Reflexive anaphor resolution in spoken language comprehension: structural constraints and beyond.

Kaili Clackson,Vera Heyer

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00904

Kaili Clackson, Vera Heyer

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00904

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Abstract

We report results from an eye-tracking during listening study examining English-speaking adults’ online processing of reflexive pronouns, and specifically whether the search for an antecedent is restricted to syntactically appropriate positions. Participants listened to a short story where the recipient of an object was introduced with a reflexive, and were asked to identify the object recipient as quickly as possible. This allowed for the recording of participants’ oﬄine interpretation of the reflexive, response times, and eye movements on hearing the reflexive. Whilst our oﬄine results show that the ultimate interpretation for reflexives was constrained by binding principles, the response time, and eye-movement data revealed that during processing participants were temporarily distracted by a structurally inappropriate competitor antecedent when this was prominent in the discourse. These results indicate that in addition to binding principles, online referential decisions are also affected by discourse-level information.

Highlights

According to most theoretical accounts, the interpretation of a reflexive is determined solely by a structural constraint which identifies a unique referent (Chomsky, 1981, 1986; Levinson, 1987; Pollard and Sag, 1992; Reinhart and Reuland, 1993; Reinhart, 2000, Reuland, 2001; Burkhardt, 2005 among others)
It is clear that processing the reflexive involves accessing the inaccessible antecedent, arguing against theories which claim that the early application of structural constraints makes inaccessible antecedents “invisible” to the parser
With spaces and length information being very salient, the distinction between English reflexives (6–10 letters) and pronouns (2–4 letters) can be made on the basis of this formal information available in the parafovea. This might provide participants with a “head-start,” reducing potential surprise effects which lead to longer reading times when a reflexive does not refer to the gender matching and discourse prominent, but structurally inaccessible, antecedent

Summary

INTRODUCTION

According to most theoretical accounts, the interpretation of a reflexive is determined solely by a structural constraint which identifies a unique referent (Chomsky, 1981, 1986; Levinson, 1987; Pollard and Sag, 1992; Reinhart and Reuland, 1993; Reinhart, 2000, Reuland, 2001; Burkhardt, 2005 among others). Early cross-modal priming studies (Nicol, 1988; Nicol and Swinney, 1989) suggested that during reflexive resolution, the structural constraint acts as an early filter so that the adult parser only considers structurally accessible antecedents but not structurally inaccessible ones1 Evidence to support this has come from studies using more time-sensitive measures such as ERPs and eye-tracking during listening (Xiang et al, 2009; Clackson et al, 2011) where no effects of the inaccessible antecedent were found. The present eye-tracking during listening study avoids such difficulties by only using proper names for potential antecedents and by using a “goal-directed” design The advantage of such a design is that the participant is required to identify the referent for the reflexive for each trial, allowing for separate analysis of eye movements and response times for trials where participants did, and did not, interpret the reflexive correctly. If manipulation of the gender of the inaccessible antecedent (matching or mismatching the gender of the reflexive) affects responses, this interference effect would suggest that the inaccessible antecedent was briefly considered as a potential antecedent in the early stages of processing

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS

DISCUSSION