Factors influencing assignment of pronoun antecedents

In two experiments a group of adult subjects and a group of 10 – 13 year old subjects completed sentences of the format NP1 V NP2 because Pro… The fragment, John telephoned Bill because he…, elicited completions such as had good news, which locate the impetus for telephoning in NP1 (John). The fragment, John admired Bill because he…, elicited completions such as was a fine athlete, which locate the impetus for admiring in NP2 (Bill). The assignment of the subject pronoun of the second clause as coreferential with NP1 or NP2 shows that this choice depends on a factor, direction of causality, which may be assigned to verb roots. This factor was isolated from interacting semantic and syntactic features of sentences in which the verbs occurred. Manipulation of these features resulted in greater or lesser salience of the direction of causality factor. The potential of this technique for investigation of verb semantics and for interaction of semantic, pragmatic and syntactic features in the psychological study of comprehension is discussed.