Pronoun Reference Research Articles

Whichitis it? The acquisition of referential and expletiveit

The purpose of this study was to determine the natural order of acquisition of the proform it, comparing deictic pronoun it, anaphoric pronoun it and expletive it. Files from four children (Adam, Eve, Nina and Peter) aged 1;6-3;0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it (here it is) and expletive it (it's raining). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it) or not (deictic it). All children examined produce deictic and anaphoric pronoun it from the very first files, but do not produce expletive it until 2-7 months later. Following Inoue's (1991) lexical-semantic reanalysis account of the acquisition of expletive there after locative there, we propose that children acquire expletive it by reanalyzing referential pronoun it to include an expletive subtype. This reanalysis takes place when children realize that expletive it never co-occurs with any deictic/anaphoric referent.

A special case of wh-extraction in child language

Young children extract from direct speech even when the pronoun reference indicates a direct speech act: How did Deanne ask: “ Can I ride a bike?” is answered with a manner of bike-riding, while the pronoun refers to main clause subject. Adults do not allow this extraction due to a blocking effect of a Point of View operator, regulating differences in perspective between direct and indirect speech. A study with 68 American children between the ages of 3:0 to 7:8 combines two conditions: long-distance versus short-distance movement and reference of the pronoun in the direct speech part. The results are that 3 and 4 year olds show long-distance movement (a manner of bike-riding) regardless of the pronoun reference. The 5 and 6 year olds, however, extract out of the direct speech part under a main clause subject reference. This means that they take the Can I ride a bike part as a direct speech act, but at the same time are able, contrary to adults, to extract out of them. These results show that the tight relation, in adult English, between different Point of Views and syntactic domains is not established for young children.

Discourse processing for context question answering based on linguistic knowledge

Motivated by the recent effort on scenario-based context question answering (QA), this paper investigates the role of discourse processing and its implication on query expansion for a sequence of questions. Our view is that a question sequence is not random, but rather follows a coherent manner to serve some information goals. Therefore, this sequence of questions can be considered as a mini discourse with some characteristics of discourse cohesion. Understanding such a discourse will help QA systems better interpret questions and retrieve answers. Thus, we examine three models driven by Centering Theory for discourse processing: a reference model that resolves pronoun references for each question, a forward model that makes use of the forward looking centers from previous questions, and a transition model that takes into account the transition state between adjacent questions. Our empirical results indicate that more sophisticated processing based on discourse transitions and centers can significantly improve the performance of document retrieval compared to models that only resolve references. This paper provides a systematic evaluation of these models and discusses their potentials and limitations in processing coherent context questions.

Givenness revisited indefinite one-anaphora in unscripted Danish dialogue

Indefinite one-anaphors (e.g. one as in “Phil gave Bob a doughnut because he asked for one”) are at the same time pronominal and indefinite. It is investigated in a small corpus study of unscripted spoken Danish dialogue whether referents of indefinite one-anaphors are as accessible as referents of definite pronouns, and whether they differ in identifiability from referents of definite pronouns. The results suggest that referents of indefinite one-anaphors indeed have approximately the same degree of accessibility as referents of (accented) definite pronouns, but differ with respect to identifiability. These results support a new model of givenness in terms of a multidimensional functional map.

Effects of topic and focus on salience

This paper investigates what factors make a particular referent a good antecedent for subsequent pronominal reference. In particular, it explores two seemingly conflicting claims in the literature regarding the effects of topicality and focusing on referent salience. In light of new experimental results combined with a review of existing work, I conclude that neither topicality nor focusing alone can explain referent salience as indicated by patterns of pronoun reference. Rather, the data provide support for a multiple-factor model of salience (e.g. Arnold 1999). More specifically, the results show that grammatical role has a striking effect: being a subject makes a referent more salient than either pronominalization/givenness or focusing alone. Furthermore, the results of the experiment suggest that the likelihood of subsequent pronominal reference is also influenced by structural focusing and pronominalization, but not as strongly as by subjecthood. I argue that these data are best captured by a multiple-factor model in which factors differ in how influential they are relative to one another, i.e. how heavily weighted they are. A single-factor system does not seem adequate for these data.

Discourse coherence and pronoun resolution

This paper used self-paced reading to test processing preferences in pronoun interpretation in English two clause sentences. The results demonstrate that people's preferences can be reversed by changing the coherence relation between the clauses. The results are not compatible with the existence of a single all-purpose strategy in pronoun resolution. Rather, the results support Kehler's (2002) hypothesis that the processing patterns observed in pronoun processing are a byproduct of more general cognitive inference processes underlying the establishment of coherence, such that discourse coherence guides pronoun reference, and pronoun reference guides discourse coherence.

