Naslov
Crosslinguistic variations in pronoun ambiguity resolution

Autori
Košutar, Sara ; Hržica, Gordana

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, ostalo

Skup
Pre- and Protomorphology Workshop 2021

Mjesto i datum
Beč, Austrija, 11.02.2021. - 12.02.2021

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Radionica

Vrsta recenzije
Podatak o recenziji nije dostupan

Ključne riječi
anaphora resolution, pronoun ambiguity, pro-drop feature, Croatian, eye-tracker method

Sažetak
Anaphora resolution is the process of determining which previously mentioned element in the sentence or text, called the antecedent, the anaphoric element refers to. In psycholinguistics, the most studied anaphoric element is the personal pronoun in the third person singular. Compared to other anaphoric elements, such as proper nouns, the personal pronoun can be ambiguous in the absence of morphosyntactic cues. Much of the research has focused on investigating what factors guide the reader in choosing an antecedent of the ambiguous personal pronoun at the sentential level. It has been found that world-knowledge factors, as well as the biases that the pronoun itself induces, play a crucial role. This is particularly interesting from a cross-linguistic perspective since languages differ in terms of their pronominal inventory. In pro-drop languages, the personal pronoun can be omitted in the subject position, and two forms are available, null and overt. It is generally assumed that the pro-drop feature influence pronoun ambiguity resolution similarly across languages. The null pronoun prefers the subject antecedent, while the overt pronoun prefers the object antecedent. However, recent studies have questioned the generalizability of this division of labour and have shown that differences in preferences exist even between typologically closer pro-drop languages. The conflicting results can be interpreted in light of the characteristics of the languages themselves, but also the research method that was used in previous studies. Not many studies investigated how readers resolve pronoun ambiguity in real-time using more sophisticated online methods such as the eye-tracker. The pro-drop feature is also important when studying pronoun ambiguity resolution in Croatian, a pro-drop language that is rather understudied in this regard. The use of the eye-tracker should shed more light on the complexity of the phenomenon in Croatian.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Logopedija, Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA