experiments in linguistic meaning, sept. 17, 2020

Discourse behavior of possessives reflects the importance of interpersonal relationships

Jesse Storbeck & Elsi KaiserUniversity of Southern California

[email protected]

Experiments in Linguistic Meaning, Sept. 17, 2020

mailto:[email protected]

Who we are

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Jesse [email protected]

www-scf.usc.edu/~jstorbec/

Elsi [email protected]

elsikaiser.com/


http://www-scf.usc.edu/~jstorbec/


http://elsikaiser.com/

Possessives in discourse● As people comprehend language, they keep track of relevant entities in a

mental model of the discourse

● Most of the work on how entities are represented on the discourse level has focused on simple nominal phrases (i.e. one NP → one discourse referent)

● What about complex NPs like possessive constructions?○ Sam’s car refers to two entities → two discourse referents

● How are possessives represented on the discourse level?○ Does the extremely broad range of semantic relations possessives can

express affect the way the two referents are represented in discourse?

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Roadmap1. Background on discourse, possessives, and interpersonal relationships

● Animate possession → interpersonal relationship (e.g. her brother)

2. Three competing hypotheses about discourse representations of possessions

3. A sentence-continuation experiment to assess our hypotheses

● We tested how animacy and being possessed affect a referent’s likelihood of re-mention in subsequent discourse

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Discourse-level representation and prominence● Entities in discourse vary in prominence (i.e. salience)

● Many factors can influence referent prominence, including:

○ Grammatical role■ Subjects usually more prominent than objects (e.g. Chafe, 1976;

Crawley et al., 1990)

○ Animacy■ Animates usually more prominent than inanimates ■ Cross-linguistic effects on word order, choice of nominal form, etc.

(e.g. Bock et al., 1992; Dahl & Fraurud, 1996)

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Possessives in discourse● the car → one entity explicitly mentioned simple nominal

● Sam’s car → two entities explicitly mentioned possessivepossessor possession

1. How are the two entities represented in discourse?○ Simply two independent discourse referents?○ Linked referents?

2. If linked, does the link differ across various types of possession relations?○ e.g. Sam’s car [ownership], Sam’s arm [part-whole], Sam’s dad [kinship]○ Same morphosyntactic realization in English, different semantics

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● Little work on the discourse-level behavior of possessives● Conflicting claims by accounts within Centering Theory (Grosz et al., 1995):

○ Possessors more prominent than possessions (Chae, 2003)■ Sam’s car → Sam > car

○ Possessors more prominent than inanimate possessions but not animate possessions (Di Eugenio, 1998)

■ Sam’s car → Sam > car■ Sam’s doctor → doctor > Sam

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Prior work: conflicting claims about prominence of possessors vs. possessions

Prior work: the need for further research● Centering Theory addresses the relative prominence of possessors and

possessions (i.e. it ranks all referenced entities according to prominence)

○ Less clear how being possessed affects a referent’s discourse representation (i.e. what’s the effect of being possessed per se?)

● Possessive constructions are commonplace

○ Yet current discourse theories struggle with how to represent them○ Thus, the lack of research on their behavior in discourse represents a

significant theoretical gap

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Interpersonal relationships● With animate possessions, possessives denote interpersonal relationships

(e.g. her father, his cousin, their boss)

● Interpersonal relationships are critical for human health and well-being (e.g. Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009; Eisenberger & Cole, 2012)

○ Longevity (e.g. Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010)○ Disease resistance (e.g. Miller et al., 2009)○ Loneliness and cognitive decline (e.g. Tilvis et al., 2004)

● Interpersonal relationships are cognitively privileged○ What about in discourse?