On the use of the personal pronoun we in communities

The purpose of this paper is to show the existing relationships between the concept of community and the linguistic forms used to convey or even to manipulate it. First of all, the limits and restrictions of any form of community will be defined. Second, one specific form of community will be selected for analysis. The community chosen will be the Parliamentary community, and the linguistic form singled out for study will be the first person plural pronoun “we”. We will try to discover any type of relationship between (a) the scope of reference of this personal pronoun and (b) the intentions of the person who uttered it. In this way, we can see whether there is any connection between personal identity (in terms of inclusion/exclusion from a group) and pronominal choice. This could also lead us to the discovery of any possible strategic use of this personal pronoun.

Critical Notice of Richard Moran, Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge

There is a way of understanding philosophical problem of the self' that makes it unquestionably central to and ineliminable from the entire endeavor of philosophy, ancient as much as modern: if by asking about the self we mean to ask what we really, fundamentally are, then the problem of the self comprehends a great range of problems, and every philosophical position worth the name will include a theory of the self. In analytic philosophy, however, the problem of the self has come to be understood differently: what it refers to in the first instance is the puzzle presented by knowledge claims regarding one's own psychological states, a problem that is distinguished from, while enjoying some connections with, the problem of the conditions for personal identity and the mind-body problem, and that resolves itself into a set of finer problems concerning the conditions of psychological selfascription, the reference of the first-person pronoun, the notion of immunity to error through misidentification, and so forth. In a historical perspective, it is as if the self has ceased to be a lynchpin and become a philosophical epiphenomenon: the self is now regarded as presenting a problem whose solution depends substantially on what positions are taken in other areas of philosophy, and that does not play an important or extensive positive role in elucidating issues outside the philosophy of mind. The key steps through which this shrinking of the concept and problem has come about include of course the linguistic turn and Wittgenstein's influential contribution, and the move away from Cartesian foundations in epistemology. But the decisive factor, it may be ventured, is acceptance, motivated from several quarters, of what may be called the Lockean or Strawsonian picture, according to which the methodologically and ontologically primary item is not the I of self-consciousness but the living, concrete,

How do adults and children process referentially ambiguous pronouns?

In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigate adults' and children's on-line processing of referentially ambiguous English pronouns. Sixteen adults and 16 four-to-seven-year-olds listened to sentences with either an unambiguous reflexive (himself) or an ambiguous pronoun (him) and chose a picture with two characters that corresponded to those in the sentence. For adults, behavioural data, responses and reaction times indicate that pronouns are referentially ambiguous. Adults' eye movements show a competition between the looks to sentence-internal and -external referents for pronouns, but not for reflexives. Children overwhelmingly prefer the sentence-internal referent in the off-line picture selection task. However, their eye movements reveal implicit awareness of referential ambiguity that develops earlier than their explicit knowledge in the picture selection task. This discrepancy between performance on a looking measure and a pointing measure in the children's processing system is explained by a general dissociation between implicit and explicit knowledge proposed in recent literature on cognitive development.

On the syntactic and semantic status of anticipatory it

So-called anticipatory it has been variously classified as a semantically empty prop it, as a referential pronoun, and as a category with an inherently cataphoric function. This article, which is based on a corpus study of actually occurring instances of anticipatory it, examines some of the arguments put forward for each of these classifications and – following Bolinger (1977) – argues for an analysis as ‘definite nominal’ with some referential force which can establish a referential link with a clausal constituent in the immediate context. As such, anticipatory it takes an intermediate position between prop it and referring it, all of which are linked by a scale of gradience specifying their scope of reference (wide vs. narrow). This view of anticipatory it, which allows for both anaphoric and cataphoric reference, can account for all informational types of it-extraposition as well as it-extraposition with complement omission, and provides a possible explanation for cases of it-omission.

Who's who in Acts 16–17? Problems of Pronoun Reference

Who's who in Acts 16–17? Problems of Pronoun Reference

Perspective in the discourse of war

The following article applies both quantitative and qualitative methods of research to markers of perspective in a TV interview of Colin Powell on the CNN LARRY KING LIVE program from November 26, 2001. Perspective is well established in phenomenology and social psychology; its starting point is the conviction that every utterance expresses a point of view. From previous research, we accept the dialogical nature of perspective (see O’Connell & Kowal 1998) and further argue that perspective can be observed through measures of orality and literacy and through referencing (name and pronoun reference). The following measures of orality and literacy are examined: Back channeling hesitations, interruptions, contractions and elisions, first person singular pronominals, interjections and tag questions, and turn transitions from interviewer to interviewee and vice versa. We argue further that Colin Powell’s perspective stresses the division between “we” and “they” with regard to the then imminent involvement in Iraq. Theoretical implications are discussed.

