Pronominalization and discourse coherence,discourse structure and pronoun interpretation

Two self-paced reading-time experiments are reported that examine the time course of pronoun interpretation processes based on local discourse structure and on world knowledge. The characterization of local discourse structure is based on recent work on centering, which provides a specific formulation of how the ways in which sentences make reference to common entities determines the coherence of discourse segments and how discourse structure influences interpretation of ambiguous pronouns. The results of the first experiment show that readers generate a default interpretation of a pronoun based on features of local discourse structure, and that that default interpretation is later confirmed or overridden by knowledge-based processes. The results of the second experiment show that local discourse structure continues to influence pronoun interpretation even when the semantic information that ultimately compels interpretation occurs before the pronoun. These results support the view that processes acting on local discourse structure play a powerful role in guiding language comprehension.     

The development of discourse mapping processes: the on-line interpretation of anaphoric expressions

The present research focuses on how children integrate the antecedent of different kinds of anaphor into their on-going interpretation of an utterance, and on the kinds of cues they use to help them to do this. These issues were studied by examining the on-line processing of three types of anaphoric devices—repeated noun phrases, general terms and pronoun anaphors. The data showed that by the age of five, anaphoric mapping processes in general are well-mastered, although all age-groups (5, 7, 10 year olds and adults) found general term anaphors more difficult to interpret. The major developmental differences concerned the processing of anaphoric pronouns. For five year olds, pronouns were primarily interpreted as devices which maintained the thematic subject of the discourse, but when there was no thematic subject they relied primarily on pragmatic plausibility in their assignment of pronominal co-reference. As children get older, they are able to take advantage of the lexical properties of pronouns and all three sources of information—lexical, pragmatic inference and the thematic structure of the discourse—play contributory roles in the assignment of reference to a pronoun.     

Coherence-driven resolution of referential ambiguity: A computational model

We present a computational model that provides a unified account of inference, coherence, and disambiguation. It simulates how the build-up of coherence in text leads to the knowledge-based resolution of referential ambiguity. Possible interpretations of an ambiguity are represented by centers of gravity in a high-dimensional space. The unresolved ambiguity forms a vector in the same space. This vector is attracted by the centers of gravity, while also being affected by context information and world knowledge. When the vector reaches one of the centers of gravity, the ambiguity is resolved to the corresponding interpretation. The model accounts for reading time and error rate data from experiments on ambiguous pronoun resolution and explains the effects of context informativeness, anaphor type, and processing depth. It shows how implicit causality can have an early effect during reading. A novel prediction is that ambiguities can remain unresolved if there is insufficient disambiguating information.     

New arguments in favour of an automatic gender pronominal process

This paper examines the automatic and strategic use of gender information in pronominal processing. Experiments 1 and 2 used short sentences where a pronoun was preceded by two potential antecedents. Results showed that even when adult readers did not use pronominal gender to strategically accelerate pronominal resolution, they remained sensitive to a gender disagreement between the pronoun and its potential referents. This gender sensitivity was further explored in Experiments 3 and 4. These experiments used longer texts where only one of the two potential referents was highly accessible when the pronoun was encountered. A gender disagreement between the pronoun and this antecedent induced longer reading times. The four experiments confirm the existence of a nonstrategic gender coindexation process between a pronoun and the entity in the focus of a discourse.     

The Processing of Coreference for Reduced Expressions in Discourse Integration

Three reading-time experiments in Chinese are reported that test contrasting views of how pronominal coreference is achieved. On the one hand, studies of reading time and eye tracking suggest that reduced expressions, such as the pronoun he, serve as critical links to integrate separate utterances into a coherent model of discourse. On the other hand, probe-word recognition studies indicate that full anaphoric expressions, such as a repeated name, are more readily interpreted than reduced expressions due to their rich lexical information, which provides effective cues to match the representation of the appropriate referent in memory. The results indicate that the ease of integrating the critical referent into a model of discourse is a function of the congruence of lexical, semantic, and discourse features conveyed by a syntactically prominent reduced expression within linguistic input. This pattern supports the view that a reduced expression is interpreted on-line and indeed plays a critical role in promoting discourse coherence by facilitating the semantic integration of separate utterances.     

