The communicative significance of primary and secondary accents

40 Pages·2011·0.42 MB·English

The communicative significance of primary and
secondary accents
David Beaver, Dan Velleman
Department of Linguistics
University of Texas
CAL 501, Mailcode B5100,
Austin, TX 78712
Abstract
Many formal linguists hold that English pitch accent has a single function:
markingfocus. Ontheotherhand,thereisevidencefromcorpusworkandfrom
psycholinguistics that pitch accent is attracted to expressions which are unpre-
dictable. We present a two-factor pragmatic account in which both focus and
predictability contribute to the placement of accent in an English intonational
phrase. On examples of so-called “second occurrence focus” and related phe-
nomena, our account gives superior results to the one-factor accounts of Rooth
and Bu¨ring and to Selkirk’s rival two-factor account.
Keywords: phonology, semantics, pragmatics, intonation, prosody, focus,
accent, stress, second occurrence focus, secondary accent, nuclear accent,
predictability, given/new
1. Introduction
In English, expressions are made acoustically prominent using a mixture of
intonational cues, notably pitch accents. Some accented expressions are very
prominent; others less so; and no current theory fully accounts for these promi-
nence differences. This paper proposes a pragmatic account, based on the in-
tuition that intonational prominence marks a combination of two factors: im-
portance and unpredictability. In developing this account, we will consider the
phenomenonofsecondoccurrencefocus whichhasreceivedagreatdealofatten-
tion in recent literature (e.g. Partee 1999; Bu¨ring 2008; Rooth 2010). We will
arguethatourtwo-factoraccountgivesbetterpredictionsonsecond-occurrence
focus than recent one-factor accounts, such as those of Bu¨ring and Rooth. We
will also compare our two-factor account to Selkirk’s. Though we are sympa-
Email addresses: [email protected](DavidBeaver),[email protected]
(DanVelleman)
Preprint submitted to Elsevier March 16, 2011
thetic to her approach and the thrust of her argumentation supporting it, we
will present data favoring our own model.
The basic question here is, what is the semantic and pragmatic function of
English pitch accents? Much of the semantic literature on English intonation
modelsthatfunctionusingthenotionoffocusmarking. Somesemanticistshave
invoked additional notions of contrast or topic marking. But contrast can be
subsumedunderfocus—forinstance,usingRooth’s(1992)alternativesemantic
account. Andindeed,somescholars(e.g. Krifka2008)havesuggestedthattopic
can also be subsumed under this account, on the basis that topics, too, invoke
alternatives: atopicisathingbeingtalkedabout,andatopicismarkedwhenit
represents an alternative to something else that could have been talked about.
As a result of all this, quite a few accounts of English intonation depend on
a single factor — focus alone — in making their predictions. But even with a
fairlybroadnotionoffocus,itremainsdifficulttoaccountadequatelyforallthe
prosodic details of English utterances. (See for instance Nenkova et al. 2007,
who find that Rooth-style focus performs rather poorly on its own as a feature
for the computational task of predicting accent placement.)
Perhaps the trouble is that focus alone is not enough. Intuitively, much ma-
terialappearstobeaccentedbecauseisinsomesensenew orunpredictable. This
intuition has an increasing amount of empirical weight behind it. Prosody cor-
relateswithpredictabilityincontrolledexperiments(seeforinstanceLieberman
1963; Aylett and Turk 2004), and features related to predictability have been
usedtogoodeffectincomputationalaccentprediction(e.g. PanandHirschberg
2000; Calhoun et al. 2010). There is evidence as well that the Given/New dis-
tinctioncorrelateswithanexpression’slikelihoodofbeingaccented(Hirschberg,
1993).
