Article Omission in a Limited-Time Context: A Look at Overwatch in-game Chat Communication

Abstract

By looking at article omissions in a gaming environment, the current study ties into the earlier findings of De Lange (2008) in her study on article omissions in Dutch and Italian headlines. In her study, De Lange found that due to a restricted processing capacity and limited time, normal speakers will omit more articles in specific time-limited contexts than in regular conditions. Data for the current study was collected by playing the online multiplayer shooter Overwatch (Blizzard, 2016), a game wherein good communication forms the basis for working well together in a team and capturing objectives. The utterances produced were analysed based on three conditions: (1) definiteness of the article, (2) article position in the sentence, and (3) finiteness of the main verb. Results showed that articles were indeed omitted more in a limited-time context by analysing a total of 65 in-game chat utterances. In addition, the three conditions were of influence on the percentage of articles being omitted. More omissions took place in sentences with a non-finite verb than with a finite verb, in sentence-initial position than sentence-internal position, and indefinite articles were omitted more than definite articles.