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Three competing hypotheses about the discourse prominence of possessed referents:

1. The animacy hypothesis

2. The possessive hypothesis

3. The interaction hypothesis

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1. The animacy hypothesis● In general, animate referents are more prominent in discourse and memory

(e.g. Bock et al., 1992; Dahl, 2008; Gelin, 2019)

● Therefore, animate possessions are more prominent than inanimate ones

○ Sam’s car → Sam > car○ Sam’s doctor → doctor > Sam

● The animacy hypothesis predicts that this effect should be comparable in magnitude to animacy effects in simple nominals ([a] doctor > [a] car)

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2. The possessive hypothesis● Possessive NPs are referentially more complex than simple NPs

○ They refer to two entities, instead of just one

● Representational complexity promotes retrieval from memory (e.g. Hofmeister, 2011; Karimi & Ferreira, 2016; Troyer et al., 2016)

● Therefore, possessions are more prominent than simpler nominals

○ [Sam’s] car > [a] car

■ Being possessed → increased complexity → increased prominence

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3. The interaction hypothesis● If animacy hypothesis and possessive hypothesis hold →

animate possessions should be most prominent○ Maybe another contribution to animate possessions’ prominence?

■ Interpersonal relationships

● Interpersonal relationships support human health → cognitive privilege○ Adaptive memory theories: better memory for animates arose from

evolutionary importance of identifying threats, mates, and social groups (i.e. interpersonal relationships) (e.g. Nairne et al., 2013)

● Due to the physiological, cognitive, and adaptive importance of interpersonal relationships, animate possessions are exceptionally prominent in discourse

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Research questions● How are possessives represented on the discourse level?

● Do different semantic possession relations affect representation in discourse?○ Sam’s car [ownership] vs. Sam’s doctor [interpersonal relationship]

● Are different types of possessed entities more or less likely to be mentioned subsequently in the discourse? With what linguistic form?

● Can we find support for our animacy hypothesis, possessive hypothesis, or interaction hypothesis?

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Method: sentence continuation paradigm● Sentence continuation task measures the discourse prominence of competing

referents (e.g. Arnold, 2001; Stevenson et al., 1994)

● Participants (n=40 MTurkers) get a prompt sentence, produce an additional sentence which naturally continues the discourse

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Analysis of sentence continuations● Dependent variable(s): which entities from the prompt do people mention in

their continuations? In what grammatical position? With what form?○ Higher likelihood of mention → more prominent○ Focus today on likelihood of mention (ask me about pronominalization data in Q&A 😃)

● Subject position is most prominent (e.g. Chafe, 1976; Crawley et al., 1990)○ Thus the most prominent referent from the prompt is likely to be realized

as the subject of the continuation (e.g. Stevenson et al., 1994)

● We understand mentions across the entire continuation as a correlated, perhaps more holistic measure

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Experiment design: prompt structure

Melissa lupted a/her chauffeur/backpack.● 2×2 design manipulating properties of direct object:

○ Animacy (human role nouns vs. alienable inanimates)○ Possessed vs. indefinite

● Nonce verbs to minimize potential effects of verb semantics○ Implicit causality (e.g. Hartshorne & Snedeker, 2013)○ Nonce verbs can be held constant within items○ Post-hoc analysis: no consistent biases for nonce verbs

● Role nouns’ stereotypical gender contrasted with name (Misersky et al., 2013)○ This is only in order to mitigate potential pronoun ambiguity

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Example targets (2 of 24)

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Example responses

● Jennifer pranned her surgeon.○ She asked him how long her surgery would last.○ The surgeon did a good job.○ It wasn't very sanitary for an OR.

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Coding responses● Jennifer pranned her surgeon.

○ She asked him how long her surgery would last.

1. What is mentioned in the subject position of the continuation?She → preceding subject

2. What is mentioned anywhere in the continuation?She, her → preceding subject, him → preceding object

● Collapsing across all forms of mention (ask me about pronominalization data in Q&A 😃)

● 97% agreement in double-coded 10% subset of the responses

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Statistical analysis● Generalized linear mixed-effects (glmer) models in lme4 (Bates et al., 2015)

● Models fit to binomial outcome of mentioning a given entity from the prompt in a given position of the continuation → combinations yield four models○ Preceding subject as continuation subject? Yes → 1, No → 0○ Preceding object as continuation subject?○ Preceding subject mentioned anywhere?○ Preceding object as mentioned anywhere?

