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Abstract:
A number of studies have observed that pronouns
uttered with intonational prominence are interpreted as shifting
attention from the most salient entity in the discourse context
to some other less salient entity [e.g., 1,2,3]. For
example, in the spoken utterance "John hit Bill, then HE hit
George", listeners agree that the accented "HE" refers to the
less salient "Bill". While this judgment has been discussed
numerous times in the literature, the majority of previous
studies have relied on introspective or off-line judgments, and
have focused on interpretation in strictly parallel clausal
sequences [e.g., 1,2]. In the present study, we document
the on-line interpretation of accented pronouns using
eye-tracking, and investigate contexts differing in the type of
discourse relations which hold among adjacent utterances.
Subjects were presented with a visual scene
depicting all male (animal) characters involved in some joint
action. Subjects viewed the scene while listening to a
short discourse about the scene, and were asked to 'follow
along'. Two types of discourses were examined: one in which
a 'resemblance' discourse relation holds between sequential
utterances (e.g., (1), see full details in [4]), versus one in
which an 'occasion' relation holds (e.g., (2)). (Only the
pre-target and target utterances are shown here. See [5]
for full details.) In both contexts, the lion (N1) is more
salient than the alligator (N2) in the pre-target utterance,
predicting that accented "HE" will be taken to refer to N2 in
both cases.
(1) The lion hit the alligator with a long wooden
rake. Then HE hit the duck. (relation =
resemblance)
(2) The lion put a bucket of soapy water next to
the alligator near the front of the car. Then HE got out
some sponges. (relation = occasion)
Results show that both N1 and N2 are fixated upon
hearing the accented pronoun. While the two referents
compete initially, preference for one referent over the other is
observed as the verb and subsequent information is
encountered. In sequences in which the 'resemblance'
relation can be identified at the verb (due to the verb being
identical across utterances), a preference for N2 is observed,
and fixations on N1 drop off. In contrast, in sequences in
which the resemblance relation is not identified at the verb and
thus the (default) 'occasion' relation is inferred, we observe an
emerging preference for N1 instead (though there is still some
competition from N2 throughout the utterance).
We propose an account of on-line accented pronoun
interpretation in which the contrast set containing both
referents is initially evoked immediately upon hearing the narrow
focus pitch accent on the pronoun, and then preference is revised
based on subsequent propositional information supplied by the
predicate. Interpretation is driven by the identification
of the discourse relations among the adjacent utterances.
References
[1] Akmajian, A., & R. Jackendoff
(1970). Coreferentiality and stress. Linguistic
Inquiry, 1: 124-126.
[2] Smyth, R. (1994). Grammatical
determinants of ambiguous pronoun resolution. Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research. 23: 197-229.
[3] Kameyama, M. (1999). Stressed and
unstressed pronouns: Complementary preferences. In P. Bosch
& R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, Cognitive, and
Computational Perspectives, pp. 306-321. Cambridge
University Press.
[4] Kehler, A. (2001). Coherence, Reference,
and the Theory of Grammar. CSLI Publications.
[5] Venditti, J. J., M. Stone, P. Nanda, & P.
Tepper (2001). Toward an account of accented pronoun
interpretation in discourse context: Evidence from
eye-tracking. Technical Report, Rutgers Center for
Cognitive Science.
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