Kwon, N. 1 & Sturt, P. 2
1 Linguistics. Nanyang Technological University. Singapore
2 Psychology. University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh, UK
This reading-time study investigated null pronoun (pro) resolution in Korean, a discourse-oriented language (Huang, 1984). We manipulated antecedents for pro; with or without a preceding discourse antecedent, and with matching or mismatching features on a following intra-sentential antecedent. Matching was manipulated using a reflexive, which requires its binder, pro, to be third person. An intra-sentential antecedent with mismatching features led to processing slow-down at the subsequent sentential positions only when there was no preceding discourse antecedent. In comparison to a study in English where such mismatch effects were found regardless of presence of a preceding discourse antecedent (Liversedge & van Gompel, ms.), the results suggest that in Korean, when pro already refers to a discourse topic, the parser does not further form a dependency between pro and a potential intra-sentential antecedent. This is most compatible with the hypothesis that in discourse-oriented languages, discourse plays a more important role than morpho-syntactic cues in pronoun resolution, while in English, both are equally important. This suggests that individual languages might have different sensitivity to different cues in pronoun resolution. Moreover, pro interpretation is immediate even in languages without rich agreement, contra Mazuka (1991).