Of course, we could attempt to incorporate these factors as well into our
notion of focus. Could such an attempt succeed? Could a definition of focus be
constructedthatexplainstheseapparenteffectsofGivennessandpredictability
all by itself? Or do we also need some formal representation of Givenness
or predictability as an independent factor in our model? Semanticists who
have addressed these questions can be divided into two camps: lumpers and
splitters. LumpersincludeRooth2010andBu¨ring2008;bothRoothandBu¨ring
claim that if the notion of focus is spelt out properly, then the theory of accent
will not need to make any further reference to the predictability or newness
of information. Splitters, including Selkirk 2002, 2007 and Beaver et al. 2007,
present explanations of accenting that make separate reference to a standard
notionoffocusontheonehand,andtopredictabilityornewnessofinformation
on the other. We differ from Selkirk on certain details, and below we present
data that invalidates a few details of her approach. But we agree with (and
our data confirms) her basic premise — that a two-pronged approach to the
phenomenon is required.1
1Muchoftheliteratureisbasedontheuseofsyntacticmarkers. Letusnoteinpassinga
distinction: whenonetalksoffocusmarking,onemightrefertothewayinwhichintonation
2
One set of crucial examples, for our and Selkirk’s two-factor accounts and
the rival one-factor accounts alike, have to do with phenomena that we will
collectively label secondary accent, and which include what has been widely
discussed under the heading second-occurrence focus. Secondary accent is what
happens when (i) a group of words form a single intonational unit (in simple
cases, an entire sentence), (ii) one word is the most prominent, and carries a
so-called nuclear accent, which we could also term the primary phrasal stress,
but(iii)thereisatleastonemorewordwhichwhilelessprominentthattheone
whichcarriesprimaryphrasalstress,isnonethelessmoreacousticallyprominent
than the remaining words in the sentence. What is standardly termed second-
occurrence focus involves secondary accent falling on a focused word or phrase
— as in the classic example (1), adapted from Partee (1999).2
(1) A: Everyone already knew that Mary only eats vegetables.
B: If even Paul knew that Mary only eats vegetables // then he should
have suggested a different restaurant.
Because foci almost always do bear primary accent, it has been considered
especially puzzling that they do not do so here. One goal of our account is to
make this fact seem a little less puzzling.
AnothercrucialsetofclassicexampleswereraisedbyBolinger(1972). These
involvesentencepairslike(2-a)and(2-b),whichappeartobeidenticalinstruc-
ture but are accented differently.
(2) a. I have a point to make.
b. I have a point to emphasize.
Bolinger’sexamplesareproblematicforeveryone,lumpersandsplittersalike. A
formalaccountoftheseexampleswouldbewellbeyondthescopeofthecurrent
paper. Still, we find it encouraging that our approach can at least support an
informal explanation of why they behave the way they do. We will return to
these data briefly in Section 5, and discuss ways in which our account could be
extended to fully cover them; but they are not our primary target here.
The next section introduces and motivates the principles at the core of our
approach. Section 3 shows how these principles can be developed into a formal
marks information status, or one might refer to some type of marker in an abstract level
of representation, e.g. a syntactic marker. Much of the literature on focus invokes abstract
syntacticfocusmarkers. Inthissense, wearenotarguingforatwo-markeraccount, butfor
a two-factor account — one which takes both predictability and importance into account,
and which allows them to interact as Selkirk’s account does. However, in Section 3 we will
presentanimplementationofouraccountwhich,likemostotheraccounts,isdefinedinterms
ofsyntacticmarkers.
2Note here that achieving terminological neutrality is not entirely trivial. For lumpers,
focusmarkingisthesolesourceofaccenting,andthusthetermssecondaryfocusandsecondary
accentcouldbeusedtodescribeasimilarrangeofphenomena. Butforus,thetermsecondary
accentismoregeneralthatsecondary focus,sincewedonotattributeallaccenting(primary
orsecondary)tofocus-marking.
3
accountofthePartee-styleexamples—onewithbroadercoveragethanleading
lumping and splitting approaches, discussed in sections 4 and 5 respectively. In
section6wereturntotheBolingerexamples;wegiveaninformalaccountbased
on our principles, and consider the work that would need to be done in order
to make the account more precise.
2. Introducing predictability and importance
Our view is that Selkirk is correct in her suggestion that two factors are
requiredtopredictEnglishprosody,butslightlymistakenaboutwhattheproper
factors are. In particular, where she uses a straightforward form of Prince’s
(1981) given/new distinction as her second factor, we use the predictability of
a constituent. Predictability is related to givenness, insofar as givenness in
Prince’s sense of the word can contribute to a constituent’s predictability, but
it is not exactly the same thing. Take the juicy piece of second-hand gossip
in (3) — the juiciest piece of which was unfortunately inaudible to our crack
team of eavesdropping field workers. All five partygoers are given after the first
sentenceofthediscourse. Andyetthisdoesnotseemtoenableustoguessatthe
identity of the drunkest partier. If we had heard the drunkest partier’s name,
whoeveritwas,itwouldhavebeenunpredictabletous—justasunpredictable,
in fact, as the exact nature of the unspeakable act performed by Larry in (4).
