I V

 

Informativity

 

1. MODIFYING INFORMATION THEORY  

1.1 Despite some diffuseness in its usage over the years, the term INFORMATION can be taken to designate not the knowledge that provides the content of communication, but rather the aspect of newness or variability that knowledge has in some context (cf. Loftus & Loftus 1976; Gröben 1978). If the actualization of a text system is constituted by a configuration of OCCURRENCES (cf. 1.1.3.; 1.4.1), then the INFORMATIVITY of a particular occurrence is its relative PROBABILITY (likelihood and predictability) as compared to other ALTERNATIVES. The lower the probability of the occurrence, the higher the informativity (cf. I.4.II.7).

1.2 In classical informational theory (Shannon & Weaver 1949), informativity (information value) was formalized by statistical methods. Suppose we had a language with a precisely enumerated set of possible elements (a 'finite-state language'). We could select an element, say X, and look at every occurrence of X in any chain. If we had a chain like W-X-Y etc., we could compare all these occurrences and compute the TRANSITION PROBABILITY between W and X, that is, the likelihood of X following W. A chain constituted according to this simple computation of transition probabilities between immediately adjacent elements is called a MARKOV CHAIN. It is questionable, however, whether Markov chains are a useable model for natural language utterances. Natural languages do not have a finite number of states, and the probability of any occurrence does not depend solely on the immediately preceding occurrence.

1.3 I hold a flexible, modified version of information theory to be valuable for theories of human communication via texts. The augmented transition networks I have proposed as operational representations for processes of sequential connectivity (II.2.12) and conceptual connectivity (III.4.7) bear a distant resemblance to the old Markov chains, because the main task is predicting the next link to a new node. Experiments inspired by the model of the augmented transition network did show that language users have fairly uniform expectations about how a sentence sequence will proceed from a given point (cf. II.2.14). A large quantity of learning experiments were based on Markov models, due to their mathematical simplicity (Kintsch 1977a: 82). But purely statistical models in general, and Markov models in particular, would lead to COMBINATORIAL EXPLOSION (II.1.2) for processes as intricate and varied as the utilization of texts: the decision about an impending occurrence rests less upon frequencies between adjacent items than upon the MOTIVATIONS the overall context supplies. Lcon Brillouin (1956) suggests that the statistical approach ignores the whole aspect of meaningfulness.

1.4 Psychologically, statistics might be applicable to the aggregate of EPISODES a person has in stored knowledge. Yet as episodic memory gradually feeds over into CONCEPTUAL memory (III.3.16), exact frequencies would tend to become blurred and unreliable for building expectations. To select an option at a given point during the production or prediction of a text sequence, people presumably consult all available CUES (signals for performing a processing action). The availability of cues depends upon the FOCUS of ATTENTION, where “attention” is defined as an expenditure of processing resources that limits the potential for another task at the same time (Keele 1973). Cues would be especially helpful if people were working with the various language systems in PARALLEL and merging shared parts of hypotheses about those systems (cf. Woods 1978b: I 1; III.4.14).

1.5 Due to the various exigencies of communication, the occurrence of an element could have quite different probabilities in different systems; it might, for example, be syntactically probable and semantically improbable, or vice versa. If we had PROBABILITY OPERATORS for the links of the grammatical and conceptual/relational network — a feature I hope to include as soon as sufficient empirical research makes it possible and reliable — the operators on the same link would be opposed in the two networks. I suspect that the PROBLEMATIC transition to the improbable element in one system (cf. 1.6.7) is eased by a comparatively unproblematic transition in the other. Probable content in a probable format would be uniformly easy to process and not informative. Improbable content in an improbable format would be uniformly difficult to process and intensely

problematic. But improbable content in a probable format, or probable content in an improbable format would be challenging and yet not unreasonably problematic. Literary and poetic texts (cf. VII.I.8.4-5) often manifest these last two combinations (cf. Beaugrande 1978b, 1979e; Koch 1978, 1979). We should bear in mind that the probabilities in virtual systems can beoverridden by those in actual systems (cf.IV.1.23.4). People seem to be quite skillful in adapting their expectations to an intricate pattern of actual episodic occurrences (cf. Friedman, Burke, Cole, Estes, Keller, & Millward 1963). While it was found that, when taken as abstract sentence patterns, the passive is harder to process than the active (Coleman 1964), a text with nothing but passive constructions removes the difficulty (Wright 1968).1  [1. The difficulty of passive sentences is exaggerated in many experiments with samples where the roles are reversible (i.e. the agent might reasonably also be the affected entity and vice-versa) and no determinate contexts are given. Slobin (1966) demonstrated the importance of reversibility in such measurements.]

1.6 It would be reasonable to distinguish various ranges on a scale of informativity. I shall propose three ORDERS, with “order” used in the mathematical sense: a higher-numbered order automatically subsumes the lower-numbered ones. The order results from the extent of PROCESSING RESOURCES that are expended upon input. The lower-order occurrences allow PROCESSING EASE, that is, the linkage of the occurrences to previous ones is non-problematic. The higher-order occurrences call for PROCESSING DEPTH (cf. III.3.5), because the linkage is problematic, perhaps seriously so (cf. I.6.7 on “serious problems'). The THRESHOLD  OF TERMINATION where processing is considered satisfactory and discontinued (III.3.24) therefore moves along with the order of informativity.

1.7 The complexity of probabilities suggests that people could rely not only on prediction, but on “postdiction” as well (Kintsch 1979a). The understander would then notice an occurrence and seek some justification after the fact. Reliance on postdiction would increase either (1) if there were a wide spread of equally probable alternatives and a scarcity of determinate cues for selecting any; or (2) if an occurrence seems quite outside the predicted range, so that no cues are readily at hand. The second case doubtless requires a stronger focus of attention, and can be strategically induced for that motive (see note 14 to Chapter I).

