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Grammar modulates discourse expectations: evidence from causal relations in English and Korean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2020

EUNKYUNG YI Open the ORCID record for EUNKYUNG YI [Opens in a new window]  and
JEAN-PIERRE KOENIG
EUNKYUNG YI*
Affiliation:
Seoul National University
JEAN-PIERRE KOENIG
Affiliation:
University at Buffalo
*
Address for correspondence: e-mail: yi.eunkyung@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper investigates whether differences in grammar affect the production of discourse relations. We report the results of two story continuation experiments on speakers of two typologically unrelated languages, English and Korean, and in two different discourse genres, monologues (Experiment 1) and conversations (Experiment 2), focusing on the contrast between the explanation discourse relation and the result discourse relation. Since the grammar of clause linkage in Korean, but not English, disfavors a backward causal order (explanation relation), we predicted that Korean speakers are less likely to produce EXPLANATION continuations in MONOLOGUES than English speakers. We also predicted that this difference disappears in conversation, as questions that can be uttered in conversations are not subject to the same constraints on clause linkage in Korean. The results confirmed our predictions. The effect of language on the production of discourse relations in monologue suggests that LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES can affect speakers’ discourse expectation and production, while the absence of language effect in conversation suggests that this language effect is not due to differences in the way speakers causally relate events or to conceptual or cultural differences in preferences for iconic discourse between English and Korean speakers.

Keywords

discourse expectationdiscourse relationsforward and backward causal relationsexplanationresultmonologueconversationcross-linguistic differenceEnglishKorean
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 99 - 127
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of UK Cognitive Linguistics Association

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Footnotes

We thank Gail Mauner and members of the Psycholinguistics Lab at the University at Buffalo for English data collection. We also gratefully acknowledge Hongmo Kang for his assistance running the experiment, and Justin Balash, Hongoak Yun, and Kwonhwan Ko for their comments on data coding. This study was supported by the Department of Linguistics’ Summer Research Fund at the University at Buffalo.

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