The point here is that while often something unpredictable is discourse new in
Prince’s sense (as “threw up on the hostess” would be if filling in the blank in
(4)), sometimes something unpredictable is discourse given (as Larry would be
if filling in the blank in (3)).
(3) Gary, Larry, Harry, Barry and Mary all showed up at the party. And
you won’t believe who got the drunkest. It was !
(4) Gary, Larry, Harry, Barry and Mary all showed up at the party. And
you won’t believe what Larry did. He !
Of course, the above just demonstrates that predictability is different from
givenness. It does not provide a precise definition of predictability, or a reason
to believe that it will lead to better results than givenness as a factor in an
account of prosody. But we will get to that soon enough. The point for now is
that givenness and predictability are not identical; the choice between Selkirk’s
theorywhichusesgivennessandourswhichusespredictabilityisthereforenon-
trivial.
Theroleswhichpredictabilityandfocusplayinourtheorycanbeunderstood
in terms of the following principles:
(5) Prominence Principle: Ifoneexpressionismorecommunicatively sig-
nificant than another expression, then the first should be more surface
prominent than the second.
(6) Predictability and focus: Anexpression’scommunicativesignificance
is based on a number of different factors. We group these factors into
4
two broad constellations: those having to do with the predictability of
the expression, and those which determine whether or not it is focused.
(7) Competition for prominence: Some forms of prominence are re-
stricted in their distribution. Primary accent, for instance, can appear
only once in an English intonational phrase.3 From this and the two
preceding principles, it follows that expressions within an intonational
phrase will have to compete for primary accent. This competition is
what determines how informationally complex material will be realized
within an intonational phrase.
Given these three principles (plus some account of how intonational phrase
boundaries are placed; we will not address that question here), we can begin to
make predictions about the placement of pitch accents in a sentence.
For the sake of simplicity and concreteness, we assume that predictabil-
ity and focus contribute equal amounts of communicative significance to an
expression, and that they are cumulative in their effect. One can think of un-
predictability as conferring one point, and focus as conferring one point, such
that expressions which are unpredictable and focused have a cumulative score
of two.
It follows from these principles that a two-point expression will always bear
primary accent. On the other hand, a one-point expression can only bear pri-
mary accent if it doesn’t have any two-point competitors; it will fall back to
secondary accent if it does. In particular, a focused-but-predictable expression
(one point!) can be forced down to secondary accent if it has a focused-and-
unpredictable competitor (two points!). This, we argue, is the cause of second-
occurrence focus.
Thereisoneslightlyoddthingabouttheprinciplesaswehavestatedthem.
It seems intuitively clear that an unpredictable constituent ought to count as
more communicatively significant than a predictable one. An unpredictable
constituent conveys more information than a predictable one; and the purpose
(or at least a purpose) of communication is to convey information. But it is
less clear why focus, out of all semantic or pragmatic phenomena, should be
singled out as a source of communicative significance. Why not stipulate that
definite nouns are more significant than indefinites, or that present-tense verbs
are more significant than past-tense verbs? Is there something ad hoc, or even
circular, about the claim that focus-marked constituents are communicatively
significant?
3We are making the following hopefully uncontroversial assumptions here about English
prosody: Utterancesaresplitintointonationalphrases. Eachintonationalphrasecontainsone
andonlyoneprimary(ornuclear)accent,whichisrealizedaspitchaccent,increasedvolume
and increased duration on the word that bears it. Intonational phrases may also contain
secondary(ornon-nuclear)accents. Asecondaryaccentthatfallsbeforetheprimaryonein
its phrase (a pre-nuclear accent) may be realized as a minor pitch accent. One which falls
aftertheprimaryaccentinitsphrase(apost-nuclearaccent)doesnotexhibitamajorpitch
movement,andistypicallyrealizedwithanincreaseinintensityand/orduration.
5
But there are in fact underlying reasons why constituents are focus-marked.
For all the cases we will consider in the main body of the paper, the focus-
marked constituents are thus marked because they play one of two discourse
roles: answering a question, or marking parallelism. These functions we take to
be of pragmatic importance in helping the speaker reach his goals and commu-
nicate effectively. Thus, more generally, rather than stating that a constituent
is communicatively significant if it is unpredictable or focused. we want to
say that a constituent is communicatively significant if it is unpredictable or
(pragmatically) important.