1.8 The mere selection of one available option in a context — an option provided by any participating system — results in at least FIRST-ORDER INFORMATIVITY. In the simplest instance (a rare one) where there seems to be only one option, there are still two alternatives: occurrence versus non-occurrence. In a restricted sequence where only two options are possible (as in many learning experiments), there are the trivial alternatives of any occurrence being the same as or different from its predecessors (a principle of the “text-score” developed in Weinrich 1972).2 [2. Intriguingly people expect a long series of the same occurrence to be broken for the sake of mere variety, even when probabilities remain constant — a phenomenon called “gambler’s fallacy’ (cf. Kintsch 1977a: 91f.).  In more realistic worlds with multiple alternatives, first-order informativity applies when an option in the upper range of probability is selected. In all of these domains, we have a low INTERESTINGNESS value: the degree of cognitive involvement resulting from uncertainty (as well as from such factors as emotivity and salience — see section IV.2).

1.9 Many selections required for the production of any text are of this trivial first order. Given a conceptual configuration and the preferences for mapping it onto surface expression (III.4.16), many decisions regarding surface structure are made efficiently (cf. I.4.14). The effectiveness of certain formulations, notably in poetry, arises from low probability in mapping. In its attempts to set up a categorical, context-free grammar that stipulates what sentences can and cannot occur, generative grammar implied the postulate that all potential occurrences in a language system are of the first order, because specified by categorical rules (cf. I.3.4.7). People’s difficulties with judging unusual sentences (I.1.16) show that the variability of information orders should not be ignored when constructing a grammar for sentences. My proposal to include the notions of DEFAULT and PREFERENCE in a grammar for texts (cf. I.3.4.3) might help resolve this matter.

1.10 A normal reaction to triviality would be to reduce one’s ATTENTION, i.e., the concentration of processing resources on one object at the expense of others. In any case, humans in communication are not likely to perform a thorough analysis of all occurrences in all systems, such as a linguist might accomplish. I suggested in III.4.15 that the intense utilization of surface structure would be needed if there were numerous or evenly matched hypotheses about the underlying conceptual/ relational structure. If the latter were immediately obvious, on the other hand, people might do only “fuzzy parsing” on the surface. The processor would leave sonic nodes or links unlabled (cf. Burton 1976: 80), working along via approximative problem-solving. If it later emerges that the unlabeled states are needed after all, but are no longer available in active storage, problem-solving could become more detailed and rigorous to reconstruct the lost material.3    [3. Some successful computer simulation of the processing of indistinct or partial input uses precisely this approach (cf. Woods et al. 1976).] If this outlook is plausible, then low-order informativity is a reliable signal that fuzzy parsing is adequate in a given context.

1.11 The selection of an option in the middle or lower-middle degrees of probability results in SECOND-ORDER INFORMATIVITY. Here, the strongest defaults and preferences are noticeably overridden. The presence of at least some second-order occurrences is presumably the usual standard for textual communication, so that first-order occurrences could be UPGRADED (unless they are accorded no further attention) and third-order occurrences could be DOWNGRADED. The demands people make for informativity vary among types of texts and situations. Conversations between married couples appear (in my view) to function with very low informativity, while contemporary art works strive for very high.

 1.12 Occurrences construed as outside the range of more or less probable options convey THIRD-ORDER INFORMATIVITY. These are unusual and extremely interesting occurrences, and correspondingly hard to understand and control. A SERIOUS PROBLEM in the sense of I.6.7 is present, because the linkage of the new occurrence to what went before is endangered in an unexpected way, and the probability of FAILURE is great. Major DISCONTINUITIES, GAPS, and DISCREPANCIES as defined in I.6.9 are the usual types of third-order occurrences and activate a MOTIVATION SEARCH to find out a source for the unexpected material. The search returns some pathway which makes the third-order occurrence accessible to its context and hence within the range of probable options after all (cf. Lenat 1977: 1097). This process in effect DOWNGRADES the third-order occurrence into the second order. Downgrading could have different DIRECTIONALITY: (1) if people regress to occurrences of a considerably earlier time to find the motivating pathway, they are doing BACKWARD downgrading; (2) if they wait and look ahead to further occurrences, they are doing FORWARD downgrading; (3) if they go outside the current context, they are doing OUTWARD downgrading. A text producer who deliberately supplies third-order occurrences may anticipate the directionality and results of the downgrading as part of the plan toward a goal (cf. Beaugrande 1978b; VII.2.33). The assumption that downgrading will be done is reliable (Berlyne [19601 suggests that “cognitive conflict” creates “epistemic curiosity” to obtain knowledge).

1.13 The directionality of downgrading suggests the control flow for processing third-order occurrences. In II.2.34, we considered what might ensue if a sentence structure were so misleading that an unaccountable element was left over at the end of parsing. The subsequent relabeling of the structure (Figures 9a and 9b) was an illustration of backward downgrading in the syntactic system. For a structure that cannot be downgraded via syntax alone, such as Simmons’ sample of ‘The old man the boats’ (see (22) in II.2.32), a processor could go outside to consult intonation or conceptual context (outward downgrading); or could leave the structure temporarily uniabeled until the context became more determinate later on (forward downgrading). If the processor interrupted the speaker with a demand for explanation, we would have a convergence of outward and forward downgrading.

1.14 These reasoning procedures doubtless extend far beyond the utilization of texts. If we are arrested with no warning and for no visible motive, we have encountered a third-order experience. We will be prone to react in the following ways: (1) mentally retracing our recent actions to see if any of them could be the ‘reason-of’ the arrest (backward downgrading); (2) waiting to be told the reason by an officer of the law (forward); (3) trying to remember cases where someone was arrested because of mistaken identity (outward). If successful, these activities downgrade the arrest-event, and if not, we will be unable to understand it. Meaninglessness, I would argue, results from the lack of continuity and connectivity, and not from the undecidability of truth values (cf. III.1.2).

