Comprehending conceptual anaphors in Spanish

Abstract

This paper examines the mechanisms involved in the assignment of an antecedent to an anaphoric element. In general, pronouns must match their antecedents at least with respect to number and gender. Sensitivity to such constraints has been shown in several experiments. But Gernsbacher (1991) has also shown that people have no difficulty comprehending a plural pronoun with an antecedent that is grammatically singular but conceptually plural. In the first three experiments, we tested whether such a "conceptual effect" was preserved with zero anaphors in Spanish. (The typical omission of pronouns in subject position in Spanish.) Verbs in a second clause were marked with plural or singular endings. Plural verbs were rated more natural than singular verbs when they followed three types of singular but conceptually plural antecedents (Experiment 1). Clauses containing plural verbs were read faster when they followed one type of singular but conceptually plural antecedents, i.e. collective sets (Experiments 2 and 3). In fact, clauses containing plural verbs were read equally fast when they followed literally singular collective sets or explicitly group nouns. Using pronominal anaphors, these reading time effects were replicated and extended to sentences that contained generic types as antecedents (Experiment 4). The results are discussed in terms of the use of information during the comprehension of anaphors.

One or More Labels on the Bottles? Notional Concord in Dutch and French

“…Additional data showing a conceptual in uence on the relation between subject and anaphoric pronoun in English and Spanish comes from work by Gernsbacher and colleagues (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992;Gernsbacher, 1991;Oakhill, Garnham, Gernsbacher, & Cain, 1992). These authors report a series of experim ents exploring the comprehension of "conceptual anaphors", such as "I think I'll order a frozen margarita.…”

How Automatically Do Readers Infer Fictional Characters' Emotional States?

“…Previously, we have empirically explored the three processes involved in structure building: (a) laying a foundation (Carreiras, Gernsbacher, & Villa, 1995;Gernsbacher & Hargreaves, 1988Gernsbacher, Hargreaves, & Beeman, 1989), (b) mapping information onto a foundation (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992;Deaton & Gernsbacher, in press;Gernsbacher, 1991Oakhill, Garnham, Gernsbacher, & Cain, 1992), and (c) shifting to build new substructures (Foertsch & Gernsbacher, 1994Gernsbacher, 1985;Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990).…”

Discourse model representation of referential and attributive descriptions

“…This asymmetrical prediction was made for two reasons. First, it follows previous ndings (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992;Oakhill et al, 1992). Second, pronoun agreement seems to be driven by conceptual plurality rather than grammatical plurality (Bock, 1995;Bock et al, 1999), so syntactically singular things that tend to appear in the world in collectives have two conceptual sources for pronoun agreement.…”

“…In English, pronouns generally agree in number with their antecedents, so (7a) with a singular antecedent (iron) and singular pronoun (it) is ne, but (7b) with a singular antecedent (iron) and plural pronoun (they) sounds odd, even though it is semantically plausible in that irons in general are hot (examples from Gernsbacher, 1991 However, if the referred-to entity was introduced with a grammatically singular NP that is conceptually plural, it is acceptable to refer back to that entity with a plural pronoun as in (7c) or (7d) (examples from Oakhill, Garnham, Gernsbacher, & Cain, 1992 This phenomenon is often called conceptual anaphora (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992;Gernsbacher, 1991;Oakhill et al, 1992) since pronoun agreement is in uenced by conceptual rather than grammatical number (Bock, 1995;Bock, Nicol, & Cutting, 1999). So if referential uses select a token, they should be understood as conceptually singular and better referred to by singular than plural pronouns (as in 7a).…”

“…Cohesiveness in text relies in part on devices that mark dependencies among expressions, including anaphora, which is a mechanism for pointing back in text. Pronouns are one type of anaphoric device, and they are not just substitutes for previously mentioned noun phrases (Donnellan, 1978;Gernsbacher, 1991) since it is possible for them to refer back to conceptual entities not overtly mentioned in the text (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992;Hankamer & Sag, 1976).…”