TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of syntactic constraints on the processing of backwards anaphora
AU - Kazanina, Nina
AU - Lau, Ellen F.
AU - Lieberman, Moti
AU - Yoshida, Masaya
AU - Phillips, Colin
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Roger van Gompel and to an anonymous reviewer for valuable feedback on an earlier draft. This research was supported by grants to CP from the National Science Foundation (#BCS-0196004) and the Human Frontiers Science Program (#RGY-0134). EFL was supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship.
PY - 2007/4
Y1 - 2007/4
N2 - This article presents three studies that investigate when syntactic constraints become available during the processing of long-distance backwards pronominal dependencies (backwards anaphora or cataphora). Earlier work demonstrated that in such structures the parser initiates an active search for an antecedent for a pronoun, leading to gender mismatch effects in cases where a noun phrase in a potential antecedent position mismatches the gender of the pronoun [Van Gompel, R. P. G. & Liversedge, S. P. (2003). The influence of morphological information on cataphoric pronoun assignment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 128-139]. Results from three self-paced reading studies suggest that structural constraints on coreference, in particular Principle C of the Binding Theory [Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht, Foris], exert an influence at an early stage of this search process, such that gender mismatch effects are elicited at grammatically licit antecedent positions, but not at grammatically illicit antecedent positions. The results also show that the distribution of gender mismatch effects is unlikely to be due to differences in the predictability of different potential antecedents. These findings suggest that backwards anaphora dependencies are processed with a grammatically constrained active search mechanism, similar to the mechanism used to process another type of long-distance dependency, the wh dependency (e.g., [Stowe, L. (1986). Evidence for online gap creation. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 227-245; Traxler, M. J., & Pickering, M. J. (1996). Plausibility and the processing of unbounded dependencies: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 454-475.]). We suggest that the temporal priority for syntactic information observed here reflects the predictability of structural information, rather than the need for an architectural constraint that delays the use of non-syntactic information.
AB - This article presents three studies that investigate when syntactic constraints become available during the processing of long-distance backwards pronominal dependencies (backwards anaphora or cataphora). Earlier work demonstrated that in such structures the parser initiates an active search for an antecedent for a pronoun, leading to gender mismatch effects in cases where a noun phrase in a potential antecedent position mismatches the gender of the pronoun [Van Gompel, R. P. G. & Liversedge, S. P. (2003). The influence of morphological information on cataphoric pronoun assignment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 128-139]. Results from three self-paced reading studies suggest that structural constraints on coreference, in particular Principle C of the Binding Theory [Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht, Foris], exert an influence at an early stage of this search process, such that gender mismatch effects are elicited at grammatically licit antecedent positions, but not at grammatically illicit antecedent positions. The results also show that the distribution of gender mismatch effects is unlikely to be due to differences in the predictability of different potential antecedents. These findings suggest that backwards anaphora dependencies are processed with a grammatically constrained active search mechanism, similar to the mechanism used to process another type of long-distance dependency, the wh dependency (e.g., [Stowe, L. (1986). Evidence for online gap creation. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 227-245; Traxler, M. J., & Pickering, M. J. (1996). Plausibility and the processing of unbounded dependencies: an eye-tracking study. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 454-475.]). We suggest that the temporal priority for syntactic information observed here reflects the predictability of structural information, rather than the need for an architectural constraint that delays the use of non-syntactic information.
KW - Binding
KW - Cataphora
KW - Coreference
KW - Grammatical constraints
KW - Parsing
KW - Pronouns
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jml.2006.09.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jml.2006.09.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:33847104623
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 56
SP - 384
EP - 409
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 3
ER -