The interpretation of pronouns by Japanese Learners of English

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether adult L2 learners of English have the same kinds of problem interpreting pronouns as L1 learning children do. Based on Reinhart and Reuland’s (1993) ‘Reflexivity’ and Grodzinsky and Reinhart’s (1993) ‘Rule I’, specific error patterns were predicted for 58 Japanese high school students, as compared to 14 English native controls, and 40 Japanese native controls. The experimental sentences included simple as well as complex sentences with both quantified and referential antecedents. Results indicate that L2 learners do have similar problems to L1 learning children. Specifically, they can use syntactic and lexical knowledge of English pronouns in interpreting pronoun reference but they have difficulty using the pragmatic principle Rule I.

Resolution of the Antecedent of a Plural Pronoun: Ontological Categories and Predicate Symmetry

Two questionnaire studies and two reading time experiments explored how readers determine the reference of the plural pronoun they. The questionnaire studies showed that readers were more willing to take an ontologically homogeneous (all humans) collection of entities as the antecedent of they than an ontologically heterogeneous collection and that they were more willing to take the entities that fill the thematic roles of a “symmetric” verb like sing with as the antecedent of they than the entities that fill the role of a “nonsymmetric” verb like hit. The questionnaire studies also showed a preference for taking the maximally inclusive group as the referent of they. The reading time experiments showed that these effects occur online so that reading is slowed when a temporary ambiguity is resolved in a way that conflicts with the preferences as described. A theoretical framework was described in which two stages of processing, described by an “equivalence” and a “closure” principle, respectively, take place.

Bound Variables and C-Command

It has long been assumed in linguistics that bound variable interpretations of pronouns are possible (only) when a quantified expression c-commands the pronoun. In two studies in which readers’ eye movements were recorded, we examined the processing of pronouns bound by universal quantifiers. Experiment 1 compared examples where the quantifier c-commands the pronoun (‘Every British soldier thought he killed an enemy soldier’) with examples where it doesn’t (‘Every British soldier aimed and then he killed an enemy soldier’). Although there were no first pass differences, re-reading time showed that both quantifier examples took longer to read than nonquantified controls (‘The old British soldier. . . ’), but there was no special penalty in examples when the quantifier failed to c-command the pronoun. Experiment 2 investigated intersentential binding (telescoping): ‘John Frederick/Each executive/Every executive went home. He broiled a steak. He ate dinner. Then he watched television.’ Second pass and total reading times in the region containing the first pronoun were longer for quantified examples than name examples. But there was no indication that telescoping is tightly restricted, for example, to contexts with ‘each’ or to discourses describing stereotypical events composed of predictable subevents. The results suggest that bound variable interpretations are more generally and more readily available than is often assumed. They fit well with Bosch’s (1983) attempt to limit pronoun occurrences to just two types: anaphoric referential pronouns and syntactic agreement pronouns. On this view, ‘bound variable’ interpretations without c-command are really anaphoric pronouns with inferred antecedents. This view is discussed along with the challenges it faces.

Reasoning for reading: an error analysis of oral reasoning skills of rural Zulu-speaking children

Oral reasoning is a well-documented precursor to text-based reasoning, and is a skill fundamental to successful text analysis, and hence academic progress (Hanson & Pearson 1983; Shiro 1994). This study aimed to analyse errors in the oral reasoning of rural Zulu-speaking children, using an adapted version of McCormick's (1992) model of error analysis for text-based reasoning. A culture-fair test, The Test of Ability to Explain for Zuluspeaking Children (TATE-ZC) (Solarsh 2001) was developed and administered to 292 rural Zulu-speaking primary school children, 7–12 years in KwaZulu-Natal. This test analyses oral/verbal thinking skills in terms of five categories, namely, ability to explain inferences, ability to determine cause, ability to answer a negative why question, ability to determine a solution and ability to give an answer to avoid a problem. Results were analysed in terms of statistically significant stages of development in thinking skills, as well as in terms of the types of errors made by the children. Statistical results of the TATE-ZC indicated that rural Zulu-speaking children did not progress annually in the development of abstract thinking skills during the primary school phase. In addition, errors most frequently made related to processing the question, responding to only a portion of the question, failure to use background information to infer and difficulty with pronoun referents. These patterns were noted to be similar to children identified as ‘poor readers’. It was concluded that verbal reasoning is a precursor to text-based reasoning which is fundamental to academic progress.

