Coreference is not always either/or: psycholinguistic evidence for near-identity

Abstract

Coreference has been traditionally defined dichotomously as identity-of-reference or non-identity-of-reference. Here, we consider the existence of a near-identity category for referential relations that are neither coreferent nor non-coreferent. We present a three-task experiment on the interpretation of the identity relationship between the referents of noun phrases in English and in Catalan. The experiment collected the judgements and reaction times (RTs) of 70 English speakers and 34 Catalan speakers to investigate the reality of a near-identity category that undermines the traditional dichotomous approach to coreference. The results show that whereas some referential relations are classified as either identity or non-identity by the majority of participants, there is a third class of relations for which the judgements are split between identity and non-identity. This third class of relations also shows a longer RT. This evidence supports the conclusion that it does not suffice to distinguish between identity-of-reference and non-identity-of-reference, but that it is psychologically plausible to assume a middle-ground category of near-identity to include those referential relations on which participants disagree as to whether they are coreferent. In addition, the results allow to conclude that near-identity relations involve higher processing complexity. The fact that this is true for both English and Catalan points towards the cross-linguistic nature of near-identical referents.