4.3 Level 3 markers
4.3.1 Level 3 markers in abstract
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4.3 Level 3 Markers
Level 3 boundary markers include the markers signaling the transitions of the
smallest events within abstracts in news kernel, and event scene presentations, main
news events and follow-ups in news body. The types and combinations of the Level 3
markers in each unit may vary because of different narration devices. For example,
abstracts should be distinguished from the other three units in news body because they
are presented solely through oral narration; visual images play little role in this section.
However, visual images affect the types and frequencies of markers to a great extent in
a news body, especially in the event scene presentation. Accordingly, there is a
necessity to separate abstracts from the other three units in news body. In the following,
4.3.1 section will discuss the Level 3 markers in abstracts, 4.3.2 will focus on the
markers in event scene presentation, 4.3.3 will discuss the markers in main news
events, 4.3.4 will focus on follow-ups and 4.3.5 will give a summary.
4.3.1 Level 3 Markers in Abstract
In regard to marking the units within abstracts, there are 46 events within the
abstracts30 and all of them are marked by Level 3 markers. The amounts and
combination types of Level 3 markers are shown in Table 11.
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Table 11 Boundary markers signaling the events in abstract (Level 3 markers)
Linguistic markers N %
1. Triply marked:
(1) Adversatives + topic shift filler + modified NP locative phrase + modified NP temporal + full NP
(1) Referential forms: modified NP full NP pronoun (2) Connectives: adversatives
temporals
As Table 11 above shows, the amount of marker combinations range from one to three.
The ranking of the amount is double marking (50%) > single marking (39%) > triple
marking (10%). In single marking, referential forms (28%) comprise the majority of
the markers. Modified NPs (6 tokens) and full NPs (5 tokens) are nearly equal in
amount. The combinations of connectives, especially temporals, plus referential forms
31 The combinations of connectives plus modified NP or full NP are so diverse that we can only lump the two referential variants together. There are five following modified NPs, eight full NPs and one
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comprise the overwhelming majority of double marking (34%). The following
referential forms include five modified NPs, eight full NPs and one pronoun. There is
no specific preference regarding referential forms. In triple marking, the combinations
are so diverse that there is no clear tendency.
Based on the result presented above, many types of markers are used in abstracts.
The most prevalent combination is double marking, accounting for 60% of all
combinations. The prevalence of double marking in this most local unit seems to
contradict Givon’s Iconicity principle: global units are marked by more markers while
local ones are marked by fewer markers. The result of the study indicates that the
amount of markers do not necessarily correspond to the unit size in broadcast news.
Besides, no specific types of markers are favored. Apparently, the combinations of
markers are much more complex and unpredictable than those of Level 1 and Level 2.
In the following sections, we discuss single marking and double and triple marking,
respectively and provide examples to illustrate how these events are marked.
According to the results, referential forms are the most commonly used single
marker. The frequency of the three variants is modified NP (6 tokens) > full NP (5
tokens) > pronoun (2 tokens). The low frequency of pronouns may be explained from
two dimensions. First, an abstract is very short, and within such a short time span, the
plot of the whole news story must be clearly delivered. To achieve this goal, only
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foregrounding events and major participants are reported. Therefore, modified NPs
and full NPs, which mark major breaks of discourse structure are used. The choice
between modified NPs and full NPs may depend on the necessity of the additional
information. If the anchors consider the background information crucial in the context,
they will cram the extra information in relative clauses instead of presenting them in
independent clauses.33 Second, pronouns can cause ambiguous interpretations. To
avoid ambiguity, the anchors tend to reduce the usage of pronouns. Indeed, in total,
there are only eight pronouns occurring at the initial IUs in the abstract section.
The following example is an abstract of a report on a fire accident happening in
Tainan. The house owner’s daughter was unable to escape successfully.
(22)
Anchor: This morning in Tainan, a barber shop was on fire. It is a four-story building.
The fire spread from the second floor to the upper floors. The decorations in the building were all inflammable. In addition, the iron sheet above worsened the situation. The fire was uncontrollable. The house owner’s oldest daughter, an eight-year-old who lives on
33 The modified NPs found in abstracts include 穿著雨衣的搶匪, ‘the robbers in the raincoat,’ 腿部中 了4 槍的司機, ‘the driver whose leg received four gunshot wounds’ 跟李恕權同住的外甥女‘the nephew living with Li Su-chen’, 家境並不算富裕的謝家, ‘the Xie family, which is not that rich,’ 住 在四樓屋主的八歲大女兒, ‘the house owner’s daughter, an eight-year-old,’ and 有一名二十歲的年輕
Event 1
Level 3 marker Level 1 marker
Event 2
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the fourth story, was unable to immediately escape.