Exhaustivity in dynamic semantics; referential and descriptive pronouns

In this paper I argue that anaphoric pronouns should always be interpreted exhaustively. I propose that pronouns are either used referentially and refer to the speaker's referents of their antecedent indefinites, or descriptively and go proxy for the description recoverable from its antecedent clause. I show how this view can be implemented within a dynamic semantics, and how it can account for various examples that seemed to be problematic for the view that for all unbound pronouns there always should be a notion of exhaustivity/uniqueness involved. The uniqueness assumption for the use of singular pronouns is also shown to be importantto explain what the discourse referents used in dynamic semantics represent.

Keeping in Step: Task Structure, Discourse Structure, and Utterance Interpretation in the Step Aerobics Workout

In this study, I examine the monologues given by instructors in step aerobics classes, focusing on the way language both arises out of ongoing action and is constitutive of it. Following Levinson (1992), I show how the structure of the activity constrains the interpretations that are made of the utterances that arise throughout the workout. Aerobics participants need specific pragmatic knowledge, a key part of which is the ability to detect and interpret 5 distinct functions of utterance, defined according to their timing and placement in the hierarchical structure of tasks that the class is performing. I demonstrate that it is beat placement, rather than grammatical form or sequential organization, that is the most important cue for this interpretative task. Having presented the utterance functions and the cues to their interpretation in detail, this article goes on to outline how participants achieve the correct assignment of pronoun reference and ellipsis in the instructor's monologue. This is explained by means of an approach to discourse modeling first suggested by Grosz and Sidner (1986), showing how instructors set up ephemeral actions as complex conceptually salient discourse entities, making them accessible for subsequent reference.

We in Hong Kong: Claiming to Speak for the Community

In the run-up to the handover in Hong Kong in 1997 there was much debate about its future identity. Many “experts” and politicians put forward views that purported to be representative of Hong Kong people. One linguistic feature in this debate was the use of the pronoun we when referring to the entire community. This paper reports a survey which examined the use of this “generic” we and other first person plural pronouns in political comment in the South China Morning Post both before and after the handover. Generally, it was found that generic we was a common feature of such writing and appeared to be the default interpretation. There was no evidence that the amount of “claiming to speak for the community” had decreased after the handover. The shifting of the reference of first person plural pronouns within articles was rare. One unexpected finding was the frequency with which generic we appeared to be anaphoric in nature, referring back to an explicit introductory noun phrase.

Comprehension of Contrastive Stress by Broca's Aphasics

Comprehension of stress as a determiner of reference for pronouns was compared in eight patients with Broca's aphasia (BA) and five age-matched control subjects. The subjects were asked to listen to sentences in which the stressed or unstressed condition of the pronoun was a critical criterion for the establishment of reference. For each sentence, subjects were shown three pictures and asked to point to the correct referent of the pronoun. While the controls were nearly perfect in both the stressed and unstressed conditions, BA patients were significantly worse than normals, showing chance performance in both cases. However, a significant disparity was found in the BA patients' selection of the object NP as the referent under stressed and unstressed conditions, indicating that BA subjects are, indeed, sensitive to the stress patterns of pronouns. It was thus hypothesized that the BA patients' chance performance was the result of an inability to implement their knowledge of stress during the processing of sentences involving discourse-related linguistic operations, such as the establishment of pronoun reference (Grodzinsky, Wexler, Chien, Marakovitz, & Solomon, 1993). To test this hypothesis, a second experiment was conducted in which discourse-related operations were eliminated. In this second experiment, comprehension of stress by the same two groups was compared in tasks involving purely morphosyntactic processes. The contrastive stress patterns of otherwise homophonous compound nouns and adjectival phrases (e.g., BLACKboard, black BOARD), rather than those of pronouns, were examined. In this grammatically “simpler” experiment (i.e., without discourse-related operations), BA subjects scored significantly above chance in their comprehension of sentences involving compound nouns; unexpectedly, however, these same subjects did not show significantly above-chance performance in their comprehension of sentences containing adjectival phrases. Nevertheless, the results obtained in these two experiments seem to support the view that aphasic patients may have a lack of processing capacity, resulting in more errors during the processing of discourse-related linguistic constructions.