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。     

Knowing what a novel word is not: Two-year-olds 'listen through' ambiguous adjectives in fluent speech

Three studies investigated how 24-month-olds and adults resolve temporary ambiguity in fluent speech when encountering prenominal adjectives potentially interpretable as nouns. Children were tested in a looking-while-listening procedure to monitor the time course of speech processing. In Experiment 1, the familiar and unfamiliar adjectives preceding familiar target nouns were accented or deaccented. Target word recognition was disrupted only when lexically ambiguous adjectives were accented like nouns. Experiment 2 measured the extent of interference experienced by children when interpreting prenominal words as nouns. In Experiment 3, adults used prosodic cues to identify the form class of adjective/noun homophones in string-identical sentences before the ambiguous words were fully spoken. Results show that children and adults use prosody in conjunction with lexical and distributional cues to ‘listen through’ prenominal adjectives, avoiding costly misinterpretation.     

Appearances aren't everything: shape classifiers and referential processing in Cantonese

Cantonese shape classifiers encode perceptual information that is characteristic of their associated nouns, although certain nouns are exceptional. For example, the classifier tiu occurs primarily with nouns for long-narrow-flexible objects (e.g., scarves, snakes, and ropes) and also occurs with the noun for a (short, rigid) key. In 3 experiments, we explored how the semantic information encoded in shape classifiers influences language comprehension. When judging the fit between classifiers and depicted objects in an explicit ranking task, Cantonese speakers evaluated classifier-noun pairings solely in terms of grammatical well-formedness and showed no separate sensitivity to the shape features of objects. In an eye-tracking task (Experiment 2), we also found little sensitivity to shape classifier semantics during real-time comprehension. However, in a subsequent experiment in which referent objects lacked the prototypical features for their accompanying classifiers (Experiment 3), an influence of shape semantics was found in participants' incidental fixations to nontarget objects. We conclude that shape classifiers influence referential interpretation primarily through their grammatical constraints, consistent with the agreementlike nature of classifiers in general. The role of shape classifiers' semantics on processing is apparent only in specific circumstances.     

Spatial distance effects on incremental semantic interpretation of abstract sentences: Evidence from eye tracking

A large body of evidence has shown that visual context information can rapidly modulate language comprehension for concrete sentences and when it is mediated by a referential or a lexical-semantic link. What has not yet been examined is whether visual context can also modulate comprehension of abstract sentences incrementally when it is neither referenced by, nor lexically associated with, the sentence. Three eye-tracking reading experiments examined the effects of spatial distance between words (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2 and 3) on participants’ reading times for sentences that convey similarity or difference between two abstract nouns (e.g., ‘Peace and war are certainly different...’). Before reading the sentence, participants inspected a visual context with two playing cards that moved either far apart or close together. In Experiment 1, the cards turned and showed the first two nouns of the sentence (e.g., ‘peace’, ‘war’). In Experiments 2 and 3, they turned but remained blank. Participants’ reading times at the adjective (Experiment 1: first-pass reading time; Experiment 2: total times) and at the second noun phrase (Experiment 3: first-pass times) were faster for sentences that expressed similarity when the preceding words/objects were close together (vs. far apart) and for sentences that expressed dissimilarity when the preceding words/objects were far apart (vs. close together). Thus, spatial distance between words or entirely unrelated objects can rapidly and incrementally modulate the semantic interpretation of abstract sentences.     

Lexical access in the production of pronouns

Speakers can use pronouns when their conceptual referents are accessible from the preceding discourse, as in 'The flower is red. It turns blue'. Theories of language production agree that in order to produce a noun semantic, syntactic, and phonological information must be accessed. However, little is known about lexical access to pronouns. In this paper, we propose a model of pronoun access in German. Since the forms of German pronouns depend on the grammatical gender of the nouns they replace, the model claims that speakers must access the syntactic representation of the replaced noun (its lemma) to select a pronoun. In two experiments using the lexical decision during naming paradigm [Levelt, W.J.M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A.S., Pechmann, T., Havinga, J., 1991a. The time course of lexical access in speech production: a study of picture naming. Psychological Review 98, 122-142], we investigated whether lemma access automatically entails the activation of the corresponding word form or whether a word form is only activated when the noun itself is produced, but not when it is replaced by a pronoun. Experiment 1 showed that during pronoun production the phonological form of the replaced noun is activated. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this phonological activation was not a residual of the use of the noun in the preceding sentence. Thus, when a pronoun is produced, the lemma and the phonological form of the replaced noun become reactivated.     

