Offline interpretation of subject pronouns by native speakers of Spanish

Research on anaphora resolution reveals that speakers’ interpretation of pronominal subjects is often inconsistent, with results differing in terms of the antecedent preferences of these speakers and the factors that affect these preferences. The present study investigates anaphora resolution by nat...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Chamorro Galán, María Gloria
Format: article
Publication Date:2018
Country:España
Institution:Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Repository:e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:e-spacio.uned.es:20.500.14468/23062
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/23062
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:57 Lingüística
Anaphora resolution
subject pronouns
antecedent preferences
Spanish
offline interpretation
Description
Summary:Research on anaphora resolution reveals that speakers’ interpretation of pronominal subjects is often inconsistent, with results differing in terms of the antecedent preferences of these speakers and the factors that affect these preferences. The present study investigates anaphora resolution by native speakers of Spanish using an offline judgment task where participants are presented with globally ambiguous anaphora to test the predictions of Carminati’s (2002) Position of Antecedent Strategy (PAS) with Spanish intra-sentential Main-Subordinate anaphora. The results show that native speakers of Iberian Spanish have a clear preference for the object as the antecedent for the overt pronoun with this structure, while a preference for the subject as the antecedent for the null pronoun was not revealed. These findings appear to be at odds with the PAS and suggest that anaphora resolution is affected by clause order.