Linguistic expectation management in online discourse processing: An investigation of Dutch inderdaad 'indeed' and eigenlijk 'actually'

• Published in: Journal of memory and language 2018-12, Vol.103, p.191-209
• Main Authors: van Bergen, Geertje, Bosker, Hans Rutger
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Dialogue; Discourse particles; Discourse processing; Polyfunctionality; Visual world eye-tracking
• ISSN: 0749-596X; 1096-0821
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2018.08.004

•We show how polyfunctional discourse particles affect real-time dialogue understanding.•Discourse particles modulate comprehenders’ expectations about how a dialogue unfolds.•Listeners make rapid and situation-specific inferences about discourse particle use. Interpersonal discourse particles (DPs), such as Dutch inderdaad (≈‘indeed’) and eigenlijk (≈‘actually’) are highly frequent in everyday conversational interaction. Despite extensive theoretical descriptions of their polyfunctionality, little is known about how they are used by language comprehenders. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments involving an online dialogue completion task, we asked to what extent inderdaad, confirming an inferred expectation, and eigenlijk, contrasting with an inferred expectation, influence real-time understanding of dialogues. Answers in the dialogues contained a DP or a control adverb, and a critical discourse referent was replaced by a beep; participants chose the most likely dialogue completion by clicking on one of four referents in a display. Results show that listeners make rapid and fine-grained situation-specific inferences about the use of DPs, modulating their expectations about how the dialogue will unfold. Findings further specify and constrain theories about the conversation-managing function and polyfunctionality of DPs.