A Partnership for the Ages

Burke suggests that we should view society as a partnership between the past, the present, and the future. I defend this idea by outlining how we can understand the interests of the past and future people and the obligations that they have towards each other. I argue that we have forward-looking obligations to leave the world a decent place and backward-looking obligations to respect the legacy of the past. The latter obligation requires an understanding of the role that traditions and meta-traditions should (and should not) play in tying together societies—especially national societies—over time.     

A Plan Recognition Model for Subdialogues in Conversations

Previous plan-based models of dialogue understanding have been unable to account for many types of subdialogues present in naturally occurring conversations. One reason for this is that the models have not clearly differentiated between the varoius ways that an utterance can relate to a plan structure representing a topic. In this paper we present a plan-based theory that allows a wide variety of utterance-plan relationships. We introduce a set of discourse plans, each one corresponding to a particular way that an utterance can relate to a discourse topic, and distinguish such plans from the set of plans that are actually used to model the topics. By incorporating knowledge about discourse into a plan-based framework, we can account for a wide variety of subdialogues while maintaining the computational advantages of the plan-based approach.     

The influence of morphological information on cataphoric pronoun assignment

In 3 eye-tracking experiments, the authors investigated the use of morphological information during pronoun resolution. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that disruption occurred when a preferred assignment was inconsistent with gender information. Experiment 2 ensured that this difficulty was not due to the introduction of a new discourse entity. Experiment 3 showed that disruption also occurred when number information was inconsistent with the preferred assignment. The results indicate that the use of morphological information is delayed until after the computation of coreference relations.     

Pronoun resolution and discourse models.

Psychological investigations of pronoun resolution have implicitly assumed that the processes involved automatically provide a unique referent for every pronoun. We challenge this assumption and propose a new framework for studying pronoun resolution. Drawing on advances in discourse representation and global memory modeling, this framework suggests that automatic processes may not always identify a unique referent for a pronoun. In 9 experiments, we demonstrate that, unlike noun anaphors, pronouns sometimes do not produce relative facilitation of their referents in comparison with nonreferents. We argue that research on pronoun resolution must consider the discourse contexts in which pronouns are likely to occur.     

The use of pronoun anaphora and speaker mood in the interpretation of conversational utterances by right hemisphere brain-damaged patients.

Understanding utterances in conversations requires a listener to weigh the disparate pieces of information present in a discourse. In this study, we examined how right hemisphere brain-damaged (RHD) patients and non-brain-damaged control subjects interpreted responses to questions concerning the location of a person (e.g., "Where's Dad?"). Stimulus vignettes included variation on three factors relevant to discourse comprehension: the mood of a speaker, the plausibility of the answer to a question, and whether the answer contained an anaphoric pronoun linking the response to the preceding question. Relative to the control subjects, the RHD patients made greater than normal use of the presence/absence of an anaphoric pronoun in their utterance interpretations, less than normal use of the speaker's mood, and marginally less than normal use of a response's plausibility. These data show how RHD patients rely on their largely intact linguistic abilities when understanding discourse and how their comprehension goes awry due to their reduced appreciation of other essential aspects of natural communication. The discussion focuses on the variable roles of speaker mood, plausibility, and pronoun anaphora in supporting inferences about a speaker's intended meaning and on the selective nature of RHD patients' impairment in this domain.     

常识性知识和语篇语境对代词指认的影响

本研究围绕中文代词理解中, 读者的常识性知识和语篇语境的作用以及作用时程这一问题展开。实验1首先探讨在中文阅读理解中, 职业性别倾向这种常识性信息是否能对代词的指认产生早期影响。存在一致和冲突(如警卫-他; 警卫-她)两个实验条件, 结果在凝视时间、重读时间和总阅读时间上都发现了职业性别倾向所引发的性别冲突效应。实验2在实验1基础上增加一个代词(如：警卫-他-他; 警卫-她-她), 考察更正后的信息, 即文本语境内容是否可以覆盖常识的作用对代词加工产生影响。结果发现语篇语境确实可以覆盖常识性信息的作用, 对代词加工产生早期影响。但是, 职业性别倾向这种常识性知识仍然在代词加工的后期阶段发挥作用。考虑到代词所形成的语境较为含蓄, 实验3中采用更明确的方式来界定职业名称的性别, 例如男艺人、爸爸等, 然后再出现一个代词, 代词的性别始终和先前的性别描述一致, 而与职业性别倾向冲突, 这样也存在一致和冲突两个条件(例如：保姆-妻子-她, 警卫-妻子-她), 结果发现只有更正后的语境信息对代词加工产生影响, 职业性别倾向不再发挥作用。说明在中文这种高语境依赖性的语言文字中, 语境可以覆盖常识性知识对代词加工产生早期作用。但是, 语境作用的持续性问题会受到语篇语境中性别信息明确程度的影响。     

