Mayol Laia, Clark Robin
619 Williams Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
J Pragmat. 2010 Mar 1;42(3):781-799. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2009.07.004.
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 different 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.
本文研究加泰罗尼亚语（一种空主语语言）中空主语代词和显性主语代词之间的差异。我们用博弈论术语来解释这种差异：也就是说，我们将显性代词和空代词的分布分析为交际交流中参与者之间策略互动的结果。首先，我们考察卡尔米纳蒂（2002年）提出的先行词位置假说（PAH）。该假说提出，空代词和显性代词有不同的偏好：空代词更倾向于主语位置的先行词，而显性代词更倾向于非主语位置的先行词。卡尔米纳蒂（2002年）在各种句内语境中对意大利语的PAH进行了测试。在本文中，我们通过实验表明，即使在跨句语境中，PAH对加泰罗尼亚语也同样适用。其次，我们还展示了如何将PAH自然地重新定义为一种不完全信息博弈，在这种博弈中，说话者和听话者试图进行交流。这种重新定义不仅将PAH翻译成了不同的符号表示，而且还将PAH扩展为一个能做出更准确预测的模型，因为它还能解释PAH所预测的偏好未被遵循的情况。
