Showing papers on "Antecedent (grammar) published in 1990"

Children's Knowledge of Locality Conditions in Binding as Evidence for the Modularity of Syntax and Pragmatics

Abstract: We report three experiments concerning English-speaking children's knowledge of locality conditions in the binding of reflexives and pronouns (Principles A and B). The children tested were between the ages of 2;6 and 6;6. By age 6, children know that a reflexive must be locally bound. At the same age, however, they appear to not know that a pronoun may not be locally bound. We suggest that children are missing a pragmatic principle, not the syntactic Principle B. This hypothesis predicts that children will not accept a local antecedent for a pronoun that is a bound variable. Experiment 4 confirms this prediction. We conclude that children know the grammatical principles of binding but do not know a relevant pragmatic principle. We suggest that such dissociation in children might be a useful tool in the study of linguistic theory.

The difference between English restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses

Abstract: A nonrestrictive relative clause (henceforth NRR) is shown in (I) and a restrictive relative clause (henceforth RR) in (2). (1) The swans, which are white, are in that part of the lake. (2) The swans which are white are in that part of the lake. Example (1) implies that all the swans under discussion are white. Example (2) implies that the white swans are being distinguished from some other not white swans which are also under discussion. There are many superficial differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses; in this paper I show that there is no need for construction-specific stipulations which distinguish between them. The differences arise from the fact that the RR is a modifier, while the NRR is not, and in fact has no syntactic relation to its host/antecedent. Co-indexing (involving a referential index) between the relative clause and its antecedent is central to this account. I examine the requirement that a relative pronoun must have an antecedent, which in the case of a NRR is the sole manifestation of the relationship between the relative clause and its host), and suggest that this holds at a level of discourse structure.

A study of the L2 acquisition of English reflexives

Abstract: This paper reports on an experimental study which was conducted to examine how native speakers of Japanese acquire syntactic properties of English reflexive pronouns. In particular, the effects of two parameters of Universal Grammar, the Governing Category Parameter and the Proper Antecedent Parameter (Wexler and Manzini, 1987), were studied. The Governing Category Parameter has five values, of which Manzini and Wexler suggest that English represents the most unmarked value while Japanese and Korean represent the most marked one. In a learning situation where the L 1 is marked and the L2 is unmarked, we may ask whether learners observe the Subset Principle and successfully acquire the correct L2 value or whether they wrongly transfer their L1 value to the L2 grammar, or assume a value in between, as found by Finer and Broselow (1986). An experimental study was conducted to examine how Japanese learners of English set values of the above parameters. Results suggest that the L2 learners transferred their L1...

Comprehending figurative referential descriptions.

Abstract: A common way of referring to people is with figurative language. People can be referred to metaphorically, as in calling a terrible boxer "a creampuff," or metonymically, as in calling a naval admiral "the brass." The present studies investigated the anaphoric inferences that occur during comprehension of figurative referential descriptions. Subjects read short narratives, each ending in either a literal or figurative description of another person. Immediately after the last line of each text, the anaphoric antecedent for the description of another person. Immediately after the last line of each text, the anaphoric antecedent for the description was presented in a probe recognition task. The results of three experiments indicated that metaphoric and metonymic referential descriptions reinstate their antecedents in the course of comprehension. Subjects were faster at reinstating the antecedents for literal referential descriptions than at reinstating metaphoric and metonymic descriptions. Moreover, people understand metaphoric referential descriptions more easily than they do metonymic ones. The implications of these findings for theories of anaphora resolution and figurative language comprehension are discussed.

Levels of representation in the interpretation of anaphoric reference and instrument inference

Abstract: The level of representation accessed when inferences are made during sentence comprehension was examined. The inferences investigated included antecedent assignment for both definite noun phrase anaphors and pronouns and also instrument inferences. In making these inferences, a listener must access the inferred element, whether an antecedent or an instrument, in either a linguistic form representation or a discourse model. The level of representation involved in these inferences was determined by exploiting differences in the lexical decision and naming tasks, which were argued to exhibit differential sensitivity to representational levels. In three experiments, the priming of antecedent and instrument targets in the lexical decision task was compared with priming of the same targets in the naming task. Differences in the patterns of activation across the two tasks indicated that all three types of inferences required accessing elements in a discourse model. Three control experiments ruled out simple context or congruity checking as an explanation for our results. The following conclusions were also supported by these studies: (1) Antecedent assignment occurs immediately after processing an anaphor; (2) antecedent assignment involves inhibition for the inappropriate antecedent rather than facilitation for the appropriate antecedent; (3) although subjects do not make instrument inferences when they hear isolated sentences containing verbs that strongly imply certain instruments, the inferences are made when sentences are preceded by a context that mentions the instrument.

Antecedent retrieval processes.

Abstract: In three experiments we examined the nature of the search for antecedents during reading. Subjects read passages that contained two possible antecedents: one appearing early in the passages and the other appearing late. The degree of elaboration was varied, with one antecedent receiving additional elaboration for half the passages and the other antecedent receiving additional elaboration for the remaining half. Reading time differences from the first two experiments demonstrated that late antecedents are reinstated more quickly than early antecedents and elaborated antecedents are reinstated more quickly than nonelaborated antecedents. Experiment 1 showed that concepts that fall in the path of an antecedent search can be activated by the search. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this activation is restricted to concepts that are from the same general category as the target antecedent.