The use of superficial and meaning-based representations in interpreting pronouns: Evidence from Spanish

Abstract

In this paper, we address the question of whether a representation of the surface form of a text is directly implicated in the interpretation of definite pronouns in that text. According to an influential theory proposed by Sag and Hankamer (1984), it should not be, because definite pronouns are model-interpretive anaphors that take their meaning from elements in a representation of content. We report three experiments in Spanish, a language with non-semantic gender, in which pronouns can match their antecedents on the basis of morphosyntactic properties alone. The first experiment suggested that a surface representation might not be implicated in the interpretation of pronouns, since a gender match speeded only the interpretation of pronouns referring to people and not those referring to things. However, a questionnaire study (Experiment 2) confirmed that our strategy of modelling the Spanish sentences in Experiment 1 on sentences used in English studies had affected the results, and a further on-line experiment provided evidence that the interpretation of pronouns referring to things can be speeded by a gender match (Experiment 3). We discuss the implication of these findings for theories of text comprehension.     

Conceptual Locations and Pronominal Reference in American Sign Language

We report the results of an experiment investigating the ramifications of using space to express coreference in American Sign Language (ASL). Nominals in ASL can be associated with locations in signing space, and pronouns are directed toward those locations to convey coreference. A probe recognition technique was used to investigate the case of "locus doubling" in which a single referent is associated with two distinct spatial locations. The experiment explored whether an ASL pronoun activates both its antecedent referent and the location associated with that referent. An introductory discourse associated a referent (e.g, MOTHER) with two distinct locations (eg., STOREleft, KITCHENright), and a continuation sentence followed that either contained a pronoun referring to the referent in one location or contained no anaphora (the control sentence). Twenty-four deaf participants made lexical decisions to probe signs presented during the continuation sentences. The probe signs were either the referent of the pronoun, the referent-location determined by the pronoun, or the most recently mentioned location (not referenced by the pronoun). The results indicated that response times to referent nouns were faster in the pronoun than in the no-pronoun control condition and that response times to the location signs did not differ across conditions. Thus, the spatial nature of coreference in ASL does not alter the processing mechanism underlying the on-line interpretation of pronouns. Pronouns activate only referent nouns, not spatial location nouns associated with the referent.     

What compound nouns mean to preschool children

Compound nouns have multiple meanings in English. The purpose of this study was to explore when children know that compound nouns refer to two objects, one ideally interacting with the other (e.g., "fish shoes" are shoes with fish on them, not next to them). Thirty-five English-speaking three- and four-year-old children participated in this study. They were given both a production and comprehension task with novel compound nouns. The results showed that the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds were equally likely to produce compounds to name two interacting objects. However, the three-year-olds were less likely than the four-year-olds to understand that a compound referred necessarily to two objects. These results demonstrate that children's knowledge of the meaning of compound nouns is still developing in the preschool years. Three possible interpretations of the mismatch in comprehension and production are discussed: (1). there are modality differences in processing by children, (2). the meaning tapped by production and comprehension is not identical, and (3). the tasks differed in complexity.     

Adjectives really do modify nouns: the incremental and restricted nature of early adjective acquisition

By 24 months, most children spontaneously and correctly use adjectives. Yet prior laboratory research that has studied lexical acquisition in young children reports that children up to 3-years-old map novel adjectives to object properties only in very limited situations (Child Development 59 (1988) 411; Child Development 64 (1993) 1651; Child Development 71 (2000) 649; Developmental Psychology 36 (2000) 571; Child Development 69 (1998) 1313). In Experiments 1 and 2 we introduced 36-month-olds (Experiment 1) and 24-month-olds (Experiment 2) to novel adjectives while providing rich referential and syntactic information to indicate what the novel words mean. Specifically, we used a given novel adjective to describe multiple familiar objects which shared a salient property; in addition we used the adjectives in full noun phrases, not in conjunction with pronouns. Under these conditions, both groups mapped novel adjectives onto object properties. In Experiment 3 we asked whether the rich referential information was responsible for the successful outcome of the previous two experiments; we introduced novel adjectives to 2- and 3-year-olds as in Experiments 1 and 2, but the adjectives modified nouns of vague (very general) reference ("one", or "thing"). Under these conditions the children failed. We suggest that young word learners require access to the taxonomy of the object type so that the relevant property can be identified. The taxonomically specific nouns of Experiments 1 and 2 accomplish this, whereas the more general, semantically bleached nominals in Experiment 3 do not. Taken together with related findings in the literature, these findings favor an account of lexical acquisition in which layers of information become available incrementally, as a consequence of solving prior parts of the learning problem.     

