Publications
Publication details [#2795]
Downing, Pamela. 1980. Factors influencing lexical choice in narrative. In Chafe, Wallace L., ed. The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Ablex Publishing Company. pp. 89–126.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Annotation
D. considers the usage of content words (as opposed to function words) in twenty English and twenty Japanese narratives produced in response to 'the pear film'. The results suggest that speakers of both languages make extensive use of a body of referentially 'basic' lexemes, but that any of a number of cognitive, stylistic, and textual constraints may cause the speaker to abandon these basic terms in categorizing a given object at a given point in the discourse.