1.15 STRENGTH OF LINKAGE (III.3.15) in world-knowledge is relevant to informativity orders. If a textual world asserts relations known to be DETERMINATE already, we have the first order only. The assertion of TYPICAL relations brings more informativity as typicalness decreases. The assertion of ACCIDENTAL relations is by itself neutral for informativity, since accidents may range from the trivial to the unique. The assertion of non-typical relations results in at least second-order, and the contradiction of determinate relations results in third-order informativity. If a tree in a textual world is assigned a trunk, little interest is aroused, that being a stored determinate ‘part-of’ link. If the tree has multiple trunks we are more interested, though not disoriented (non-typical but allowed, hence second-order). If the tree has no trunk at all, its branches hovering in mid-air, we are alarmed by a conflict with a determinate link (third order) and expect an explanation or assume we are dealing with a highly fictional text-world (downgrading).

1.16 The fictional text-world instructs the processor to relax the application of real-world expectations. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll 1960), the initial plunge down an impossible rabbit-hole filled with cupboards and bookshelves at once marks the textual world as not governed by the same organization as the reader’s. After a series of strange occurrences, the narrator remarks about a normal event (Carroll 1960: 33):

 

(36) Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of- the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

 

Yet the Alice-world is by no means devoid of continuity and coherence. Many real-world expectations still apply: gravity makes things fall, water makes things wet, characters speak English, etc. Some domains are understandable via opposition to the real-world: assignment of human roles to animals or playing-cards, violation of politeness conventions, etc. The enduring interestingness of the Alice books arises from experiencing a text-world whose third-order occurrences are downgradable by discoverable principles (cf. IV.1.23.1). During the activities of downgrading, readers discover by analogy how the organization of the real-world is arbitrary and amusing (cf. ‘Vll. 1. 8.4).

1.17 Original METAPHORS can constitute third-order occurrences. The fragment of Dylan Thomas’(1971: 196) poem ‘In my craft or sullen art’ that runs:

 

(37) In the still night, when only the moon rages

 

presents a totally non-expected action or emotion of the moon that no reader would have in stored knowledge. To process the fragment, the reader must integrate the problematic element, for example, by reasoning: (1) that the moon’s surface resembles the face of a ‘raging’ person with staring eyes and open mouth; (2) that the moon is traditionally believed to cause lunacy and hence ‘raging’ in people; (3) that the moon’s casting light in all directions resembles a ‘raging’ person throwing things all around; and so forth. Hence, the original metaphor elicits a resolvable discrepancy between text-presented knowledge and previously stored knowledge. There need be no particular literal expression that accomplishes the same thing as the metaphoring (Ortony 1978c). The discrepancy is below surface structure, and its downgrading may be undecidable, as we saw with the Thomas fragment. A literalized restatement could be an impoverishment or even a mis- representation.

1.18 In recent times, literary texts are characterized by more numerous third-order occurrences that are increasingly resistant against downgrading. That trend is conspicuous even in the progression of James Joyce between Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. In the earlier novel, the selective principles applied to language options are periodically reorganized, calling forth an adaptation of expectations. In the later novel, the author applies the far more complex principle of simultaneous partial actualization of different options, many from other languages besides English, so that no comprehensive expectations about surface structure occurrences can be maintained, and even logical identities are blurred. Experiments of the latter kind (also in the poetry of Hans G. Helms) have an intrinsically limited acceptability as texts, because they run counter to human processing strategies. Constant blocks against downgrading third-order occurrences place an enormous strain on processing energy, which most readers see no reason to sustain. For some readers, an enriching awareness results about human reliance on expectations in ordinary communication. Yet the processing of a text or situation where continuity is steadily at the break-down point is internally paradoxical and is tolerable only for correspondingly pre-trained readers. It is noteworthy that some literary critics have undertaken instead to explicate Finnegan’s Wake in conventional language: perhaps the most colossal downgrading in history.

1.19 The procedures of UPGRADING are also intriguing. If something is well-known or even determined by standards of logic or science, people should have little reason to assert it by means of a text. Here again, a MOTIVATION SEARCH (IV.1.12) is likely to take place. Consider the example (in Beaugrande 1978b: 11) of a woman introducing her husband at a party with the utterance:

 

(38) My husband is a human being.

 

She assigns to a person a relation that should be stored already as a determinate ‘instance-of’ link for all people. Hearers will want to discover why the woman makes the effort to say so, because communication is by default presumed to have a reason (cf. Rieger 1975: 160). They could recast the utterance into an expanded format with explicit motivation, such as:

 

(38a) My husband is so nondescript that one can’t say much about him except that he is a human being

(38b) My husband is so much like a non-human object that his human status should be asserted when meeting new people.

 

(38a) overturns the expectation that one ought to be able to say more than (38). (38b) serves to signal that the ‘instance-of’ relation is in fact less probable than might be assumed. These replacements of (38) with assumed alternative versions illustrate outward upgrading of a first-order occurrence in the conceptual/relational system. A demonstration of forward upgrading in that system — not an uncommon procedure for the beginnings of texts — can be found in this opening passage from a science textbook (quoted in Beaugrande 1978a: 29f.):

 

(39) The sea is water only in the sense that water is the dominant substance present. Actually, it is a solution of gases and salts […]

 

The first-order informativity of the determinate “substance-of’ relation in ‘the sea is water’ is made upgradable by the subsequent assertion that this piece of common knowledge is ‘actually’ not accurate and is hence not so probable as it seems. The demands of informativity can even eliminate alternative readings, as is shown by this headline (Gainesville Sun, Dec. 20, 1978):

 

(40) San Juan Gunfire Kills One

 

The reading where ‘one’ is taken as an impersonal pronoun (hence: ‘San Juan gunfire kills people’) is ruled out as uninformative (unless, of course, gunfire in other Puerto Rican cities were not fatal) and hence not newsworthy.

1.20 If a given text allows more than one order of informativity, the second order will presumably have preference over the first. In the final part of Antony’s speech (Julius Caesar, Act V, Sc. v, 72-75):

 

(41)  His life was gentle, and the elements

So mixed in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’

 

the audience will attribute more to the utterance ‘this was a man’ than a first- order ‘instance-of’ relation. They will rather prefer an understanding such as that  this ‘man’ is an infrequent class of humans who possessed the full range of ‘elements’ offered by ‘Nature’.