The road to understanding is paved with the speaker’s intentions: Cues to the speaker’s attention and intentions affect pronoun comprehension

A series of experiments explore the effects of attention-directing cues on pronoun resolution, contrasting four specific hypotheses about the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns he and she: (1) it is driven by grammatical rules, (2) it is primarily a function of social processing of the speaker’s intention to communicate, (3) it is modulated by the listener’s own egocentric attention, and (4) it is primarily a function of learned probabilistic cues. Experiment 1 demonstrates that pronoun interpretation is guided by the well-known N1 (first-mention) bias, which is also modulated by both the speaker’s gaze and pointing gestures. Experiment 2 demonstrates that a low-level visual capture cue has no effect on pronoun interpretation, in contrast with the social cue of pointing. Experiment 3 uses a novel intentional cue: the same attention-capture flash as in Experiment 2, but with instructions that the cue is intentionally created by the speaker. This cue does modulate the N1 bias, demonstrating the importance of information about the speaker’s intentions to pronoun resolution. Taken in sum, these findings demonstrate that pronoun resolution is a process best categorized as driven by an appreciation of the speaker’s communicative intent, which may be subserved by a sensitivity to predictive cues in the environment.     

The role of pronouns in young children's acquisition of the English transitive construction.

Two studies investigating the linguistic representations underlying English-speaking 2 1/2-year-olds' production of transitive utterances are reported. The first study was a training study in which half the children heard utterances with full nouns as agent and patient, and half the children heard utterances with both pronouns (i.e., He's [verb]-ing it) and also full nouns. In subsequent testing, only children who had been trained with pronouns and nouns were able to produce a transitive utterance creatively with a nonce verb. The second study reported an analogous set of findings, but in comprehension. Together, the results of these 2 studies suggest that English-speaking children build many of their early linguistic constructions around certain specific lexical or morphological items and patterns, perhaps especially around particular pronoun configurations.     

The effect of prosody on conceptual combination

Research into people's comprehension of novel noun-noun phrases has long neglected the possible influences of prosody during meaning construction. At the same time, work in conceptual combination has disagreed about whether different classes of interpretation emerge from single or multiple processes; for example, whether people use distinct mechanisms when they interpret octopus apartment as property-based (e.g., an apartment with eight rooms) or relation-based (e.g., an apartment where an octopus lives). In two studies, we manipulate the prosodic emphasis patterns of novel noun-noun combinations (placing stress on the modifier noun, the head noun, or dual stress on both nouns) and ask participants to generate an interpretation for the novel phrase. Results show that people are faster to generate property-based interpretations when dual emphasis stresses both nouns equally, with prosody having little effect on the speed of relation-based interpretations. These findings highlight a role for prosody during meaning construction and underline important differences between relation- and property-based interpretations that are difficult to reconcile with unitary process views of conceptual combination.     

Changes Over Time in the Comprehension of <Emphasis Type="Italic">He</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">They</Emphasis> as Epicene Pronouns

An epicene pronoun is a gender-neutral singular pronoun used in sentences when the gender of the subject is unknown or unspecified. In English, he and they are commonly-used epicene pronouns. Until recently, he has been widely accepted as being grammatically correct. However, many have argued that he is sexist because it may bias people to think about males. Two experiments were performed using a lexical decision task in which participants reacted to gendered words (e.g., aunt and uncle) after reading sentences using he, they, or unrelated epicene pronouns. We conducted the experiments 15 years apart in order to explore whether change in pronoun usage and the social significance of pronouns would be associated with different priming effects. Both experiments demonstrated that pronouns influence the processing of gendered nouns. However, in Experiment 1 they facilitated the processing of feminine nouns whereas in Experiment 2, he slowed the processing of feminine nouns. We discuss these results with respect to language change and conclude that they is a more effective epicene.     

Adjectives Modulate Sensorimotor Activation Driven by Nouns

We performed three experiments to investigate whether adjectives can modulate the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns. In Experiment 1, nouns of graspable objects were used as stimuli. Participants had to decide if each noun referred to a natural or artifact, by performing either a precision or a power reach-to-grasp movement. Response grasp could be compatible or incompatible with the grasp typically used to manipulate the objects to which the nouns referred. The results revealed faster reaction times (RTs) in compatible than in incompatible trials. In Experiment 2, the nouns were combined with adjectives expressing either disadvantageous information about object graspability (e.g., sharp) or information about object color (e.g., reddish). No difference in RTs between compatible and incompatible conditions was found when disadvantageous adjectives were used. Conversely, a compatibility effect occurred when color adjectives were combined with nouns referring to natural objects. Finally, in Experiment 3 the nouns were combined with adjectives expressing tactile or shape proprieties of the objects (e.g., long or smooth). Results revealed faster RTs in compatible than in incompatible condition for both noun categories. Taken together, our findings suggest that adjectives can shape the sensorimotor activation elicited by nouns of graspable objects, highlighting that language simulation goes beyond the single-word level.     

