ERIC Number: EJ1141230
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Jun
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0090-6905
EISSN: N/A
Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints during Native and Non-Native Pronoun Resolution
Felser, Claudia; Drummer, Janna-Deborah
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, v46 n3 p771-789 Jun 2017
We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers' sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted "wh"-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the "wh"-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources.
Descriptors: Form Classes (Languages), Phrase Structure, Second Language Learning, Native Language, Language Processing, German, Task Analysis, Psycholinguistics, Structural Analysis (Linguistics), Eye Movements, Reading Processes, Gender Differences, Language Research
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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