REFERENCE RELATIONS AND SYNTACTIC PROCESSING: EVIDENCE OF A PRONOUN'S INFLUENCE ON A SYNTACTIC DECISION THAT AFFECTS WORD NAMING.
Item
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Title
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REFERENCE RELATIONS AND SYNTACTIC PROCESSING: EVIDENCE OF A PRONOUN'S INFLUENCE ON A SYNTACTIC DECISION THAT AFFECTS WORD NAMING.
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Identifier
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AAI8319756
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identifier
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8319756
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Creator
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COWART, WAYNE.
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Contributor
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Helen S. Cairns | Arthur Bronstein
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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Several experiments demonstrate and assess an interaction between reference relations and syntactic processing in sentence fragments such as As they soar gracefully over the field, flying kites.... The evidence indicates that listeners rapidly assume the possible (but not necessary) coreference relation between they and flying kites in this fragment and that this assumption influences the syntactic interpretation of flying kites (i.e., the choice between the structures related to Flying kites is fun and Flying kites are fascinating). However, the mechanisms that implement this relation appear to use only some of the listener's relevant knowledge. When coreference is blocked by syntactic principles (e.g., If they want to believe that visting uncles...), they produces no effect. But when positing a relation with they yields a pragmatic anomaly (e.g., Whenever they lecture during the procedure, charming babies...) the effect of they appears to be undiminished. These facts are interpreted as evidence that the language processing system is partitioned in such a way that the device that first attributes a referent to they does not have access to pragmatic information. The results also bear on certain questions about syntactic influences on lexical processing.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Linguistics