1.21 The considerations raised so far suggest an important factor of CYBERNETIC REGULATION in regard to textual communication (cf. I.4.3). The absolute stability of a textual system is guaranteed by a maximum of predictability, because every transition is made rapidly and without effort. Yet this very stability leads to such low informativity that communication lacks all motivation and interest. It follows that textual communication can be envisioned as the perpetual removal and restoration of stability. The dynamics of communicative systems arises from an irresolvable antagonism of functional principles. The normal workings of a textual system are therefore kept in the range of second-order occurrences, a degree of moderate but not absolute stability. Upgrading or downgrading of the other orders of informativity are operations of cybernetic regulation in the most basic sense (like the classical example of the thermostat).

1.22 If communication is composed of LEARNING SYSTEMS that adapt to their environment (I.4.3), it follows that the immediate expectations of a context would override those based on general knowledge. Over time, special utilization of systems engenders evolution. For example, highly respected literary texts could serve to expand the possibilities for conventional expression, or to propagate alternative viewpoints about reality via the mode of fictionality (cf. VII.1.8.4f.). Wolfgang Iser (I975: 302) observes that the literary text both stabilizes and interferes with the operations of communicative systems.

1.23 To explore communicative probabilities in more detail, we need to classify expectations into a hierarchy such as the following:

1.23.1 Stored knowledge and episodic experience lead people to see the world in a certain way. The socially dominant model of the human situation and its environment evolves into the notion of the REAL WORLD and is henceforth privileged over all other models. Propositions judged to be true in this world are conventionally called FACTS (cf. Schmidt 1979), and are entered into socially shared BELIEF SYSTEMS (cf. Bruce 1975) as the most fundamental assumptions about the organization of knowledge and experience. Some facts and beliefs are so firmly established that they act as defaults pervading almost any textual world that might be created: that causes have effects; that time can move in only one direction; that matter cannot be totally destroyed; that entities cannot be both existent and non-existent, present and absent, or possible and impossible at the same time and under the same circumstances; and a great deal more. A textual world in which such basic facts and beliefs are countermanded, e.g., science fiction stories, must provide distinct cues in relevant contexts. These cues are instructions that the text receivers should make specified modifications in their expectations lest the textual world become inaccessible and its organization unbearably problematic. On the few occasions where Lewis Carroll does make use of the reversal principle derived from mirror imagery in Through the Looking-Glass (Carroll 1960: 205, 249f., 290), he is very emphatic. I suspect that strict adherence to such nonce facts in fictional worlds would soon lose informativity as a corresponding set of expectations is tailored to the occasion (cf. IV. 1. 5). The continuing interestingness of the Alice world is upheld by the variety of its principles for unconventional organization (cf. also IV. 1. 16).

1.23.2 People also have expectations about LANGUAGE, such as about sequencing (ch. II) and conceptual connectivity (ch. III). People rely on this knowledge to deal with predictable expressions. Users of English do not anticipate unpronounceable clusters of consonants (except in abbreviations), so that when asked to “read aloud’ a line on an eye-testing chart, such as:

 

(42) PDZTLF (Snellen eye chart)4 [4. As a notorious prankster,  I have on occasion read these eye-chart lines as wards, only to elicit confusion from the eye-doctor.]

 

they do not attempt to pronounce the whole line as a unit. Radically disordered syntax, such as:

 

(43) Mat cat the sat the on. would

 

not be processable in most contexts (always discounting discussions among linguists). The insistence upon such third-order presentations would more likely be taken as a signal of inability or refusal to communicate, as in Ziff’s (1971: 6 1) grotesque example of an “irritable academic” responding to the stupid questions of a military officer with an intentional non-text:

 

(44) Ugh ugh blugh blugh ugh blug blug.5 [5. Ziff gives no indication of possible phonological distinctions between ‘blug’ and ‘blugh’, so that even the tagmemic method for mini-languages (cf. Pike 1967: 210ff.) would fail to extract meaning.

 

1.23.3 Expectations also arise from the TEXT TYPE (cf. VII.I.5). The tolerance for violations of expectations is very different for modern poetry than for scientific reports. All fictional text-worlds have some freedom in their organization, though not, as I have pointed out, absolute freedom. Readers are not disturbed by the appearance of a unicorn in the Alice-world of Lewis Carroll (1960: 283ff.). But a scientific report with a passage such as (Beaugrande 1978b: 6):

 

(45) The values obtained for white rates (ratus norvegicus) were correlated as functions on Vincent curves with those for a control group of unicorns (equus monoceros) as shown in Figure 3.

 

could be deeply disturbing. A scientific-report-world is expected to conform to the organization of the accepted real-world in all aspects. An intriguing hybrid is ‘science fiction’, as the name suggests, where the authority and authenticity of science are borrowed to increase the effectiveness of a deliberately impossible reorganized world.

1.23.4 The final type of expectations are those arising in the IMMEDIATE CONTEXT where the text occurs or is utilized. I suggested in IV.1.22 that these expectations can override more general ones in a manner analogous to the adaptation of a learning system to its environment. Hence, the processes of ACTUALIZATION can create a range of expectations which may be quite different from the organization of VIRTUAL systems (cf. 1.3.4.3; IV.1.5). An illustration is the phenomenon of STYLE: the characteristic selection and mapping of options among contributing systems of a text (cf. 1.2.10). The attempts to characterize styles of a single text, a single text producer, a corpus of texts, a text type, a whole historical period, or even a whole language (cf. survey in Spillner 1974) attest to the ability of language users to create specific expectations for contexts of all sizes. If a text belongs to a highly specialized type, it may by that very token become too predictable and be impelled to break out of the style that it has itself established (cf. Riffaterre 1959, 1960). In such cases, informativity arises from the mapping between systems rather than from the transitions within a single System.

1.24 The divergency of sources for the expectations of text users helps account for the notorious inconsistencies in informants’ judgments on the grammaticalness of isolated sentences (cf. 1.1.16; IV.1.9). If people were indeed basing their judgments on the availability of imaginable contexts (McCawley 1976), they would naturally need more determinate cues about the uses of an utterance than were provided by the artificial interview situation. If they took the trouble to imagine very detailed contexts, they might accept utterances that would be wholly undesirable for a grammar. Jerry Morgan (1973) notes that an utterance like:

 

(46) Kissinger conjectures poached.