Comprehension of Deep and Surface Verbphrase Anaphors

Abstract: Linguistic research on anaphora (Hankamer & Sag, 1976; Sag & Hankamer, 1984) suggests that anaphors can be divided into two classes: Surface anaphors that find their antecedents in some level of linguistic representation, and deep anaphors that find their antecedents in a discourse model or a corresponding mental representation. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that the syntactic form of the antecedent for a subsequent anaphor would affect the difficulty with which surface anaphors but not deep anaphors would be comprehended. In a “makes-sense” judgement task, surface anaphors were judged to make sense more often when the antecedent was introduced in a phrase that was syntactically parallel to the anaphor than when it was syntactically non-parallel. In contrast, the syntactic form of the antecedent did not affect judgements to the deep anaphors. Parallelism did, however, influence comprehension times for both types of anaphors. The results provide qualified support for the hypothesi...

Interpretation of verb phrase anaphora: Influences of task and syntactic context

Abstract: When listeners hear a sentence like "Will Carey do it?" they must find an interpretation of the phrase "do it", which is an anaphor replacing a full verb phrase (VP). To accomplish this task, listeners may use two sources of information: finding a recent VP that is syntactically appropriate, or using pragmatics to find a recent discourse event that plausibly completes the sentence. One theory of anaphor comprehension says that listeners use both sources of information in a competition for the best antecedent. Another theory says that listeners use only one of those sources, depending on the syntactic class of anaphor. Two experiments are reported, one using a reading time technique and one a sensicality judgement task. The experiments varied the distance of the antecedent from the anaphor, the material that intervened between the antecedent and anaphor, and the syntactic class of the anaphor. In the reading task, the results followed the predictions of the two-source competition theory, as a number of effects were observed, but none of them depended on the anaphor's syntactic class. In the judgement task, however, the type of anaphor did influence judgement time. The overall results suggest that there are important differences between simple comprehension tasks and metalinguistic judgements, and that past empirical conflicts may be explicable on this basis.

Sobre la supuesta despronominalización del relativo

Abstract: It has been argued that the adjectival clauses that contain an anaphoric pronoun referred to the antecedent of the relative are anomalous, since this relative loses its pronominal nature in order to become a mere conjunctive nexus. it is thus assumed that, in an expression such as "hay gente que le gusta vivir", que no longer substitutes for a noun which represents the content of gente, for this role is now played by the anaphoric le. The author of this essay sets out to demostrate (a) that the so-called relative pronouns are anaphoric determiners devoid of nominal content; (b) that they never substitute for an antecedent, whether nominal or not; (c) that the article or the prepositions that can go before it do not take this position depending on an imaginary nominal condition, which these relatives lack, but depending on the syntactic relation that their antecedent may establish with the verb in the subordinate clause; (d) that the concept of "anomaly" arises from a mistaken grammatical analysis of the relative clause, as it is evidenced by the fact that these constructions are attested in all the stages of the Spanish language and in all speech registers; (e) that, nevertheless, this phenomenon varies considerably with usage, and this fact allows us to establish several degrees of acceptability, according to the different types of grammatical structure that contribute to the classification of the examples. The author ends by sketching a set of rules concerning both the grammaticality and the acceptability of every specific type into which these constructions can be classified.

Counterfactuals and the complexity of causal notions

Abstract: 1. The present paper starts from the idea that any satisfactory theory of causality should account for the plurality of causal notions of different degrees of complexity which are identifiable both in ordinary language and in the language of science itself. In what follows I will try to give the elements of a conceptual framework in which counterfactuals play a key role in systematizing such a plurality. Two assumptions will be essential to this approach: (1) the truth of a conditional is held to depend on whether or not the truth of its consequent is determined through laws of nature by conditions including the truth of the antecedent; (2) it is held that iterated conditionals make full sense and that their meaning is not in general reducible to the one of non-iterated conditionals. In addition to these assumptions the following assumptions, borrowed from Suppes' theory of causality, will be taken for granted without justification: (a) causal relata are assumed to be simple or compound event-tokens. Simple event-tokens are symbolized by A i, Bj, C t . . . . where A, B, C stand for event types and i, j, l . . . stand for temporal indexes referring to the instants at which the indexed event-tokens are assumed to have a beginning. Compound event-tokens are obtained by combining the simple ones by means of the standard operators , U, f3. Co) event-tokens which are causes strictly precede event-tokens which are effects. (c) "O" stands for an occurrence-operator forming sentences out of event-tokens so that O A t is to be read "A occurs at i ". Suppes introduced in his [1970] an axiomatic basis for "O" (p. 38) with no justification for it in terms of a previously discussed theory of events. Unfortunately at present we lack a well-established theory of events to be used as a paradigm to guide our intuitions about eventoccurrence. To minimize philosophical commitment, in the present context we will be content to see events as abstract objects of a particular kind: "intervals cum