Answersareimportantforobviousreasons: whenthespeakeranswersaques-
tionwhichhasbeenraisedinthecurrentdiscourse, thenwecantakeanswering
the question to have been one of his communicative goals.4 The answering
constituent is instrumental in meeting this inferred goal; we can thus assign it
more importance than it would have in a context where it did not answer any
questions.
Note here that Beaver and Clark (2008), building on Roberts (1996) and
others, analyze association with focus in terms of question answering. Suppose
thatsomeaccentedexpressionassociateswithafocussensitiveparticle. Insuch
acase,BeaverandClarkanalyzetheaccentedexpressionasbeingtheanswering
constituent for the Question Under Discussion, and argue that that the focus
sensitive particle, as part of its conventionalized meaning, provides a comment
on that question. For example, in “Mary only ate cheese” — which suggests
a Question Under Discussion paraphrasable as “What did Mary eat?” — the
exclusive “only” would rule out every answer to the question except the answer
“Maryatecheese.” Returningtothecurrentpaper,therelevantconsequenceof
the Beaver and Clark model is that all expressions that associate with (conven-
tionally) focus sensitive particles are important, because they provide answers
to the Question Under Discussion.
Letusturnbrieflytocontrast. Wedonotbelievethatthereisanyobligation
to mark contrasts — but when a speaker does emphasize a contrast, or make
a correction, we take this to have been one of his communicative goals, leading
the contrasted constituents to be more important than they would have been
otherwise. It should be noted here that contrast-marking could be analyzed
in terms of predictability rather than importance. The point would be that a
contrastive element is usually the least predictable element within some string.
For example, in “Jane like Mary and she likes Joan”, the word “Joan” is
the least predictable in “she likes Joan”. There are, in fact, at least three
obvious ways in which “Joan” might be communicatively significant: it is part
of a parallel structure, it might be part of the answer to a Question under
4Note that this does not require us to assume cooperativity on the part of all speakers
at all times. If the speaker does answer, we infer that the answer furthers some goal of his.
Perhapsthegoalistohelpthehearer;butperhapsthegoalistodeceiveorannoy,ortoinsult
thehearerbygivingablatantlyunhelpfulanswer—andsinceweonlymaketheseinferences
incaseswherethespeakerdoesanswerthequestion,thisleavesoutrightuncooperativerefusal
toanswerasanotherpossibility.
6
Discussion, and it is unpredictable. More generally, contrastive constituents
will often be both important and unpredictable.
We acknowledge that there may be discourse goals, even quite general and
widely held ones,5 beyond those we have specified (answering questions, and
marking contrast/parallelism. We only claim that these goals can be reliably
imputed — that for instance when someone gives a direct answer to a question,
we can infer that answering that question was a goal of theirs. These reliably
imputed goals give us a leg to stand on in talking about the general role of im-
portanceinlanguagewithoutworryingaboutgoalswhichvaryfromonespeaker
to the next.
We can now restate (6) in terms of importance, as follows:
(8) Predictability and importance: An expression’s communicative sig-
nificanceisbasedonanumberofdifferentfactors. Wegroupthesefactors
into two broad constellations: those having to do with the predictability
of the expression, and those having to do with its importance in meeting
the speaker’s goals.
If we restrict ourselves to considering the sort of discourse goals mentioned
above, this principle will generate the same predictions as (6). If we branch out
to consider a wider set of goals, it will predict additional prominence for some
constituents, based on their importance to some real-world goal or preference
of the speaker’s. There is, for what it’s worth, some evidence that this occurs.
Watson et al. (2008) show in an experiment based on a game of tic-tac-toe
that when game-winning moves are called out by speakers, these moves bear
a special form of acoustic prominence. This could plausibly be argued to be
the result of the importance of these moves in meeting a real-world goal of
the speaker’s — namely, winning the game of tic-tac-toe. It is also suggestive
that the emotional weight a speaker attaches to different expressions can affect
their prosodic realization. One could imagine discussing the prosodic effects
of emotion in terms of some notion of emotional importance. For now we will
restrictourselvestothesortofdiscourseimportancethatisessentiallyequivalent
to focus — but we will take up these more speculative subjects again towards
the end of the paper.
There is similar variability in what can be called predictable, once again
including a large number of idiosyncratic factors. Indeed, whenever speaker
and hearer have any common ground whatsoever — any special mutual knowl-
edge which isn’t simply shared by all competent speakers and hearers — there
will be idiosyncratic factors arising from it that affect what they will consider
predictable. Once again, though, there are some factors which we maintain
will reliably affect predictability; because of these, we can talk about the role
of predictability in a general way, without getting hung up on interpersonal
differences. In particular, we maintain the following:
5“Bepolite,”oratleast“belikeable,”isalikelycandidate,butitisunclearthatthisever
confersimportanceonaspecificconstituent.