 

which should hardly be allowed by a formal grammar of English, would be a perfectly good reply in a situation where someone had asked:

 

   (47) Anyone know how President Nixon likes his eggs?

 

Text types can also provide settings where the APPROPRIATENESS (in the sense of 1.4.14: mode in which the standards of textuality should be upheld) of structures is clearly given, although the requirements of virtual syntax are not upheld. Milton’s lines

 

   (48) Thee, chantress, oft the woods among

           I woo to hear thy evensong. (Il Penseroso, 63-64)

 

are fully acceptable within the poetic diction of his time — which he himself did much to create —  and for those familiar with his style, they are not even surprising. Surely the ‘competence” of language encompasses the ability to fit texts to contexts of many kinds, and not in the ability to mark samples like (46) and (48) with asterisks.

1.25 Expectations also apply to the uses of NEGATION in communication. Experiments prove that people have extra trouble recalling negative sentences (Cornish & Wason 1970) or judging their truth (Fillenbaum 1973; Frederiksen 1975). Usually, there is no motive to negate anything unless people have a reason to believe or expect it (cf. Wason 1965; Osgood 1971; Beaugrande 1978b; Givón 1978). In actualization, a hearer or reader must first activate a knowledge space, and then mark it as non-factual with respect to the textual world (cf. Carpenter & Just 1975). Another account might be that people set up two alternative spaces and then discard one. It is, in either case, evident that multiple negations should be increasingly hard to produce or understand:

 

(49) I never deny that this approach is not otherwise than the opposite of unproductive.

 

1.26 In this section, I have looked into some issues that reveal the importance of informativity for textual processes. I have suggested that problem-solving techniques for maintaining connectivity of textual occurrences are tied to probabilities for transitions in participating systems. When probable pathways are chosen, efficiency increases, but interest sinks; the reverse is true for improbable pathways. I concluded that there should be at least three orders of informativity: a medium order where efficiency and effectiveness are balanced against each other, and one order each for the extreme ranges where one heavily outweighs the other. If the medium order is indeed the usual standard for textual communication, then language users must have strategies for upgrading or downgrading the extremes. I identified these factors with the principle of cybernetic regulation, and speculated that textual communication functions by a continual cycle of disturbing and restoring stability.

 

2. APPERCEPTUAL INFORMATIVITY

 

2.1 If text utilization interacts with other human abilities and sensory modes (cf. III.3.18), we should investigate the nature of human apperception in general. Humans must distribute attention selectively (IV.1.4) to notice and retain some kinds of episodes and knowledge configurations better than others. The degree of expectedness alone cannot account for all the phenomena involved. At least some effects are due to the inherent nature of the material and some to general processing strategies of apperception.

2.2 Psychologists have devoted considerable study to elementary LEARNING tasks, following several main trends. Some claim that the  FREQUENCY of a presentation decides whether it is learned and utilized (e.g. Ekstrand, Wallace, & Underwood 1966). Others see the basic mechanism as TRANSFER of previously acquired skills to a particular task at hand (e.g. Ferguson 1956). Still others stress the SALIENCE of the concrete cues in a presentation, i.e., the force with which cues intrude on sensory apperception (color, brightness, loudness, etc.) (e.g. Goldstein & Schecter 1941). And some believe that portions of a presentation which are markedly DIFFERENT from the rest are best noticed and recalled (e.g. Hull 1920; Hershberger & Terry 1965; Rundus 1971) — a phenomenon also called the “von Restorff effect” (cf. von Restorff 1933; Wallace 1965). 5a [5a. This effect is widely misunderstood by American psychologists who haven’t read von Restorff’s dissertation (and maybe can’t read German at all). Working in the gestalt tradition (IV.2.5), her thesis was not that differing elements simply get more attention (positive effect), but that they hinder the formations of unifying “gestalts’ (negative effect).]

2.3 In early work, it was hoped that only one of these factors could account for all kinds of learning behaviour — an outlook which immensely simplified the design and interpretation of experiments. More recently, it has become evident that apperception and learning in realistic settings must operate via PROCESSING INTERACTIONS of numerous factors such as those just mentioned. Moreover, these general factors require further specification regarding the situations of apperception and the strategies applied. Several factors merit consideration:

2.3.1 general criteria for ordering and organizing apperceptive material: from higher to lower, from central to peripheral, from mobile to stationary, etc.;

2.3.2 extent of emotional involvement of the apperceiver (cf. Erdelyi 1974);

2.3.3 scales of variables with average versus extreme values;

2.3.4 changing input as opposed to unchanging;

2.3.5 match between current input and stored knowledge (cf. Petofi 1974);

2.3.6 current need to differentiate among the appereeivable entities, especially those with inherent similarities;

2.3.7 current relevance of input to the appereeiver’s own situation, desires, and plans (cf. ‘ego-seizing” in Ertel 1977).

2.4 The interactions of these factors are unquestionably intricate. Both the appereeiver’s state and the organization of a presentation are subject to mutable influences, so that it might be difficult to obtain a consensus. Overreliance upon one factor could be misleading. For example, we would not obtain a very sensible classification of most objects by grouping them according to their salience alone: no one would think of classifying the word of a language according to the loudness with which the current speaker utters them. Moreover, the conflict between stability and informativity noted in I.1.21 may emerge here as well: attention might be focused on the very factors that are interesting because they are extreme and hence not reliable for purposes of classification.

2.5 Within the tradition of ‘gestalt” psychology (e.g. Koffka 1935), a distinction is drawn between FIGURE and GROUND. The “figure” is the portion of an appereeptual presentation which receives the focus of attention, while the “ground” is the background setting that receives only peripheral attention. For instance, a moving object can appear as the figure, and its stationary environment can appear as the ground (changing vs. unchanging input, cf. IV.2.3.4). To a certain extent, however, the selection of figure and ground depends less on the presentation than on the apperceiver’s internal predisposition. It is sometimes hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins; it is safe to say that the two interact in cognition of all kinds (cf. Arnheim 1947; Neisser 1967). The presentation provides the input, but the apperceiver must impose organization if the input is to be utilized as knowledge (cf. Ausubel 1963; Keele 1973; Kintsch 1974).