(#16, Era-NEWS) The abstract example (IUs1–8) contains two events: the depiction of the fire (IUs 1-6)
and the failed attempt to escape (IUs 7-8). The second event is marked by a modified
NP zhu zai silou wuchu de basuei danuer 住在四樓屋主的八歲大女兒 ‘the house
owner’s oldest daughter, an eight-year-old who lives in the fourth story.’ From IU 7 we
can see the anchor’s attempt to cram all the information into a relative clause. Yet, for
the audience, the information load contained in the relative clause is too much to be
processed, especially when the referent is introduced to the discourse for the first time.
Running the risk of the audience failing to successfully comprehend, the anchor still
lumped all of the information together. This may be explained according to two
aspects. First, because abstracts are very brief summaries of news story, the
information in the news body section has to be crammed into a relative clause. For
instance, the information coded in the relative clause zhu zai silou wuchu de basuei
danuer 住在四樓屋主的八歲大女兒 ‘the house owner’s oldest daughter, an eight-
year-old who lives on the fourth story’ stretches over a few IUs. Second, the anchor
has assumed that the audiences are aware that the more specific details of the news
will be delineated in the news body. In other words, even though failing to grasp the
key points in the abstract section, the audience is able to get more comprehensive
content.
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In regard to the events marked by more than one marker, an example illustrates
how the events are marked by more than one marker. The following excerpt is an
abstract of a report on a falling accident, which is composed of three smaller events.
(23)
Anchor: Without any key, he hurried to search for rope to descend from the 6th floor to the window of the 5th floor and entered his room. However, a chain of coincidences resulted in his death. In fact, he had descended to the windowsill. However, a PET bottle happened to be on the windowsill. Because it was wet, the student treading on it lost his balance and hung in the air.
(#9, TVBS) The beginning of the abstract is marked by a single modified NP jiudu taida faluxi
ernianji de zhang tongxue 就讀台大法律系二年級的張同學 ‘Mr. Chang, a
sophomore at NTU law school.’ However, the following three events are marked by
more than two markers. The second event (IUs 9-11) is marked by a pronoun modified Event 1
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adversative plus a locative phrase plus a modified NP. The fourth one (IUs 15-17) is
marked by a topic shift filler plus a temporal plus a modified NP. As we can see, the
amounts of markers fail to reflect the hierarchy of units. That is, the larger unit is not
necessarily marked by global markers. Taking a closer look at the first two events, we
found that there is only a minor semantic break between them because the topic
participant remains the male student. In that case, a pronoun ta 他 ‘he’ is sufficient to
signal the break. Then, why did the anchor restate the fact that the student did not
bring the key with him in the relative clause? This may be explained by the disfluency
produced by the anchor while she was spontaneously delivering the news. As we can
see, IUs 5- IU 8 are not that coherent. First, the adversative meiyouxiangdao 沒有想
到 ‘unexpectedly’ usually denotes something unanticipated happening, but what
follows the adversative (i.e., forgetting the key) is not in contrast to the previous event.
It would be more appropriate if the adversative is placed preceding men 門 ‘the door’
in IU 7 because the sudden shutting of the door is not predictable. In addition, there is
also a 0.3-second-long pause preceding IU 8. The coherence gaps and pause in IUs 5-8
suggest that the anchor is probably still doing online editing. In order to make sure that
the messages are successfully delivered, the anchor summarized the information in the
relative clause in IU 9. Accordingly, the restated information may be better viewed as a
repair.
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The following units are about the student’s stumbling over a PET bottle, which
resulted in his death. The adversative danshi 但是 ‘however’ followed by a locative
phrase and a modified NP in IU 12 indicate that the topics shifted. When it comes to
the last event in IUs 15-17, the whole event is marked by a topic shift filler er 而
‘and/but’ plus a temporal zhegeshihou 這個時候 ‘at this moment’ and a modified NP
zhicheng ta shengti zhonglian de tongjunsheng 支撐他身體重量的童軍繩 ‘the rope
supports his body.’ The modified NP tongjunsheng 童軍繩 ‘a rope’ is reintroduced to
the discourse. The distance between it and its last mention crosses 6 IUs, so the use of
the modified NP is justified. Besides, because the entity is non-human and thus plays a
minor role, the audiences need more coding materials to retrieve the memory of the
rope. That is probably why the anchor used a NP modified by a relative clause instead
of a single full NP.