7
(9) New referents are unpredictable: This is fairly straightforward —
referring expressions whose referents are new in Prince’s (1981) sense of
the word are unpredictable.
(10) Old referents in new roles are unpredictable: Referring expres-
sionswithgivenreferentsmaystillbeunpredictableifthereisalackof
parallelism between occurrences. For instance, if John loves Mary is in
the context (and nothing else is), then the occurrence of John in John
lovessomebodyispredictable,butitsoccurrenceinSomebodylovesJohn
is unpredictable.
(10) captures the unpredictability of the last word in (3). For while we’ve
introduced all the partygoers as discourse referents, we haven’t talked at all
aboutthequestionofwhogotthedrunkest. Thus,anyonefillingthatrolewillbe
doingitforthefirsttime,andwillbeequallyunpredictableinit. Compare(11),
inwhichitseemslikeasurebetthatwecanfillintheblankwithGary’sname.
Certainlythereareotherfactorsherethatguideustowardsthisconclusion,but
one factor — and the one that will prove to matter most in our discussion of
secondary accent — is that Gary has filled this role before. Anyone else whose
name occurred in the blank would be an old referent in a new role, and hence
less predictable than Gary.
(11) Gary, Larry, Harry, Barry and Mary all showed up at the Halloween
party, and out of all of them, Gary got the drunkest. They all showed
up at the Christmas party too, and out of all of them, Gary got the
drunkest. Well, now they’re all here for Easter dinner, and guess who’s
gotten roaring drunk? That’s right, it’s .
InSection3wewillconsiderhowthesegeneralizationscanbemademorefor-
mal. Butevenwiththeinformalversionswehavestatedhere,wecanmakesome
worthwhile predictions. In the remainder of this section, we will demonstrate
the reasoning behind a few of these predictions; this will also let us illustrate
the general shape of our account before we delve into specifics.6
Let’sstartwiththeclassicexampleofsecondaryaccent,adaptedfromPartee
(1999).
(12) A: Everyone already knew that Mary only eats vegetables.
B:IfevenPaulknewthatMaryonlyeatsvegetables//thenheshould
have suggested a different restaurant.
When B utters the word vegetables, it is focused, but unlike most foci it bears
secondaryaccent. (Weadopttheconventionofwritingprimary-accentedwords
in small caps and secondary-accented words with underlines. Intonational
6There is, too, some merit to the informal versions. In particular, if we express them in
termsofpsychologicaltraitsthatcanbeindirectlyobserved—whatahearercan and can’t
predict; what a speaker will and won’t do to meet goals he has been set — it is easier to
incorporatethemintopsycholinguisticexperiments.
8
phrase breaks are indicated by double slashes.)
The explanation is simple. Consider B’s utterance in (12). The word Paul
is unpredictable, because it is new in the immediate discourse context. But
furthermore, Paul is important, because it is contrastive: two points! By com-
parison,theoccurrenceofvegetablesinB’sutteranceisdiscourseoldandhighly
predictable, the VP that contains it being string identical to one in the pre-
vious utterance. Still, vegetables is important because of its association with
the exclusive particle only. We award it one point. Since Paul and vegetables
are in the same intonational phrase, they must compete for prominence.7 Paul
wins with two points, and receives primary accent. Vegetables, with one point,
still needs to be more prominent than the scoreless words around it. We give it
secondary accent as a sort of consolation prize.
Rooth’s (1992) “rice farmer” example has gotten a lot of attention in the
literature on focus recently.
(13) People who grow rice generally only eat rice.
In some ways, it is similar to (12). It, too, has a repeated constituent rice,
which is associated with only on its second occurrence, but which bears only
secondary accent. But as we will see in Section 4, there are several interesting
differences between the two examples, which make it problematic for accounts
ofsecond-occurrencefocuswhichhandle(12)justfine. (Here’sasneakpreview:
in(12),thewordwhichintervenesbetweenonlyandvegetablesistotallywithout
communicative significance — unfocused, unimportant, highly predictable. In
(13), the word which intervenes between only and rice is contrastively focused.