● Maximal convergent models○ All have random intercepts for items and participants○ Random slopes added when they did not result in non-convergence

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Predictions● The animacy hypothesis, possessive hypothesis, and interaction hypothesis

make different predictions of the results

● Predictions broadly relevant for subject position and across the continuation

○ Subject position is a “winner take all” view of prominence

○ Mentions across the continuation will be correlated but more inclusive

● These predictions relate mainly to mentions of the preceding object, since that is where the experimental manipulation takes place

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Predictions: the animacy hypothesis● The animacy hypothesis

○ Animate possessions are more prominent than inanimate ones

■ Mentions of animate objects > inanimate objects■ Animacy effect in possessives parallel to its effect in indefinites■ We expect a main effect of animacy in the models for mentions of

the preceding object

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Predictions: the possessive hypothesis● The possessive hypothesis

○ Possessions are more prominent than simple NPs (here, indefinites)

■ Mentions of possessions > indefinites■ Possessive effect in animates parallel to its effect in inanimates■ We expect a main effect of being possessed in the models for

mentions of the preceding object

● Note that differences in givenness and specificity between possessions and indefinites (e.g. Barker, 2000; von Heusinger, 2011) could affect this prediction, but more on this in the results/discussion

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Predictions: the interaction hypothesis● The interaction hypothesis

○ Animate possessions are exceptionally prominent in discourse

■ Superadditive effect of animacy and possession together

■ We expect an interaction of animacy and being possessed in the models for mentions of the preceding object

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Results: two sets of figures● Jennifer pranned her surgeon.

○ She asked him how long her surgery would last.

1. What is mentioned in the subject position of the continuation?○ Subject position is mutually exclusive, so proportions within a

condition will sum to 1* (*except for a very small number of they responses)

2. What is mentioned anywhere in the continuation?○ Both entities can be mentioned across the continuation, so

proportions within a condition do not sum to 1

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Results: subject position of continuations (Fig. 1)

“Melissa lupted a/her chauffeur/backpack.”

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● Animacy effect: preceding subjects mentioned more often as continuation subject when preceding object is inanimate (p<0.01)



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● Animacy effect: animate preceding objects more likely than inanimates to be mentioned in subject position of continuations (p<0.001)



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● Interaction: animate possessed preceding objects are extra likely as continuation subjects (i.e. animacy:possession interaction, p=.05; simple effect, p=.03)

Results: all positions of continuations (Fig. 2)


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● No significant effects: preceding subjects are equally likely across conditions to be mentioned anywhere in the continuation



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● Interaction: animate possessed preceding objects are extra likely to be mentioned anywhere in the continuation (i.e. animacy:possession interaction, p<.01)

Results: summary● Animacy effects in subject position for

preceding subjects and objects, but not across the entire continuation

● Interactions: animate possessions particularly likely to be mentioned○ Effects in both subject position and

across the entire continuation○ These effects not accounted for by

either animacy or possession alone○ Cognitive importance of

interpersonal relations influencing language?

What is mentioned in subject position of continuation?

What is mentioned anywhere in continuation?

Predictions revisited1. Animacy Hypothesis

○ Mentions of animate objects > inanimate objects○ Animacy effect in possessives parallel to its effect in indefinites

2. Possessive Hypothesis○ Mentions of possessed objects > indefinite objects○ Being possessed affects animates and inanimates similarly

3. Interaction Hypothesis○ Possessed animate objects mentioned most often○ Superadditive effect of animacy + possession

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Predictions revisited

1. ✗ Animacy Hypothesis○ Mentions of animate objects > inanimate objects○ Animacy effect in possessives parallel to its effect in indefinites

2. ✗ Possessive Hypothesis○ Mentions of possessed objects > indefinite objects○ Being possessed affects animates and inanimates similarly

3. ✓ Interaction Hypothesis○ Possessed animate objects mentioned most often○ Superadditive effect of animacy + possession

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Research questions reviewed● Are different types of possessed entities more or less likely to be mentioned

subsequently in the discourse?

