ERIC Number: EJ1090027
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Feb
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0090-6905
EISSN: N/A
Antecedent Frequency Effects on Anaphoric Pronoun Resolution: Evidence from Spanish
Egusquiza, Nerea; Navarrete, Eduardo; Zawiszewski, Adam
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, v45 n1 p71-84 Feb 2016
High-frequency words are usually understood and produced faster than low-frequency words. Although the effect of word frequency is a reliable phenomenon in many domains of language processing, it remains unclear whether and how frequency affects pronominal anaphoric resolution. We evaluated this issue by means of two self-paced reading experiments. Native speakers of Spanish read sentences containing the anaphoric noun or pronoun at the subject syntactic position (Experiment 1) or at the object syntactic position (Experiment 2) while the antecedent of the anaphor was either a high-frequency or a low-frequency word. Results showed that nominal anaphors were read faster when referring to high-frequency than to low-frequency antecedents, and faster when referring to subjects than to objects. Critically, pronoun reading times were unaffected by the frequency and by the syntactic position of the antecedent. These results are congruent with theories assuming that syntactic information of the words is not frequency sensitive.
Descriptors: Spanish, Word Frequency, Syntax, Form Classes (Languages), Psycholinguistics, Language Processing, Native Speakers, Linguistic Theory, Reading Processes, Language Research
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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