对比焦点的认知加工及其与重读的关系

信息结构作为语言学的一个重要概念,在语言学、心理学和神经科学等领域进行了广泛的研究。其中,从焦点和背景这一维度对信息结构的研究最多。通常情况下,人们会重读焦点信息。本研究使用ERP技术,通过对话语篇考察了不同位置对比焦点和重读的一致性对口语语篇理解的影响。研究发现,对比焦点不受位置影响,稳定诱发中后部分布正波,且小句末尾焦点诱发的正效应早于小句内部。此外,重读相对于不重读在小句内部和末尾都诱发了正效应,并且出现在较晚的时间窗口。尽管焦点不重读相对于一致性重读没有诱发任何脑电效应,但背景重读相对背景不重读在小句末尾诱发了一个早期负效应。本研究表明,听者按照不同的方式、即时使用不同位置的对比焦点和重读信息建构语篇表征。     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

The Role of Animacy in Children's Interpretation of Relative Clauses in English: Evidence From Sentence–Picture Matching and Eye Movements

Subject relative clauses (SRCs) are typically processed more easily than object relative clauses (ORCs), but this difference is diminished by an inanimate head-noun in semantically non-reversible ORCs (“The book that the boy is reading”). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g., “Where is the tractor that the cow is chasing”). In Experiment 1, 48 children (aged 4;5–6;4) and 32 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head-noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head-nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children; however, online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate an SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head-noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy. In Experiment 2, we repeated our design with inanimate (rather than animate) NP2s (e.g., “where is the tractor that the car is following”) to investigate whether our online findings were due to increased visual surprisal at an inanimate as agent, or to similarity-based interference. We again found greater anticipation for an SRC in the inanimate condition, supporting our surprisal hypothesis. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children's interpretation of ORCs, whereas online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data. Overall measures of syntactic comprehension, inhibitory control, and verbal short-term memory and working memory were not predictive of children's accuracy in RC interpretation, with the exception of a positive correlation with a standardized measure of syntactic comprehension in Experiment 1.     

On the orienting value of attitudes: attitude accessibility as a determinant of an object's attraction of visual attention.

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that objects toward which individuals hold attitudes that are highly accessible from memory (i.e., attitude-evoking objects) are more likely to attract attention when presented in a visual display than objects involving less accessible attitudes. In Experiments 1 and 2, Ss were more likely to notice and report such attitude-evoking objects. Experiment 3 yielded evidence of incidental attention; Ss noticed attitude-evoking objects even when the task made it beneficial to ignore the objects. Experiment 4 demonstrated that inclusion of attitude-evoking objects as distractor items interfered with Ss' performance of a visual search task. Apparently, attitude-evoking stimuli attract attention automatically. Thus, accessible attitudes provide the functional benefit of orienting an individual's visual attention toward objects with potential hedonic consequences.     

Eponymous verb phrases and ambiguity resolution

To understand eponymous verb phrases such as "do a John Travolta," readers cannot merely select a sense out of a mental lexicon (sense selection). They must create new senses (sense creation) by retrieving salient information from memory. We conducted two experiments to test the hypothesis that these processes of memory retrieval parallel those used for ordinary lexical ambiguities. To prepare for Experiment 1, we gathered readers' interpretations of eponymous verb phrases like "do a John Travolta" to establish dominant and subordinate interpretations. We then wrote story contexts that biased comprehension toward one or the other interpretation. In Experiment 1, paraphrase judgment times were used to demonstrate that dominant meanings are privileged in the sense that they are accessible even when the story creates a subordinate bias. In Experiment 2, this privilege faded somewhat when there was a delay before the paraphrase judgment. We discuss the results with respect to the distinction between sense selection and sense creation.     

How Do Opportunities to View Objects Together in Time Influence Children's Memory for Location?

We conducted three experiments to investigate how opportunities to view objects together in time influence memory for location. Children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open, square box. During learning, participants viewed the objects either simultaneously or in isolation. At test, participants replaced the objects without the aid of the dots. Experiment 1 showed that when the box was divided into quadrants and the objects in each quadrant were categorically related, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only 11-year-olds and adults in the isolated viewing condition exhibited categorical bias. Experiment 2 showed that when the objects were categorically related but no boundaries were present, 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only adults showed bias in the isolated viewing condition. Experiment 3 revealed that adults exhibited bias in both simultaneous and isolated viewing conditions when boundaries were present but the objects were not related. These findings suggest that opportunities to see objects together in time interact with cues available for grouping objects to help children form spatial groups.