2.6 There is already some evidence that the factors I have mentioned are also relevant for textual processes. If so, a theory of text processing must be integrated into a general theory of human information processing (Rumelhart 1977a). Such evidence includes the following:

2.6.1 The focus on some part of a scene, such as a mobile object on a stationary background, does affect the format of a linguistic description of the scene (Huttenlocher 1968; Olson 1970; Osgood 1971; Osgood & Bock 1977). The ease of verifying descriptive statements also varies along the same parameter (Olson & Filby 1972; Clark & Chase 1974). Robert E. Longaere (1970) applies the terms of “figure” and ‘ground” directly to elements in sequences of sentences.

2.6.2 SALIENCE plays a role in speech, where priorities can be signaled by the intensity of intonation in the voice. In general, the greatest stress falls on unexpected elements, such as those contrasting with previously mentioned ones (Bolinger 1972; Brazil 1975; Grimes 1975: 280ff.; Coulthard 1977. 130ff.). Such stress serves to draw attention, and hence to preclude anticipated misunderstandings (Grimes 1975: 282). A rising intonation curve can indicate a lack of belief (Coulthard 1977: 132). Salience also applies to the entities of the textual world. The slaying of a dragon in a children’s story would be better noticed than a description of the dragon (cf. Clark & Clark 1977: 238). Salience also affects syntactic choices (Fillmore 1977: 75).

2.6.3 SCALES of VARIABLES can be influential too. Comparisons appear to be recalled better than statements of equivalence (Clark & Card 1969). If a group of objects differ along a scale, the one with the most extreme value serves as a point of orientation in descriptive texts (Flores d’Arcais 1970). There is a considerable literary tradition of text-worlds involving very small and very large objects (Weinrich 1966b).

2.6.4 ORDERING of events and situations correlates with the order in which they are expressed. In describing scenes, speakers were shown to move from the top downward (DeSoto, London, & Handel 1965; Clark & Chase 1974). For event sequences, narration moves from earlier to later (Clark & Clark 1968; E. Clark 1971; Kintsch 1977a: 315). In describing apartments, people expressed major rooms more often in subject positions of sentences; minor rooms emerged more often in predicates (Linde & Labov 1975). Focus on either an agent or an affected entity in a scene depicting an action has been found to correlate with preferences for active versus passive sentence formats (Olson & Filby 1972).

2.6.5 DIFFERENTIATION among the components of a textual world determines the degree of explicitness of descriptive references. The “basic” concepts apparently follow a medium degree of specificity (Rosch, Simpson, & Miller 1976). If there are many similar objects present, speakers use more modifiers in mentioning them (Krauss & Weinheimer 1967; Olson 1970). Some researchers see differentiation as a basic motive in the entire evolution of communicative systems (e.g. Vygotskii 1962; Minsky 1977; cf. the overloaded notion of “opposition” in Saussure 1916).

2.6.6 EMOTIONAL INVOLVEMENT of language users exerts controls on deciding what should be expressed, and in what sequence. It has been suggested that entities having the greatest degree of involvement for the speaker are preferentially placed earlier in text production (cf. Osgood 1971), for instance, in the subject slot of a sentence (cf. Ertel 1977). In return, other items outside the involvement focus seem difficult to describe and express (cf. Erdelyi & Appelbaum 1973; Erdelyi 1974).

2.7 These findings are not yet fully reliable, since they were often obtained in simplified situations. Doubtless, the correlations are less straightforward when several factors apply at once, so that competition arises. Nonetheless, just as we cannot successfully divorce language use from world knowledge (III.3.18), we shall have to explore the relationships between the processes of producing or understanding texts and those for utilizing apperceptive material in human experience at large.

2.8 Even the fundamental question of how sounds or printed symbols are recognized must be answered. Acoustic and visual input as raw material could hardly be handled at the requisite speeds without extensive prior conditioning. Hearers adapt to the characteristics of a particular voice (Ladefoged & Broadbent 1957). There appears to be a short-term sensory impression of sounds like an echo of sorts which can be retained long enough to impose organization upon it (cf. Neisser 1967; Crowder & Morton 1969; Darwin, Turvey, & Crowder 1972). A comparable ‘iconic’ impression is seemingly maintained for visual input (Sperling 1960; Neisser 1967). Letters in words figure partly as images and partly as confirmation of predicted patterns (Selfridge & Neisser 1960). The letters that are contained in words are of course recognized better than those which are not (Miller, Bruner, & Postman 1954). If a test word is semantically related to an already identified one, its recognition is quicker (Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy 1974) — an effect that would also be explainable as arising from spreading activation of concepts (III.3.24). Not surprisingly, recognition is further aided for predictable words in sentences (Tuiving, Mandler, & Baumal 1964). Increasing well-formedness of sentences makes their recognition more resistant against noise disturbance (Miller & Isard 1963).

2.9 The interactions between text utilization and cognitive operations of all kinds demand intensive research. I predict that the complexity of these issues may yet be mastered to the extent that a limited number of efficient and very flexible strategies may underlie a wide range of operations. It would be strange if there should turn out to be a huge number of totally disparate and specialized strategies working independently. The decisive argument in support of interactive processing, as I have argued, is the NON- DETERMINACY of the materials and configurations of textual communication if subdivided into levels of tiny units and steps. As William S. Havens (1978: 2) puts it, cognitive processing “must tolerate non-determinacy by exploiting context and allowing multiple partial interpretations to be hypothesized and their confirmation attempted concurrently.”

