Information density in French and Dagara folktales : a corpus-based analysis of linguistic marking and cognitive processing
This thesis examines the relationship between information density and the use of certain syntactic or discourse features. It analyses how the use of these linguistic features varies across two significant contextual dimensions: (i) societal literacy, i.e. the extent to. which the written medium is used in a particular society, as indicated by a number of measurable factors, and (ii) whether the spoken or the written medium is being used. Drawing on the psycholinguistic and cognitive science literature on discourse processing, the relationship between information density, cognitive processing difficulty and linguistic marking is also a key element of the study. Defining information as semantic (based on semantic propositions), pragmatic, and only measurable in relative terms, a definition of information density is elaborated involving informativity (a relative measure of semantic and pragmatic information) per clause. While information density is seen as too complex to measure globally, a wide-ranging study of both syntactic and discourse features related to semantic propositions and inferences allows a comparison of information density between corpora.
Mills, Colin Robert
Information density in French and Dagara folktales : a corpus-based analysis of linguistic marking and cognitive processing. This thesis examines the relationship between information density and the use of certain syntactic or discourse features. It analyses how the use of these linguistic features varies across two significant contextual dimensions: (i) societal literacy, i.e. the extent to. which the written medium is used in a particular society, as indicated by a number of measurable factors, and (ii) whether the spoken or the written medium is being used. Drawing on the psycholinguistic and cognitive science literature on discourse processing, the relationship between information density, cognitive processing difficulty and linguistic marking is also a key element of the study. Defining information as semantic (based on semantic propositions), pragmatic, and only measurable in relative terms, a definition of information density is elaborated involving informativity (a relative measure of semantic and pragmatic information) per clause. While information density is seen as too complex to measure globally, a wide-ranging study of both syntactic and discourse features related to semantic propositions and inferences allows a comparison of information density between corpora.
information density french corpus_based analysis linguistic mark cognitive_processing examines_relationship information density use certain syntactic discourse feature analysis use linguistic_feature varies across significant contextual dimension societal literacy extent write_medium use particular society indicate number measurable factor whether speak_write medium use drawing psycholinguistic cognitive_science literature discourse_processing relationship information density cognitive_processing difficulty linguistic marking also key_element study defining information semantic base semantic proposition pragmatic measurable relative_term definition information density elaborate involve relative measure semantic_pragmatic information per clause information density see complex measure globally wide_ranging study syntactic discourse feature relate semantic proposition inference allow comparison information density corpus