TY - JOUR A1 - Patterson, Clare A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Delayed Application of Binding Condition C During Cataphoric Pronoun Resolution JF - Journal of Psycholinguistic Research N2 - Previous research has shown that during cataphoric pronoun resolution, the predictive search for an antecedent is restricted by a structure-sensitive constraint known as ‘Condition C’, such that an antecedent is only considered when the constraint does not apply. Evidence has mainly come from self-paced reading (SPR), a method which may not be able to pick up on short-lived effects over the timecourse of processing. This study investigates whether or not the active search mechanism is constrained by Condition C at all points in time during cataphoric processing. We carried out one eye-tracking during reading and a parallel SPR experiment, accompanied by offline coreference judgment tasks. Although offline judgments about coreference were constrained by Condition C, the eye-tracking experiment revealed temporary consideration of antecedents that should be ruled out by Condition C. The SPR experiment using exactly the same materials indicated, conversely, that only structurally appropriate antecedents were considered. Taken together, our results suggest that the application of Condition C may be delayed during naturalistic reading. KW - Sentence processing KW - Cataphora KW - Pronouns KW - Binding KW - German KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Self-paced reading Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9613-4 SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 48 IS - 2 SP - 453 EP - 475 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - THES A1 - Patterson, Clare T1 - The role of structural and discourse-level cues during pronoun resolution T1 - Zur Rolle von struktureller und diskursbasierter Information während der Pronomenverarbeitung N2 - Pronoun resolution normally takes place without conscious effort or awareness, yet the processes behind it are far from straightforward. A large number of cues and constraints have previously been recognised as playing a role in the identification and integration of potential antecedents, yet there is considerable debate over how these operate within the resolution process. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the parser handles multiple antecedents in order to understand more about how certain information sources play a role during pronoun resolution. I consider how both structural information and information provided by the prior discourse is used during online processing. This is investigated through several eye tracking during reading experiments that are complemented by a number of offline questionnaire experiments. I begin by considering how condition B of the Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981; 1986) has been captured in pronoun processing models; some researchers have claimed that processing is faithful to syntactic constraints from the beginning of the search (e.g. Nicol and Swinney 1989), while others have claimed that potential antecedents which are ruled out on structural grounds nonetheless affect processing, because the parser must also pay attention to a potential antecedent’s features (e.g. Badecker and Straub 2002). My experimental findings demonstrate that the parser is sensitive to the subtle changes in syntactic configuration which either allow or disallow pronoun reference to a local antecedent, and indicate that the parser is normally faithful to condition B at all stages of processing. Secondly, I test the Primitives of Binding hypothesis proposed by Koornneef (2008) based on work by Reuland (2001), which is a modular approach to pronoun resolution in which variable binding (a semantic relationship between pronoun and antecedent) takes place before coreference. I demonstrate that a variable-binding (VB) antecedent is not systematically considered earlier than a coreference (CR) antecedent online. I then go on to explore whether these findings could be attributed to the linear order of the antecedents, and uncover a robust recency preference both online and offline. I consider what role the factor of recency plays in pronoun resolution and how it can be reconciled with the first-mention advantage (Gernsbacher and Hargreaves 1988; Arnold 2001; Arnold et al., 2007). Finally, I investigate how aspects of the prior discourse affect pronoun resolution. Prior discourse status clearly had an effect on pronoun resolution, but an antecedent’s appearance in the previous context was not always facilitative; I propose that this is due to the number of topic switches that a reader must make, leading to a lack of discourse coherence which has a detrimental effect on pronoun resolution. The sensitivity of the parser to structural cues does not entail that cue types can be easily separated into distinct sequential stages, and I therefore propose that the parser is structurally sensitive but not modular. Aspects of pronoun resolution can be captured within a parallel constraints model of pronoun resolution, however, such a model should be sensitive to the activation of potential antecedents based on discourse factors, and structural cues should be strongly weighted. N2 - Pronomenauflösung erfolgt normalerweise scheinbar mühelos und ohne bewusste Anstrengung. Jedoch ist die Verarbeitung von pronominalen Referenzen aus linguistischer Sicht ein hochkomplexer Prozess. Durch unterschiedliche wissenschaftliche Studien wurden bereits zahlreiche Faktoren ermittelt, die bei der Pronomenauflösung eine Rolle spielen, allerdings herrscht weitgehend noch keine Einigkeit darüber, wie genau diese Faktoren die Verarbeitung von Pronomen beeinflussen. Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es zu untersuchen, wie der Leser/Hörer mit Pronomen umgeht, denen mehrere Antezedenten zugeordnet werden können, um zu verstehen, welche Rolle bestimmte Informationsquellen in der Verarbeitung von Pronomen spielen. Besondere Beachtung findet dabei, wie strukturelle Eigenschaften sowie Informationen aus dem vorangegangenen Diskurs für die Suche nach einem passenden Antezedenten benutzt werden. Die angewandte Untersuchungsmethode der vorliegenden Dissertation ist Eye-tracking during reading, ergänzt mit verschiedenen offline-Fragebögen. Die Experimente erforschen die Rolle der folgenden Aspekte in der Verarbeitung von Pronomen: Prinzip B der Bindungstheorie (Chomsky 1981; 1986), Koreferenz und Variablenbindung laut der Primitives of Binding Hypothese (Reuland 2001, Koornneef 2008), Antezedentenreihenfolge im Satz, und Diskursstatus des Antezedents. Obwohl es zeigt sich, dass der Hörer/Leser sensibel für subtile Veränderungen in der syntaktischen Konfiguration ist, wie z.B. für die Reihenfolge der Antezedenten im Satz und für den Diskursstatus des Antezedenten, gibt es keinen Nachweis dafür, dass Variablenbindung zeitlich vor Koreferenz erfolgt. Einige Aspekte der Auflösung pronominaler Referenzen können in einem parallel constraints model erfasst werden, allerdings sollte so ein Modell strukturelle Informationen stark gewichten und sensitiv sein für die Aktivierung potenzieller Antezedenten aufgrund von Diskursfaktoren. KW - Pronomen KW - Anaphora KW - Psycholinguistik KW - Pronouns KW - anaphora KW - psycholinguistics KW - Binding Theory KW - Centering Theory Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71280 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bos, Laura S. A1 - Dragoy, Olga V. A1 - Avrutin, S. A1 - Iskra, E. A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Understanding discourse-linked elements in aphasia: A threefold study in Russian JF - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience N2 - Background: Agrammatic speakers have problems with grammatical encoding and decoding. However, not all syntactic processes are equally problematic: present time reference, who questions, and reflexives can be processed by narrow syntax alone and are relatively spared compared to past time reference, which questions, and personal pronouns, respectively. The latter need additional access to discourse and information structures to link to their referent outside the clause (Avrutin, 2006). Linguistic processing that requires discourse-linking is difficult for agrammatic individuals: verb morphology with reference to the past is more difficult than with reference to the present (Bastiaanse et al., 2011). The same holds for which questions compared to who questions and for pronouns compared to reflexives (Avrutin, 2006). These results have been reported independently for different populations in different languages. The current study, for the first time, tested all conditions within the same population. Aims: We had two aims with the current study. First, we wanted to investigate whether discourse-linking is the common denominator of the deficits in time reference, wh questions, and object pronouns. Second, we aimed to compare the comprehension of discourse-linked elements in people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Methods and procedures: Three sentence-picture-matching tasks were administered to 10 agrammatic, 10 fluent aphasic, and 10 non-brain-damaged Russian speakers (NBDs): (1) the Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART) for present imperfective (reference to present) and past perfective (reference to past), (2) the Wh Extraction Assessment Tool (WHEAT) for which and who subject questions, and (3) the Reflexive-Pronoun Test (RePro) for reflexive and pronominal reference. Outcomes and results: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. We found an overall effect of discourse-linking in the TART and WHEAT for the agrammatic speakers, and in all three tests for the fluent speakers. Scores on the RePro were at ceiling. Conclusions: The results are in line with the prediction that problems that individuals with agrammatic and fluent aphasia experience when comprehending sentences that contain verbs with past time reference, which question words and pronouns are caused by the fact