About the locus of the distractor frequency effect: Evidence from the production of clitic pronouns

In this study, we report results from two experiments in which pictures were shown with superimposed distractors that varied along two dimensions: frequency (high vs. low) and semantic relation with respect to the picture (related vs. unrelated). In one condition of Experiment 1, participants named pictures with a noun utterance; in the other condition of Experiment 1 and in Experiment 2 participants named pictures with a pronominal utterance. Low frequency distractor words produced greater interference with respect to high frequency words in noun production, but not in pronoun production. Critically, a semantic interference effect, greater interference in the semantically related than unrelated condition, was reported in both experiments, suggesting that distractor words were equally processed in both noun and pronoun conditions. These results are discussed in the context of current models of picture–word interference.     

语篇中代词指代的研究进展

代词的指代在语篇局部连贯性中具有关键作用。中心理论是代词指称中的重要理论,它解释了语篇中代词的分布规律;注意驱动理论是在中心理沦的基础上结合重音预设解释重音或非重音代词。影响代词指称的因素有语义因素和结构因素。对代词的认知研究另一方面主要集中在对歧义代词的解释．对歧义代词的解释的研究一方面采用重复姓名不利实验范式,另一方面的研究采用的研究方法是探测词任务。在汉语中对代词的研究主要是对文本语篇的研究。     

Thee,uhh disfluency effect in preschoolers: A cue to discourse status

Speech disfluencies, such as filled pauses (ummm, uhhh), are increasingly recognized as an informative element of the speech stream. Here, we examined whether 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds expected that the presence of filled pause would signal reference to objects that are new to a discourse. Children viewed pairs of familiar objects on a screen and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects twice in succession. Next, children heard a critical utterance and were asked to look and point at either the discourse‐given (i.e., previously mentioned) or discourse‐new (i.e., previously unmentioned) object using a fluent (‘Look at the ball!’) or disfluent (‘Look at thee uh ball!’) expression. The results indicated that 3‐year‐old children, but not 2‐year‐old children, initially expected the speaker to continue to refer to given information in the critical utterance. Upon hearing a filled pause, however, both 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children's looking patterns reflected increased looks to discourse‐new objects, although the timing of the effect differed between the age groups. Together, these findings demonstrate that young children have an emerging understanding of the role of filled pauses in speech.     

When You and I Share Perspectives: Pronouns Modulate Perspective Taking During Narrative Comprehension

ABSTRACT— Readers mentally simulate the objects and events described in narratives. One common assumption is that readers mentally embody an actor's perspective; alternatively, readers might mentally simulate events from an external "onlooker" perspective. Two experiments examined the role of pronouns in modulating a reader's adopted perspective when comprehending simple event sentences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that readers embody an actor's perspective when the pronoun you or I is used, but take an external perspective when he is used. Experiment 2 , however, found that a short discourse context preceding the event sentence led readers to adopt an external perspective with the pronoun I . These experiments demonstrate that pronoun variation and discourse context mediate the degree of embodiment experienced during narrative comprehension: In all cases, readers mentally simulate objects and events, but they embody an actor's perspective only when directly addressed as the subject of a sentence.     