 

3. INFORMATIVITY WITHIN THE SENTENCE

 

3.1 The declarative sentence with its subject and predicate has traditionally been regarded as a statement wherein “ speaker announces a topic and then says something about it” (Hockett 1958: 301). However, this consideration was downplayed in language models where sentences were treated as derived from logical formulas. The sequential format of such formulas is inflexibly and precisely fixed a priori by the construction of the type of logic being used. One cannot arrange things in a special order just because they happen to be expected or unexpected at any particular moment. To the extent that a logical world is composed on discrete and atomistic principles (I.6.3), assertions could influence each other only by certain rules, such as for ‘if - then’ conclusions. Assertions made in natural language, on the other hand, are often built in a given way because what is already known can be compressed, while what is not yet known or expected can be set into focus via special arrangements.

3.2 There are several options for treating informativity in logic-based linguistics. One can assign the labels of ‘topic” (already known) and “comment” (new) to fixed elements in a formula, e.g. Chomsky (1965: 221), who defines topic simply as ‘the leftmost NP immediately dominated by S in the surface structure’ and the comment as “the rest of the string.” Or, one can restructure the logical formulas themselves to obtain the desired correspondence between positioning and knownness (essentially the method of Sgall, Hajičová, & Benešová 1973). And finally, one can adopt the view that underlying logical formulas and the devices for indicating knownness or expectedness are mutually antagonistic, so that surface structure is misleading; such is the view of Robert P. Stockwell (1977: 168), when he writes:

 

But after these focusing and compression devices have worked their destructive way, some restitution must be made if only to give the hearer at least a 50-50 chance of reconstructing the meaning of the sentence, the underlying Logical Form. [all emphases added]

 

Stockwell’s almost comical indignation at the perverse behavior of language users stands in a venerable, stodgy tradition among logicians deploring the sloppiness of natural languages.

3.3 Inspired by the work of Vilem  Mathesius (1924, 1928, 1929), a group of Czechoslovakian linguists have long been concerned with “functional sentence perspective’: how sentence structures can “function” in projecting a specific “perspective’ on the content activated by particular elements (survey in Daneš [ed.] 1974; Jones 1977). Their work was brought to the attention of western linguists in particular by Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1968) and Chafe (1970). There have been substantial differences in the treatment of the issues, but the central distinction was between “old’ or “given’ knowledge versus “new” or “focused” knowledge.6.  [6.1 Information is defined as extent of unknownness, there could not strictly speaking be any “old information,” but only “previous informing actions.” See VIll.1.8.]

3.4 In the multiplicity of terms and proposals (Chafe 1976 and Jones 1977 undertake to sort them out), it has remained unclear precisely what phenomenon we are dealing with:

3.4.1 the grammatical notions of “subject’ and “predicate” as structurally defined positions for noun phrase and verb phrase, respectively;

3.4.2 the distinction between what has already been said or mentioned and what has not;

3.4.3 the totality of ‘presuppositions” entailed by an utterance;

3.4.4 the options for mapping concepts and relations onto sentence positions;

3.4.5 the rate of informativity as a sentence format is presented;

3.4.6 the staid notions of “psychological subject” as “the idea which appears first in the consciousness of the speaker” and of ‘psychological predicate” as whatever is added to that idea” (von der Gabelenz 1891, cited in Gundel 1977: 19);

3.4.7 the means for signaling alternatives and contrasts;

3.4.8 the relevance of certain sentence formats as answers to specific questions;

3.4.9 the informativity of a textual element seen against the background of probabilities and expectations.

3.4. I 0 the density of conceptual connectivity around some nodes in a text- world model (c. g. ‘rocket’ as topic, cf. III.4.27).

3.5 The extent to which linguistic theories can or cannot deal with these phenomenon varies according to the insistence upon a borderline between language and other kinds of knowledge, and between a sentence and the contexts in which sentences are utilized. A compromise has been drawn by many researchers who concern themselves with PRESUPPOSITIONS (cf. Peöfi & Franck [eds.] 1974; Wilson 1975). Following the usual trends in linguistics, these presuppositions are envisioned as sentences that could precede the sentence one wishes to analyze (van Dijk 1972a: 73; Harweg 1974: 98). However, the ability to presuppose something is more a matter of stored knowledge of the world than of an enumeration of preceding sentences. So far, the conventional treatment of presuppositions as sentences has not, in fact, been very successful. I see more hope for a theory of the interaction between stored world knowledge and text-presented knowledge (for some proposals in such a theory, cf. VII.3). At the very least, we should investigate CO-TEXTS (textual environments, cf. I.3.4.5) rather than sentences.

3.6 The need to take some notice of co-text was reflected in the popula “question test” (cf, Daneš 1970; Sgall, Hajičová, & Benšová 1973). For example, a statement such as this (Tampa Tribune, Oct. 8, 1978):

 

(50) The Syrian command in Lebanon ordered a cease-fire Saturday.

 

seems a better answer to (51a) han to either (51b) or (51c):

 

(51a) What he Syrian command in Lebanon do?

(51b) Who ordered a cease-fire?

(51c) Which Syrian command ordered a cease-fire Saturday

 

The difficulty here is that (50) would not normally be given as an answer to any of (51a-c); the latter questions would — embarrassingly for stodgy grammarians — not be answered with complete sentences at all, but rather like this:

 

(52a) Ordered a cease-fire Saturday.

(52b) The Syrian command in Lebanon.

(52c) The one in Lebanon.

 

A further difficulty is that (50) could be an answer to questions that do not suggest any detailed presuppositions about content, such as:

 

(53) What’s new in the world? [to someone seen reading a newspaper]

 

3.7 If we start out from the questions rather than the answers, we still cannot settle the matter. It is true that there are heavy constraints upon the RELEVANCE (VII.2.8) of question-answer pairs, depending on context. If the person giving the answer picks out some detail not in the questioner’s focus of attention, the answer is irrelevant, e.g. in these exchanges:7 [7. I italicize the elements I wish to point out within the samples.]

 

(54.1) CLAUDIO: Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

(54.2) BENEDICK: I noted her not, but I look’d on her. (Much Ado about Nothing, 1, i) 7

(55.1)     JACK: How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out.

