Pronominal Reference in Sentences about Persons or Things: An Electrophysiological Approach

Abstract

German pronouns (er(MALE/masculine), sie(FEMALE/feminine)) that refer to a person are determined by the biological gender (MALE/FEMALE) and/or syntactic gender (masculine/feminine) of the person. Pronouns (er(masculine), sie(feminine)) that refer to a thing are determined by the syntactic gender of this thing (Garten [garden]masculine, Tasche [hand-bag]feminine). The study aimed to investigate whether semantic integration, syntactic integration, or both are involved in establishing co-reference between pronoun and subject/antecedent in sentences. Here we focused on two event-related potential components: the SPS/P600, related to syntactic violation and reanalysis, and the N400 component, related to semantic integration problems. In one condition, a person was introduced as antecedent and later referred to by a pronoun, which either agreed in biological/syntactic gender or not (biological/syntactic gender violation). In a second condition, a thing was introduced as antecedent and the corresponding pronoun either agreed in syntactic gender or not (syntactic gender violation). Results at critical pronouns showed a P600 effect for incongruent compared with congruent pronouns in both conditions with a centro-parietal maximum. This effect was larger for the person compared to the thing condition. We interpreted this finding as reflecting a syntactic integration process that can be influenced by conceptual/semantic and syntactic information of the antecedent type. Furthermore, at the word following the pronoun, we observed an N400 for the thing but not for the person condition. We suggest, supported by the results of a control experiment, that this effect reflects continuous integration processes for things, whereas for persons the integration seems to be finished at pronoun position.

Processing anaphoric constructions: Insights from electrophysiological studies

“…case, gender, number) are incompatible with the only possible antecedent, the anaphor elicits a broadly distributed positivity (often with a centro-parietal or parietal maximum) between approximately 400 and 1000 ms post word-onset (i.e. a P600) (Coulson et al, 1998;Hammer, Jansma, Lamers, & Mu¨nte, 2005;Harris, Wexler, & Holcomb, 2000;Lamers, Jansma, Hammer, & Mu¨nte, 2006;Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006;Osterhout, Bersick, & McLaughlin, 1997;Osterhout & Mobley, 1995;Schmitt, Lamers, & Mu¨nte, 2002) and sometimes a left anterior negativity between 300 and 500 ms post-word onset (i.e. a phasic LAN) (Coulson et al, 1998).…”

“…German), double violations of both biological and syntactic gender elicit a positivity with a broad distribution (Hammer et al, 2005;Schmitt et al, 2002) while pure violations of syntactic gender elicit a positivity with a more fronto-central distribution (Schmitt et al, 2002). On the other hand, violations of conceptual/biological gender elicit a positivity with a more parietal distribution (Lamers et al, 2006;Nieuwland & van Berkum, 2006;Osterhout et al, 1997;Osterhout & Mobley, 1995;Schmitt et al, 2002), possibly because different neural generators are involved in the processing of semantic and syntactic violations.…”

“…Since some participants are willing to consider that a pronoun might refer to an antecedent outside the discourse context (Hammer et al, 2005), only participants who are reliably computing reference for the anaphor and interpret the anaphor as co-referential with the mismatching antecedent show a late positivity (Osterhout & Mobley, 1995); however, this effect can be elicited even when the gender of the pronoun does not Fig. 4.…”

Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

“…Note that several other psycholinguists have also begun to examine reference-related issues by means of EEG (e.g., Anderson and Holcomb, 2005;Camblin et al, 2007;Hammer et al, 2005;Magne et al, 2005;Rösler et al, 1998;Schmitt et al, 2002;Swaab et al, 2004); we refer to Camblin et al, 2007, and Van Berkum, in press, for broader surveys.…”

Tracking referents in discourse

“…Many eye tracking studies addressing anaphor resolution, along with studies using other time sensitive methodologies (e.g., registration of event related brain potentials), report effects at the anaphor, as well as further along in the discourse (e.g., Duffy & Rayner, 1990;Ehrlich & Rayner, 1983;Hammer, Jansma, Lamers & Münte, 2005;Sanford & Garrod, 1994;Van Gompel, Liversedge & Pearson, 2004). These findings indicate that anaphor resolution comes about in two different stages.…”