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<Paper uid="W98-0306">
  <Title>trast and Violated Expectation, Sanders et al.'s Contrastive Cause-Consequence, Contrastive Consequence-Cause, Contrastive Argument- Claim, Contrastive Clalm-Argument, Oppo-</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="39" end_page="39" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Experiment 2: The role of
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    <Paragraph position="0"> discourse markers in production The aim of our second experiment consisted in verifying whether there is any significant difference between spoken and written language, in terms of the kind of relations employed and of lexical marking of the relations. We decided to compare the spoken and written narratives produced by subjects about a common topic. Our original hypothesis was that spoken language would display a lower proportion of cognitively more complex relations as well as an increase in the global marking of the relations. The first expectation was due to the hypothesis that spoken language, being constrained by the limitations imposed by short-term memory, would avoid the cognitively more complex relations and, at the same time, would contain a higher number of connectives as a trace or footsteps of the cognitive processes underlying the production process.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="39" end_page="39" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.1 Methodology and Data Collection
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      <Paragraph position="0"> The stimulus employed for this experiment consisted in a humorous story depicted in a set of eleven cartoons, put in order. Pictorial material was considered to be appropriate for the experiment in that it enables the analyst to have a comparable set of narratives based on the same subject; in addition, the pictorial form provides a neutral input with regard to the target form of expression (spoken or written), thus preventing from a priming effect. The subjects were 19 undergraduate students, who were instructed to look at the cartoons and tell the story they presented (the data for subject 9 had been later excluded from analysis). Once the spoken narrative was concluded, they were asked to put the story in written form. Spoken narratives were taped and transcribed according to the standard Italian orthography. null length</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="39" end_page="41" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
SPOKEN
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    <Paragraph position="0"> n. of conn. I conn/claus  nectives for written language In order to compare the two versions of the narratives, each pair of narratives underwent three levels of analysis. First, the total number of connectives was measured, as well as the percentage of connectives in relation to the total number of words and the ratio connectives:clauses. Second, after translating the narratives into a propositional form, we labelled the individual relation holding between a proposition and the preceding one and we determined the relative percentage of every class of relations for both versions, spoken and written. Finally, for each class of relations we measured the proportion of relations which were signalled by a connective.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="39" end_page="41" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
3.2 ResuRs and Discussion
3.2.1 Length of narratives and percentage
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      <Paragraph position="0"> of connectives Tables 2 and 3 illustrate, for each pair of narratives, the mean values for length, the total number of connectives, the percentage of connectives over the total number of words and the connectives:clauses ratio. The figures show a steady tendency toward a decrease in the number of connectives from the spoken to the written version of the narratives (M = 10,6% in the spoken version, 7,6% in the written version).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> 3.2.2 Types of relations employed in the two versions Table 4 shows a comparison of the relations employed in the spoken and in the written versions of the narratives (where A means additive type, CS consequential, and CTcontrastive, respectively). The data show no significant difference between the  spoken and written versions: in both cases most of the relations belong to the consequential and additive types, with a relatively low percentage of contrastive relations. There is a straightforward relation between the slight preponderance of the consequential type and the nature of the task: since the narratives describe a story, it is obvious that the consequential type of relation would be the prevailing one. Another possibility, which is not in contrast with the preceding one, is that consequential type is preferred because it is cognitively &amp;quot;stronger&amp;quot; than the additive (cf. Experiment i). Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that consequential and additive relations represent to a large extent alternative choices for the organization of the narrative content, as it is shown by the high degree of individual variation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> Regarding contrastive relations, it can be noted that they are generally little employed, both in spoken and in written language. As before, this genera\[ phenomenon could be explained by reference to the nature of the task; however, an alternative explanation could be in terms of avoidance of cognitively complex relations discussed earlier. Again, there is no difference in the percentage of use between spoken and written versions of the narratives.