(55.2)     ALGERNON: Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. (The Importance of Being Earnest [Wilde 1940: 4461)

 

Our realization of inappropriateness rests not on sentence structure, but on our knowledge of purposes and motives in human interaction. The same can be said of Labov’s (1970) example:

 

(56.1) A: I feel hot today.

(56.2) B. No.

 

People should be allowed to know for themselves if they are cold or hot. Yet this is not  always the case:

 

(57.1) LADY CAROLINE: I think you had better come over here, John. It is more sheltered.

(57.2) SIR JOHN: I am quite comfortable, Caroline.

(57.3)  LADY CAROLINE: I think not, John. You had better sit beside me. (A Woman of No Importance [Wilde 1940: 31 If.])

 

Lady Caroline may not know if her husband is cold, but she does know that she wants to watch over him at close range all the time.

3.8 Another technique for identifying topicl/comment formats is to construct follow-up statements that might be fitting responses (“commentations”) to the sample (R. Posner 1972). The witness’s response to (58.1) and (59. 1) is precisely the same, yet it protests against different content (Posner 1973: 129f.):

(58.3)  DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Before the defendant emptied the safe, he shot down the watchman.

(58.1)     WITNESS: That’s not true!

(58.3)  DISTRICT ATTORNEY: After the defendant shot down the watchman, he emptied the safe.

(59.4)  WITNESS: That’s not true!.

 

Posner observes that the truth of the content expressed in the subordinate clauses is neither asserted nor denied. He concludes that formatting thus signals a GRADATION of RELEVANCE (here, relevant to the task of denial, cf. VII.2.8). The informativity of more highly relevant material would be more readily noticed.

3.9 The issues raised here should perhaps be better treated within a model of conversational interaction such as I outline in Chapter VIII. In general, the mechanics of topic and comment seem to be based on the ways in which a world-model from a previously produced text can be expanded into a jointly developed DISCOURSE MODEL. The TOPIC is that portion of the on-going discourse model to which the next speaker adds on material such that density of linkage results (cf. III.4.27). In an exchange like this:

 

(60.1) LEONATO: Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine named Claudio.

(60.2) MESSENGER: Much deserved on his part. (Much Ado about Nothing, 1,i)

 

the “comment” of the first utterance becomes the “topic” for the next-the most neutral sort of topic/ comment flow (cf. Firbas 1966). The messenger’s text picks upon a “reason-of” relation for connecting ‘deserve’ to ‘bestow’. World knowledge makes it unnecessary to specify the co-referent for ‘his’(cf. V.4.1 1), there being only one person in the topic the messenger would logically be commenting upon.

3.10 For efficient communication, it is sensible to present material already established before making additions or modifications. It follows that the early portion of a sentence would be preferentially used for mapping what is previously known. In English, the subject slot betrays a preference for containing old knowledge, but as pointed out by Firbas (I966), by no means obligatorily. By the same token, new or focused knowedge would be strategically well positioned in the predicate (cf. Chafe 1970: ch. 15).  For special focus, marked sentence structures can be employed. The “cleft” sentence (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik 1972: 95 1; Leech & Svartvik 1975: I 80f.), in which a dummy ‘it’ and a form of  ‘be’ are followed by a focused element and then a relative clause whose content is known or expected, can exert focus on practically any material, while the usual declarative sentence format is better for focusing the verb phrase or a noun phrase after the verb. If focus were needed for attribute, location, or time (e.g., because of possible confusion with alternatives), then (61a), (61b), or (61c) respectively, could be used:

 

(61a) It was the Syrian command that ordered a cease-fire Saturday (not the Lebanese).

(61b) It was in Lebanon that the Syrian command ordered a cease-fire (not in Syria).

(61c) It was on Saturday that the Syrian command ordered a cease-fire (not on Friday).

 

In terms of processing, the cleft sentence is effective because of the way it distributes attention. The first part is a mere dummy subject and verb whose sole function is to create a predicate slot where the intended material can have maximal focus. In exchange, the rest of the material falls into a dependent clause, which, as we saw from (58-59), tends to have reduced focus. Hence, the formats of (61) would only be fitting if the material following ‘that’ in each case were presumed already known and not in dispute.

3.11 Another focusing device is the so-called “pseudo-cleft” construction (Quirk et al. 1972: 954f.). This one entails beginning with a relative pro-form of the ‘wh-’ sort, as in:

 

(62a) What the Syrian command did was order a cease-fire.

(62b) What the Syrian command ordered was a cease-fire.

 

The opening can also contain a pro-form like ‘one’ or a very general expression such as ‘thing’.

 

(63a) The one who ordered the cease-fire was the Syrian command.

(63b) The thing the Syrian command did was to order a cease-fire.

 

Like the cleft construction, the pseudo-cleft can be used when most of the material is presumed known or expected. The pseudo-cleft withholds the focused element until the very end of the sentence, creating particular suspense; the appearance of the ‘wh-’ items even conveys a distant impression of a question being posed and then answered. Notice that the arrangement of the pseudo-cleft construction renders it useful if some context is to be supplied. For instance, following a lecture at the University of Florida, this utterance was heard:

 

(64) What bothered me was how you used that first example.

 

This statement uses the opening stretch to pick out certain content from a large framework and to establish that the speaker wishes to protest. The cleft version:

 

 

(65) It was your use of the first example that bothered me.

 

would work better if some indication of protest had already been given.

3.12 The volume and variety of potential expectations sometimes make it expedient to deny things that might be assumed. REPUDIATION — the explicit rejection of stated or implied content (cf. Halliday & Hasan 1976) — is available to handle such cases. In the remark cited below, the follow-up sentence suggests a repudiation of ‘family’ via a construction that looks like a cleft with the relative clause left unexpressed:

 

(66) I was in hopes he would have married Lady Kelso. But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? (A Woman of No Importance [Wilde 1940: 310])

 

A deictic (i.e. pointing) expression like ‘that’ can be used to indicate what content is repudiated (MAD Magazine, Jan. 1979, 42):

 

(67.1) Suddenly a strange metamorphosis took place.

(67.2) Well, not that strange. After all, I could’ve changed into Wonder Woman!