This difference turns out to be a crucial ones for other accounts.) But on our
7Astutereaderswillnotethatwehavenotexplainedwhybothexpressionsfallinthesame
intonationalphrase. Andthisiscurrentlythemostseriousgapinouraccount,forwedonot
attempt to predict phrasing. Here, we observe that the most natural pronunciation of B’s
contributionisphrasedasin(12)butweoffernoexplanationofwhyitisphrasedthisway.
Hereisonerelevantobservation,though. ItispossibletophraseB’scontributiondifferently
—andwhenitisphrasedinsuchawayastoseparatePaulandvegetables,vegetablesbecomes
eligibleforprimaryaccentoncemore. Considerthefollowing.
(i) If even Paul // knew // that Mary only eats vegetables // then he should have
suggestedadifferentrestaurant.
We find that it gives an exasperated tone to the whole if-clause, and singles out the word
knewasanespeciallystrongsourceofexasperationorevenoutrage. Butinasituationwhere
such outrage is warranted, we find it to be perfectly felicitous. Note that pauses before and
after knew are called for, suggesting that there are phrase boundaries here. And note too
that,safefromcompetitiononthefarsideofthesephraseboundaries,vegetablescangetits
pitchaccentback.
Wetakethisassomeevidencethattheintonationalphraseistheproperdomainforcompe-
titionforprominence. Butwearestillmerelyobservingthelocationsofthephraseboundaries,
andnotmakinganypredictionsabouttheirlocations. Thisisnosubstituteforaproperthe-
oryofphrasing—indeed,itonlyreinforcestheneedforsuchatheory,byraisingthequestion
ofwhyoutrageoverPaul’sepistemicstateshouldlicensephraseboundariesaroundtheword
knew—andclearlymoreworkisrequiredhere.
9
account, we can handle this new example in exactly the same way, despite its
differenceinstructure. Wenotethatthesecondoccurrenceofriceispredictable.
This is because it does not have a discourse-new referent, and because it is
not newly occupying particular slot in a previously used expression. We note
that eat, on the other hand, is unpredictable. As before, both competitors are
important—ricebecauseofitsassociationwithonly,eatbecauseitiscontrasted
with grow. And as before, the unpredictable-and-important competitor beats
the predictable-but-important one. The winner is eat.
3. Formalizing predictability and importance
Thenextstepistoformalizetheaccountwehavelaidoutinthelastsection.
We propose a formalization which is based on two sets of syntactic marks. As
in Selkirk’s account, the first set of marks is identical to the F-marking used in
Rooth (1992) to capture focus. The second set of marks captures the notion
of predictability we have used in the previous section. As in the last section,
we assign prominence based on competition between the constituents within an
intonational phrase.
It should be born in mind here that we will not present empirical evidence
that the phenomenon of acoustic prominence should be mediated via syntactic
marking, and there is no direct evidence for the syntactic markers we will as-
sume. But our use of syntactic markers follows what has become the norm in
the field, and we hope it will facilitate comparison to other models which use
syntactic marking, e.g. Rooth (1992).
The system of marking we use to capture the predictability of an expression
isderivedfromSchwarzschild(1999),andprovidesuswitharuleforN-marking
those constituents that are unpredictable in the current context. 8 The core
principle driving Schwarzschild’s approach is this: if you take any constituent
in a felicitous sentence and cut out the N-marked parts, the semantic value of
whatever remains ought to be old news. This principle guides the application
of N-marking, and the goal is to N-mark as few constituents as possible while
still adhering to it.
Here is how Schwarzschild formalizes that principle. Let us define two op-
erations: N-closure, which “cuts out” the N-marked parts of a constituent’s
semantic value, and Existential type-shifting, which turns the semantic value of
any constituent into a proposition. Let us then call any constituent Given iff
8WedodeviatefromSchwarzschildononepoint: terminology. Therearenowsimplytoo
manyformsof“F-marking”intheliterature,oftenwithradicallydifferentmeanings. Wehave
alreadyfollowedSelkirkandRoothinusing“F-marking”toindicateimportantconstituents.
ButSchwarzschilduses“F-marking”toindicateunpredictableconstituents;andweobviously
cannotusethesamemarkforboth,sinceitiscrucialforouraccountthatpredictabilityand
importance be marked separately and that the same constituent be able to be marked for
both. We will go on using “F-marking” for important constituents, and we will adopt “N-
marking”—NstandsforNew—forunpredictableones. Ifthisisconfusing,remember: our
N-markingisjustSchwarzschild’sF-markingunderanewname.
10