Ellert, M. 1 , Järvikivi, J. 2 & Roberts, L. 3
1 German Linguistics Department University of Göttingen
2 Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Speech Sciences University of Helsinki
3 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen
Coherent discourse entails repeated reference to the same discourse entity. This is often achieved by the use of personal pronouns such as “he” in English (Peter in [1]). In German and Dutch, however, in addition to personal pronouns (German “er”, Dutch “hij”), an alternative set can be used, namely d-pronouns (German “der”, Dutch “die”). The question becomes what is the difference in referential functions and processing between personal and d-pronouns.[1]Peter wanted to play tennis. But he was sick. Peter wollte Tennis spielen. Doch er/der war krank Peter wilde gaan tennissen. Maar hij/die was ziek.[2] The doctor is friendlier than the cook. He (personal/d-pronoun)… We studied this in spoken German and Dutch using visual world eye tracking and referent assignment. We presented two potential antecedents followed by an ambiguous pronoun that was either a personal or a d-pronoun [2]. The results showed an asymmetric resolution pattern: German and Dutch personal pronouns were resolved towards the topical and d-pronouns towards the non-topical entity. This pattern of results emerged both on-line during eye-tracking (p<0.5 for both effects) and also offline in final interpretation preferences. However, offline the non-topical preference for the d-pronoun was only marginally significant (personal: p<0.001, d-pronoun: p=0.6). When we included the participants’ final choice as a predictor in mixed-effects modelling, we found cross-linguistic differences regarding the referential functionality of the pronouns. Whereas in Dutch there was a correlation between on-and off-line resolution preferences for the d-pronoun, the Germans always showed a clear and early on-line-preference to the non-topic for the d-pronoun regardless of their final interpretation preferences. This pattern of results suggests that, unlike in Dutch, the German d-pronoun is marked for non-topical co-reference; a result only to be observed via the on-line task.