Grammatical and pragmatic factors in the interpretation of Japanese null and overt pronouns

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3989708
AutoresMieko Ueno (Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0515, USA, autor de correspondencia), Andrew Kehler (0000-0001-7135-8809, Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093–0108, USA)
Año2016
Volumen54
Número6
Páginas1165-1221
Fecha de publicación2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2016-0027
OpenAlexW2550546022
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16
Referencias citadas34

Pronoun interpretation in English has been demonstrated to be sensitive to an interaction between grammatical and pragmatically driven factors. This study investigated the interpretation of pronouns in Japanese, which has both null and overt forms. Thirty-two native speakers of Japanese per experiment participated in passage completion studies with transfer-of-possession contexts (Experiment 1) or implicit causality contexts (Experiment 2), varying prompt type, aspect, and topic/nominative-marking of the previous subject. Two judges annotated reference and coherence relations in the completed passages. Japanese overt pronouns were revealed to pattern closely with English overt pronouns in their sensitivity to pragmatic factors, whereas null pronouns showed a mixed resilience to pragmatic factors. Topic-marking only showed marginal effects on reference in limited contexts. Despite different degrees of sensitivity to pragmatic factors, Japanese null and overt pronouns were both mostly subject-biased, casting doubt on the existence of a division of labor between the two forms. There was also an intrinsic link between reference and coherence relations throughout the experiments. We discuss the overall results in terms of language specificity and universality, the latter of which includes interactions between grammatical and pragmatic factors and the importance of discourse coherence in the interpretation of various pronouns across languages

Clitic · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Null (SQL) · Object pronoun · Personal pronoun · Pronoun · Reflexive pronoun · Subject pronoun · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation