drama text Geng Toilet based on speech that contains action include locution,illocution, and perlocution. While, speech acts based on the sentence mode include direct speech acts and indirect speech acts.Next, the principle of politeness in the dialogue collection of drama text Geng Toilet includes maxim of agreement or consent, maxim of generosity, maxim acceptance or praise or appreciation, maxim of humility or simplicity, and maxim of sympathy. the collection of drama text Geng Toilet can be  used  as a teaching materials for drama text in High School.</em>


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 413
Author(s):  
Elisa Fadlilah ◽  
Rika Septyani

This study deals with the English deixis. The objectives of this study are to analyze type of deixis and to find out the frequency of each deixis in the movie entitled Beauty and The Beast. This study was conducted by using descriptive qualitative research. The source of data was taken from the movie script of Beauty and The Beast. Documentary technique is used in collecting data. The findings showed that there are three types of deixis found in the Beauty and The Beast movie script and there are nine frequencies of deixis, namely person deixis in greater occurrences than another. Type of person deixis is used 128 times or (84,21%), which consists of first person used 53 times or (34,86 %), second person used 52 times or (34,21 %), and third person used 23 times or (15,13 %). The next, spatial (place) deixis is used 12 times or (7,89 %) and the last, temporal (time) deixis is used 12 times or (7,89 %) which consists of present used 5 times or (3,28 %), past used 5 times or (3,28 %), future used 2 times or (1,31 %). The least frequently used by the Beast in Beauty and the Beast Speech film`s dialogue was first person deixis used 53 times or (34,86 %). Keywords:  Pragmatic, Movie,  Deixis


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-169
Author(s):  
Maria Ramasari

The use of deixis on every language has different forms including English because of the various different context, such as grammatical rules and also background of culture or custom in society. This research is conducted to identify and analyze the forms of Deixis existed on Articles at Jakarta Post as contextual information. Research method of analyzing data used was descriptive qualitative research. Human instrument and text analysis are used as instruments of collecting data. Based on the data analyzed, it was found that pronoun of person deixis was most frequently used (existed) as second person deixis, third person deixis, possessive personal plural person deixis, and reflective personal person deixis that was used as reference to participant role of a referent for describing the speaker, the addressee and referent which are neither speaker nor addressee in written forms. In addition, the deixis with focus on time was also existed on Jakarta Post’s articles as the moment of utterance which is the coding time (the time of utterance conveyed by informants) and receiving time (the time of recovery of information by the hearer who got the information). The deixis of place that was existed on articles of Jakarta Post, was deictic reference to describe the current locations of informants indicated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Audrey Desjardins ◽  
Oscar Tomico ◽  
Andrés Lucero ◽  
Marta E. Cecchinato ◽  
Carman Neustaedter

In this introduction to the special issue on First-Person Methods in (Human-Computer Interaction) HCI, we present a brief overview of first-person methods, their origin, and their use in Human-Computer Interaction. We also detail the difference between first-person methods, second-person, and third-person methods, as a way to guide the reader when engaging the special issue articles. We articulate our motivation for putting together this special issue: we wanted a collection of works that would allow HCI researchers to develop further, define, and outline practices, techniques and implications of first-person methods. We trace links between the articles in this special issue and conclude with questions and directions for future work in this methodological space: working with boundaries, risk, and accountability.


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