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Abstract:
Anaphor resolution is affected by discourse and
semantics, but is also constrained by syntax, via binding
theory. Thus, it offers a useful way of looking at
interfaces between these levels.
Here we report two eyetracking experiments which
examined the time course of the application of binding
constraints during reading. The experiments aimed to
determine whether binding constraints constrain the earliest
stages of reference processing. The first experiment
examined discourses such as the following:
1. Jonathan/Jennifer was pretty worried at the
City Hospital. He/She remembered that the surgeon had
pricked himself/herself with a used syringe needle. There
should be an investigation soon.
In terms of binding theory, the reflexive anaphor
in the second sentence can only refer to "the surgeon", and not
to "Jonathan/Jennifer". Therefore, it is expected that
"herself" will be relatively hard to process, because of the
mismatch with the stereotypical gender of "surgeon"
(stereotypical gender was used to avoid presenting ungrammatical
sentences). The relative time-course of binding
constraints can be determined by examining the point in
processing at which this mismatch effect is found, in relation to
any effect of the gender of the previously mentioned character
(Jonathon/Jennifer), which is outside the binding domain of the
anaphor, but which is highly focused in the discourse. The
results show a reliable effect of the stereotypical gender of the
local noun phrase (surgeon) on the first fixation time on the
anaphor, suggesting that the configurational constraints of
binding theory are operative from the very earliest stages of
word identification. There was no trace of an influence of
the binding-inaccessible noun phrase (Jonathan/Jennifer) in the
first fixation data, but this did have an effect in the
second-pass measure. This suggests that binding theory is
operative from a very early stage, but that it does not
necessarily rule out from consideration non-binding compatible
antecedents at later stages of processing (cf. Badecker &
Straub, 2001).
In order to rule out the possibility that the
first fixation effect was due to lexical priming of the anaphor
by the recently processed "surgeon", a second experiment was
designed in which the linear positions of the first and second
mentioned characters were reversed in the second sentence, but
where their accessibility with regard to binding theory was kept
constant:
2. Jonathan/Jennifer was pretty worried at the
City Hospital. The surgeon who treated Jonathan/Jennifer
had pricked himself/herself with a used syringe needle.
There should be an investigation soon.
This experiment replicated the first fixation
effect of the stereotypical gender of "surgeon" on the anaphor,
with no reliable influence of the inaccessible antecedent in this
measure or second-pass reading times. Note that the
inaccessible character was less prominent in Experiment 2 than
Experiment 1 (e.g., it is not a subject and does not c-command
the anaphor).
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