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ERIC Number: EJ1424503
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Apr
Pages: 43
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0364-0213
EISSN: EISSN-1551-6709
Available Date: N/A
The Importance of Linguistic Factors: "He" Likes Subject Referents
Regina Hert; Juhani Järvikivi; Anja Arnhold
Cognitive Science, v48 n4 e13436 2024
We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns "er" and "der" in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first-mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' "prominence" / "accessibility" / "salience." The results showed an overall subject preference for "er," whereas "der" was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of "er," suggesting that "prominence" or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A