Discourse structure and relative clause processing

Studies in several languages have shown that subject-relative clauses are easier to process than object-relative clauses. Mak, Vonk, and Schriefers (2006) have proposed the topichood hypothesis to account for the preference for subject-relative clauses. This hypothesis claims that the entity in the relative clause that is most topicworthy will be chosen as the subject. By default, the antecedent of the relative clause will be chosen as the subject of the relative clause, because it is the topic of the relative clause. However, when the noun phrase (NP) in the relative clause is also topicworthy, the preference for the antecedent to be the subject will disappear. This was confirmed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested relative clauses with a personal pronoun in the relative clause. We obtained a preference for object-relative clauses, in line with the assumption that personal pronouns refer to a discourse topic and are thus topicworthy. In Experiment 2, the discourse status of the NP in the relative clause was manipulated; either it was not present in the preceding context, or it was the discourse topic. The experiment showed that when the NP in the relative clause refers to the discourse topic, the difficulty of object-relative clauses is reduced, in comparison with relative clauses with an NP that is new in the discourse, even in the absence of any explicit cue in the relative clause itself. The experiments show that discourse factors guide processing at the sentence level.     

Proactive yet reflective? Materializing proactive personality into creativity through job reflective learning and activated positive affective states

Studies linking proactive personality to creativity have primarily taken a future-oriented perspective, describing a process where individuals assess future opportunities and risks of creative endeavors. Complementing this approach, we draw on an attribution theory perspective to delineate how proactive personality relates to employee creativity through the serial mediating effects of job reflective learning—a backward-looking cognitive process—and activated positive affective states. Job reflective learning captures backward-looking self-assessments and the underlying internal causal attributions, and it is differentiated into two valences: job reflective learning from successes and from failures. Based on two separate multi-wave, multi-source field studies, our findings consistently show a serial mediation process linking proactive personality to creativity through both valences of job reflective learning and activated positive affective states. Job reflective learning from successes breeds joviality, whereas job reflective learning from failures arouses attentiveness. Joviality and attentiveness—both types of activated positive affective states—in turn promote creativity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of how proactive employees manifest their proactivity trait into actual creativity through backward-looking cognitive and affective processes.     

Conversation,relevance, and argumentation

This paper deals with the explanation the maxim of relevance provides for the way utterances in argumentative discourse follow each other in an orderly and coherent fashion. Several senses are distinguished in which utterances can be considered relevant. It is argued that an utterance can be considered relevant as an interactional act, as an illocutionary act, as a propositional act, and as an elocutionary act. These four kinds of relevance manifest the rational organization of discourse, which is aimed at bringing about mutual alignment between the participants, enabling them jointly to work out certain interactional outcomes that are acceptable to both of them.     

Accessing singular antecedents in conjoined phrases

Two experiments examined processing of singular pronouns when the antecedent (e.g., Mary) was a noun phrase (NP) in a conjoined phrase (e.g., Mary and John). Whole-sentence reading times showed an increase in processing time associated with splitting the conjoined phrase to access a single NP antecedent. The increase in processing occurred both when the antecedent was in the subject position and when it was in a nonsubject position. The source of the disruption was further investigated using eyetracking methods. Summing over regions of the text, the magnitude of the processing cost incurred by having to split a conjoined NP was closely comparable when there was and when there was not a gender-appropriate distracting potential antecedent. When there was no such potential antecedent, the increase in processing time occurred immediately in the pronoun region when eye movements were measured. In contrast, when there was a second discourse entity that matched the gender and number of the pronoun (but was not a plausible antecedent for the pronoun), eyetracking measures suggested that the processing difficulty was delayed until additional information was read that forced the antecedent to be one of the conjoined NPs. The results are interpreted in terms of Sanford and Garrod’s (1981) scenario-based model of text comprehension.     

Processing "d-linked" phrases

Linguists draw a distinction between two types of interrogatives: discourse linked (d-linked) phrases such as which man, which implies the existence of a set of contextually determined entities (men) from which the speaker is asking for a choice, and non–d-linked interrogatives such as who, which carry no such implication. Two questionnaires and an on-line reading study showed that readers prefer a d-linked phrase more than a non–d-linked phrase as the antecedent for a pronoun, suggesting that d-linked phrases are immediately instantiated in a discourse representation that is checked during the process of pronoun interpretation. Comparable difficulty is not observed for non–d-linked interrogatives. A questionnaire and an on-line listening study also showed that readers and listeners were more willing to accept a grammatical island violation containing a pronoun when the pronoun's antecendent was a d-linked interrogative than when the antecedent was non–d-linked, suggesting that they check a discourse representation for the pronoun antecedent. All results suggest that d-linked phrases are immediately interpreted in a discourse representation, not just in a syntactic representation.