Psychology of Language and Bilingualism Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
PLoS One. 2022 Jan 11;17(1):e0262459. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262459. eCollection 2022.
The mechanism of anaphora resolution is subject to large cross-linguistic differences. The most likely reason for this is the different sensitivity of pronouns to the range of factors that determine their reference. In the current study, we explored the mechanism of anaphora resolution in Polish. First, we explored preferences in the interpretation of null and overt pronouns in ambiguous sentences. More specifically, we investigated whether Polish speakers prefer to relate overt pronouns to subject or object antecedents. Subsequently, we tested the consequences of violating this bias when tracing the online sentence-interpretation process using eye-tracking. Our results show that Polish speakers have a strong preference for interpreting null pronouns as referring to subject antecedents and interpreting overt pronouns as referring to object antecedents. However, in online sentence interpretation, only overt pronouns showed sensitivity to a violation of the speaker's preference for a pronoun-antecedent match. This suggests that null pronoun resolution is more flexible than overt pronoun resolution. Our results indicate that it is much easier for Polish speakers to shift the reference of a null pronoun than an overt one whenever a pronoun is forced to refer to a less-preferred antecedent. These results are supported by naturalness ratings, which showed that null pronouns are considered equally natural regardless of their reference, while overt pronouns referring to subject antecedents are rated as considerably less natural than those referring to object antecedents. To explain this effect, we propose that the interpretation of null and overt pronouns is sensitive to different factors which determine their reference.
回指解析的机制受到很大的跨语言差异的影响。最有可能的原因是代词对决定其指称的各种因素的敏感性不同。在本研究中，我们探讨了波兰语中回指解析的机制。首先，我们探讨了在歧义句中解释零代词和显性代词的偏好。更具体地说，我们研究了波兰语使用者是否更喜欢将显性代词与主语或宾语先行词联系起来。随后，我们使用眼动追踪技术测试了在追踪在线句子解释过程时违反这种偏差的后果。我们的结果表明，波兰语使用者强烈倾向于将零代词解释为指代主语先行词，将显性代词解释为指代宾语先行词。然而，在在线句子解释中，只有显性代词对违反说话者对代词先行词匹配的偏好表现出敏感性。这表明零代词的解析比显性代词的解析更灵活。我们的结果表明，对于波兰语使用者来说，每当一个代词被迫指代一个不太受青睐的先行词时，将零代词的指称进行转换比将显性代词的指称进行转换要容易得多。自然度评分也支持了这一结果，评分表明，无论零代词的指称如何，它们都被认为同样自然，而指代主语先行词的显性代词的自然度明显低于指代宾语先行词的显性代词。为了解释这种效果，我们提出零代词和显性代词的解释都对决定其指称的不同因素敏感。
