Anaphoric Pronouns and the Computation of Prominence Profiles

Abstract

Previous research has investigated anaphoric resolution at the anaphor. Using a self-paced reading study we show that prominence profiles, i.e. the ranking of the referential candidates for anaphoric resolution, are dynamically established as discourse unfolds. We compared four types of context sentences introducing two referents and found that the cost of the computation of the prominence profile depends on the alignment of prominence-lending features, namely ‘left edge’, ‘agent’, ‘subject’. Cost occurs as referents become available. Further downstream, we contrasted two types of pronouns in German, personal pronoun vs. demonstrative pronoun. By the time the pronoun is encountered, profile computation is already complete, as indicated by the lack of interaction between context and pronoun type. An effect of pronoun reveals that resolution is driven by the form-dependent strength with which an interpretation is obtained (demonstrative pronouns being more stable than personal pronouns). The results also indicate that two prominence-lending features – subjecthood and agentivity – compete with each other.

The Importance of Linguistic Factors:HeLikes Subject Referents

“…Maybe the contrast between the offline results and participants' attention to the focused referent at that point could be explained by the idea that the computation of prominence profiles is not completed when encountering the pronoun, but that it carries on after? However, even considering participants' attention to the referents at the end of the pronoun sentence (the next time point when the prominence profile would be updated following von Heusinger and Schumacher (2019) and Tomaszewicz‐Özakın and Schumacher (2022) and the last relevant point before the offline question), participants' attention is not consistent with the offline results of Experiment 1. In particular, the object focus conditions initially showed more looks to the object which decreased toward the end of the pronoun sentence.…”

“…There is a possible counterargument to this reasoning, namely that the focused constituent may have consistently been the most prominent referent around the time when the pronoun was encountered, as well as during the preceding sentence, but maybe the relative prominence of referents still changed after that and before finally determining pronoun resolution. According to von Heusinger and Schumacher (2019) and Tomaszewicz‐Özakın and Schumacher (2022), the computation of prominence profiles is dynamic (see also Section 1). This would mean that computation would not end when encountering the pronoun.…”

“…According to Tomaszewicz‐Özakın and Schumacher (2022), prominence profiles are fully computed at the predicate and available upon encountering the pronoun. That said, this would only reflect the prominence at the point in time during processing when the pronoun is encountered.…”

How Does Topicality Affect the Choice of Referential Form? Evidence From Mandarin

“…Although null pronouns provide no information about a potential referent, demonstratives in German encode grammatical gender and number of a potential referent similar to overt pronouns. Yet German demonstratives and overt pronouns are suggested to differ in terms of interpretation preferences (e.g., Bosch et al., 2007; Hinterwimmer, 2014; Tomaszewicz‐Özakin & Schumacher, 2022). While overt pronouns are used for topics, demonstratives have a strong preference against topics.…”