that these elements involve discourse linking. The effect is not specific to agrammatism, although it may result from different underlying disorders in agrammatic and fluent aphasia. KW - Aphasia KW - Sentence comprehension KW - Discourse-linking KW - Tense KW - Time reference KW - wh Questions KW - Pronouns Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.02.017 SN - 0028-3932 SN - 1873-3514 VL - 57 SP - 20 EP - 28 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seržant, Ilja A. A1 - Moroz, George A. T1 - Universal attractors in language evolution provide evidence for the kinds of efficiency pressures involved JF - Humanities & Social Sciences Communications N2 - Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language. However, efficiency management is a complex mechanism in which different efficiency effects-such as articulatory, processing and planning ease, mental accessibility, and informativity, online and offline efficiency effects-conspire to yield the coding of linguistic signs. While we do not yet exactly understand the interactional mechanism of these different effects, we argue that universal attractors are an important component of any dynamic theory of efficiency that would be aimed at predicting efficiency effects across languages. Attractors are defined as universal states around which language evolution revolves. Methodologically, we approach efficiency from a cross-linguistic perspective on the basis of a world-wide sample of 383 languages from 53 families, balancing all six macro-areas (Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Oceania). We explore the grammatical domain of verbal person-number subject indexes. We claim that there is an attractor state in this domain to which languages tend to develop and tend not to leave if they happen to comply with the attractor in their earlier stages of evolution. The attractor is characterized by different lengths for each person and number combination, structured along Zipf's predictions. Moreover, the attractor strongly prefers non-compositional, cumulative coding of person and number. On the basis of these and other properties of the attractor, we conclude that there are two domains in which efficiency pressures are most powerful: strive towards less processing and articulatory effort. The latter, however, is overridden by constant information flow. Strive towards lower lexicon complexity and memory costs are weaker efficiency pressures for this grammatical category due to its order of frequency. KW - Duration KW - Explanations KW - Redundancy KW - Pronouns KW - Usage Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01072-0 SN - 2662-9992 VL - 9 IS - 1 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Seržant, Ilja A. A1 - Moroz, George A. T1 - Universal attractors in language evolution provide evidence for the kinds of efficiency pressures involved T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe N2 - Efficiency is central to understanding the communicative and cognitive underpinnings of language. However, efficiency management is a complex mechanism in which different efficiency effects-such as articulatory, processing and planning ease, mental accessibility, and informativity, online and offline efficiency effects-conspire to yield the coding of linguistic signs. While we do not yet exactly understand the interactional mechanism of these different effects, we argue that universal attractors are an important component of any dynamic theory of efficiency that would be aimed at predicting efficiency effects across languages. Attractors are defined as universal states around which language evolution revolves. Methodologically, we approach efficiency from a cross-linguistic perspective on the basis of a world-wide sample of 383 languages from 53 families, balancing all six macro-areas (Eurasia, North and South America, Australia, Africa, and Oceania). We explore the grammatical domain of verbal person-number subject indexes. We claim that there is an attractor state in this domain to which languages tend to develop and tend not to leave if they happen to comply with the attractor in their earlier stages of evolution. The attractor is characterized by different lengths for each person and number combination, structured along Zipf's predictions. Moreover, the attractor strongly prefers non-compositional, cumulative coding of person and number. On the basis of these and other properties of the attractor, we conclude that there are two domains in which efficiency pressures are most powerful: strive towards less processing and articulatory effort. The latter, however, is overridden by constant information flow. Strive towards lower lexicon complexity and memory costs are weaker efficiency pressures for this grammatical category due to its order of frequency. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe - 180 KW - Duration KW - Explanations KW - Redundancy KW - Pronouns KW - Usage Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-583976 SN - 1866-8380 VL - 9 IS - 180 ER -