Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution
- We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive fromWe report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources.…
| Author details: | Claudia FelserORCiDGND, Janna-Deborah DrummerORCiD |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9465-8 |
| ISSN: | 0090-6905 |
| ISSN: | 1573-6555 |
| Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27933563 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Journal of psycholinguistic research |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Place of publishing: | New York |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2016/12/08 |
| Publication year: | 2016 |
| Release date: | 2022/05/09 |
| Tag: | Eye-movement monitoring; German; Pronoun resolution; Strong crossover; Weak crossover |
| Volume: | 46 |
| Number of pages: | 19 |
| First page: | 771 |
| Last Page: | 789 |
| Funding institution: | German Science Foundation [FE1138/1-1]; Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship |
| Organizational units: | Zentrale und wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen / Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism (PRIM) |
| DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
