School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Institute of Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Jul;237:103955. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103955. Epub 2023 Jun 14.
referential relationships can be communicated through presupposition. The presupposition trigger (also) in Jiayan also bought eggs exerts a pragmatic constraint that besides the object, the verb constrains additional and alternative referents. Our study provided a novel set of evidence that the reader preferred larger- over smaller-sized sets for the scope of presupposition in discourse comprehension. The structural hierarchy in smaller-sized sets and the earlier-mentioned structural details in larger-sized sets drove higher preference. Furthermore, readers' difference in their preference reflected their tendency to attend to discourse structural information. These findings are consistent with the multiple constraints hypothesis/the presupposition maximization principle hypothesis, rather than the local bias hypothesis. The present study enlightened the understanding of structural constraints on processing the number and the identity of presupposed referential information in discourse reading comprehension.
指称关系可以通过预设来传达。假设触发语（也）在“家严”中也买了鸡蛋，这对动词施加了一个语用限制，即除了对象之外，动词还限制了其他的替代指称。我们的研究提供了一组新的证据，表明读者在语篇理解中更喜欢大集合而非小集合来作为预设的范围。小集合中的结构层次和大集合中前面提到的结构细节推动了更高的偏好。此外，读者在偏好上的差异反映了他们关注语篇结构信息的倾向。这些发现与多约束假设/预设最大化原则假设一致，而与局部偏向假设不一致。本研究启示了对语篇阅读理解中预设指代信息数量和身份的结构约束的理解。
