Abstract
Previous research has shown that during cataphoric pronoun resolution, the predictive search for an antecedent is restricted by a structure-sensitive constraint known as ‘Condition C’, such that an antecedent is only considered when the constraint does not apply. Evidence has mainly come from self-paced reading (SPR), a method which may not be able to pick up on short-lived effects over the timecourse of processing. This study investigates whether or not the active search mechanism is constrained by Condition C at all points in time during cataphoric processing. We carried out one eye-tracking during reading and a parallel SPR experiment, accompanied by offline coreference judgment tasks. Although offline judgments about coreference were constrained by Condition C, the eye-tracking experiment revealed temporary consideration of antecedents that should be ruled out by Condition C. The SPR experiment using exactly the same materials indicated, conversely, that only structurally appropriate antecedents were considered. Taken together, our results suggest that the application of Condition C may be delayed during naturalistic reading.
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Notes
The term ‘c-command’ refers to a particular structural relationship between elements in a sentence, where one element is structurally higher than another (Reinhart 1983). The pronoun she in (4a) c-commands Karen, but the pronoun her in (4b) only c-commands son, not Karen.
See Kazanina et al. (2007) for a discussion of the shortcomings of these studies.
This was to avoid presenting participants with sentences containing unresolved pronouns, which may discourage full pronoun processing over the course of the experiment.
This resulted in log transformation for all models except for the regression-path time in the critical region, where an inverse transformation was used.
Further evidence for this is reported by Drummer and Felser (2018), who carried out an eye-tracking experiment using similar materials to those used in the current study.
Note that this produces negative estimates for the main effects in the model even though the No Constraint conditions and the Gender Mismatch conditions produced longer reading times.
Note, however, that SPR has also been criticised for the opposite problem, that it encourages participants to press the button as fast as possible to get the next word; this has even been considered a possible reason for effects so often being found one or two words downstream of the critical manipulation in SPR (see Witzel et al. 2012 for a discussion).
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the following people for their help with this project: Daniela Mertzen for help with materials creation; Daniela Mertzen, Janna Drummer, Thea Villinger and Carrie Toptan for experiment preparation and data collection; Janna Drummer for fruitful discussions and useful insights.
Funding
This research was supported by an Alexander-von-Humboldt professorship awarded to Harald Clahsen (Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism) and by the German Science Foundation (DFG) through Grant No. FE 1138/1-1 awarded to Claudia Felser.
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Patterson, C., Felser, C. Delayed Application of Binding Condition C During Cataphoric Pronoun Resolution. J Psycholinguist Res 48, 453–475 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9613-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9613-4