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The interpretational preferences of null and overt pronouns in Chinese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2021

AILI ZHANG Open the ORCID record for AILI ZHANG [Opens in a new window]  and
NAYOUNG KWON Open the ORCID record for NAYOUNG KWON [Opens in a new window]
AILI ZHANG
Affiliation:
School of Foreign Languages, Shandong Jianzhu University, 1000 Fengming Road, Jinan, 250101, P. R. China [email protected]
NAYOUNG KWON
Affiliation:
308 Friendly Hall, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA [email protected]
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Abstract

We report three reading comprehension experiments investigating the interpretational preferences and processing of pro and overt pronouns in Chinese, a ‘discourse-oriented’ pro-drop language (Huang 1984). Our offline rating experiments showed that both pro and overt pronouns were subject-based, but the preference for the subject antecedents was stronger with pro than with overt pronouns. In addition, these different levels of subject biases were confirmed in a self-paced reading experiment; a processing penalty was incurred with object antecedent interpretation regardless of the pronominal type, but the penalty was bigger for pro than for overt pronouns. These experimental results are consistent with Accessibility theory that less specific anaphoric expressions (e.g. pro) were less likely than more specific anaphoric expressions (e.g. overt pronouns) to refer to a less prominent antecedent (e.g. syntactic object).

Keywords

anaphoric biasesChineseovert pronounsproreferential resolution
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 649 - 676
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for providing many helpful comments. This research was supported by Doctoral Research Fund of Shandong Jianzhu University (X21061Z).

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