✓ YES

● Do different possession relations affect representation in discourse?

✓ YES results compatible with such a theory


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✓ YES


✓ YES results compatible with such a theory


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✓ YES


✓ YES, results compatible with such a theory


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✓ YES


✓ YES, results compatible with such a theory

● Can we find support for our animacy hypothesis, possessive hypothesis, or

✓ interaction hypothesis?

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Discussion● Possessed animates are especially prominent in discourse, as measured by

their likelihood of re-mention○ In general, animates are more prominent in discourse and memory, but

possessed animates seem to get a special boost in prominence■ Possessed animates explicitly denote interpersonal relationships■ May relate to non-linguistic theories on importance of interpersonal

relationships (social, physiological, and adaptive benefits)

● Compatible with Di Eugenio’s (1998) Centering Theory account○ Furthermore, we show that this boost is due to more than a simple

animacy effect or the additive effects of animacy and possession

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Discussion● We observe expected animacy effects (e.g. competition for prominence

between animate referents) but what about an overall possessive effect?○ Possessions and indefinites may differ in givenness and specificity, which

affect prominence (e.g. Barker, 2000; Kaiser, 2011; von Heusinger, 2011)■ Potential to mask a main effect of possession■ Maybe a different result with definites?

● Crucially, givenness/specificity differences do not explain interactions○ Givenness and specificity should not vary with animacy○ Choosing a different class of nominals to compare with possessions

should modulate possessive effect, but interactions should remain

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Thank you for your attention and feedback!

[email protected]

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Appendix: pronominalization results● Mentions of the preceding subject were much more likely to use a pronoun

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Appendix: pronominalization results● This holds across conditions, even in subject position with preceding animate

objects, where the preceding object was more likely as continuation subject○ Likelihood of mention ≠ likelihood of pronominalization (Kehler & Rohde, 2013)

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Appendix: pronominalization results

Appendix: item details

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Name Nonce Verb

Animate Object

Inanimate Object Name Nonce

VerbAnimate Object

Inanimate Object

Carol debbed butler violin Megan gerped chiropractor clarinet

Emily pletched stockbroker saxophone Melissa lupted chauffeur backpack

Helen swudged tattooist unicycle Rebecca gweeshed bodyguard umbrella

Jennifer pranned surgeon blanket Sarah chooped plumber scarf

Jessica rulked electrician chandelier Stephanie shupped mechanic flashlight

Kimberly chabbed chef fork Veronica brilted priest towel

Appendix: item details

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Name Nonce Verb

Animate Object

Inanimate Object Name Nonce

Verb Animate Object Inanimate Object

Anthony jolfed florist toaster Jason joiped congresswoman wheelbarrow

Brad churbed receptionist screwdriver Joseph tammed babysitter microwave

Brian sibbed waitress basket Kevin blorned stewardess dictionary

Daniel zatted nurse jacket Mark meared housekeeper stereo

Fred risped nanny broom Robert dasped secretary television

James fammed hairdresser thermometer William dreezed psychic helmet

Appendix: glmer formulaesubject_model <- glmer(glmer_subj ~ animacy * det + (1 + animacy | subjectID) + (1 | itemID)

object_model <- glmer(glmer_obj ~ animacy * det + (1 + animacy + det | subjectID) + (1 | itemID)

subject_model_anywhere <- glmer(itemSubjMention ~ animacy * det + (1 + animacy | subjectID) + (1 | itemID)

object_model_anywhere <- glmer(itemObjMention ~ animacy * det + (1 + animacy | subjectID) + (1 | itemID)

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