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3">  If the data concerning the use of relations do not exhibit a significant variation explainable in terms of an influence of the spoken vs. written modality, the data regarding the lexical marking of the relations are highly indicative of some constraints imposed by the means of expression. Table 5 shows tile global percentage of lexically signalled relations in the two versions of the narratives.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> The figures suggest a uniform tendency toward marking the relations in the spoken versions, which drastically drops in the written form. This framework is consistent with our original hypothesis, i.e. that the spoken form would exhibit a higher number of connectives in that they represent a footstep of the cognitive processes underlying production.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> At a closer inspection, however, it turns out that the reduction of lexical marking in writing displays again distinct patterns according to the type of relations involved. Table 6 illustrates for each class of relations the proportion of relations signalled by a connective.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> sidegKE r 'v ITTi A CS CT A CS CT 21.6 59.7 95.3 24.8 43.4 91.7 Table 6: Percentage of relations signalled by a connective for the two versions (mean values) As it can be seen, the contrastive type holds the highest degree of marking (over 90% in the two versions); the consequential type of relations shows a relatively high degree of marking (around 60% in speaking, around 40% in writing). On the other hand, the additive type has a very low rate of lexical signalling (around 20%). In addition, the figures show that reduction in the degree of lexical signalling significatively concerns the consequential type only (- 16.3%), while the contr~tive type is only slightly affected (-3.6%); more importantly, reduction does not concern the additive type, which shows an opposite tendency toward an increase in the global percentage of lexical marking (+3.2%).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> The fact that a contrastive relation is almost always marked by a connective, either in speaking and in writing, indicates that connectives are obligatory for this class. This is again in accordance with the hypothesis of a higher cognitive complexity for this kind of relations. In production, thus, higher cognitive complexity imposes a constraint in the form of an obligation to lexically signal the relation (this also indicates that graphic and punctuation markers are felt as inadequate for a correct retrieval of the relation).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="8"> The relatively low degree of lexical marking of the additive type in speaking indicates a tendency against the marking of the relation which is inverted in writing. However, the data for writing (here not presented in full) show a higher individual variation than the one in speaking and as a result they suggest a less consistent tendency to mark the relation as opposed to the steady one for speaking.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="9"> For what concerns the consequential type, writing and speaking show a similar tendency to consistently and steadily signal the relation, but, again, the written language highlights a higher individual variation, and the general percentage of marking is significantly lower than in the oral versions. For the additive and consequential types, thus, the data show an influence of the means of expression in terms of an increased degree of lexical marking for the spoken versions which decreases in the written versions. This latter phenomenon could be due to the fact that writing has graphic and punctuation marks available in order to signal the relation.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="10">  In sum, with reference to our original questions, i.e. a) whether the means of expression (oral vs.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="11"> written) constrains the type of relations used in the narratives; b) whether any difference could be related to the use, in spoken language, of cognitively less complex relations; c) whether spoken language manifests a tendency toward marking the cognitively more complex relations; and d) whether spoken tanguage shows a significantly higher use of connectives, as a trace of the cognitive processes involved in production, the data from our second experiment suggest the following conclusions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="12"> a) Discourse relations do not depend on the modality of expression, since both spoken and written narratives show a basically identical use of the three classes; this directly rules out question b).</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="13"> With regard to question c), this is contradicted by the data, which show that lexical marking is almost obligatory for contrastive relations both in spoken and in written language. Finally, the hypothesis underlying question d) is strongly strengthened by the data relative to the degree of signalling of the different types of relations. The spoken versions show a large use of connectives, which is globally much higher than it is for the written versions. As regards a comparison among the different types, the almost obligatory marking of contrastive relations, both in speaking and in writing, represents an unexpected finding, which is nevertheless consistent with tile hypothesis of a higher cognitive complexity of the contrastive type. A further phenomenon is represented by the low degree of marking of additive relations compared to consequential relations for which we do not possess at present a convincing explanation.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
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