Pronouns in Catalan: games of partial information and the use of linguistic resources
This paper investigates the variation between null and overt subject pronouns in Catalan, a null subject language. We account for this variation in game-theoretical terms: that is, we analyze the distribution of both overt and null pronouns as a result of the strategic interaction between participan...
| Autores: | , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2010 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:10230/34188 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10230/34188 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.07.004 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Anaphora Game theory Null-subject languages Catalan |
| Sumario: | This paper investigates the variation between null and overt subject pronouns in Catalan, a null subject language. We account for this variation in game-theoretical terms: that is, we analyze the distribution of both overt and null pronouns as a result of the strategic interaction between participants in a communicative exchange. First, we examine the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis (PAH), as put forward by Carminati (2002). This hypothesis proposes that null and overt pronouns have difeerent biases: null pronouns prefer antecedents in subject positions, while overt pronouns prefer antecedents in non-subject positions. Carminati (2002) tested the PAH for Italian in a variety of intrasentential contexts. In this paper, we show experimentally that the PAH also holds for Catalan even in across-sentence contexts. In the second place, we also show how the PAH can be naturally redefined as a game of partial information, in which speaker and hearer are trying to communicate. This redefinition does not just translate the PAH into a different notation, but it extends the PAH into a model that makes more accurate predictions, since it can account also for the cases in which the biases predicted by the PAH are not obeyed. |
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