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Different words generally have different meanings. However, some words seemingly share similar meanings. An example are null and overt pronouns in Italian, which both refer to an individual in the discourse. Is the interpretation and processing of a form affected by the existence of another form with a similar meaning? With a pupillary response study, we show that null and overt pronouns are processed differently. Specifically, null pronouns are found to be less costly to process than overt pronouns. We argue that this difference is caused by an additional reasoning step that is needed to process marked overt pronouns but not unmarked null pronouns. A comparison with data from Dutch, a language with overt but no null pronouns, demonstrates that Italian pronouns are processed differently from Dutch pronouns. These findings suggest that the processing of a marked form is influenced by alternative forms within the same language, making its processing costly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resolution of ambiguous pronouns is influenced by the preceding linguistic discourse. This raises the question whether the processing of an object pronoun is also influenced by the preceding sentential subject. In an experiment with Dutch adults, we recorded pupil dilation as a measure of the cognitive effort involved in resolving pronominal versus full noun phrase (NP) subjects and pronominal versus reflexive objects. Our results indicate that more effort is needed to resolve a pronominal subject or object compared to a less ambiguous full NP subject or reflexive object. These results support the hypothesis that the ambiguity of a referring expression influences processing. Contrary to our expectations, no evidence was found that the form of the subject influences the processing of a subsequent pronominal object. We conclude that pupillary responses reflect ambiguity resolution in pronoun processing, and that the process to resolve pronouns commences as soon as the pronoun is encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the processing of deictic pronouns in two types of speech reports, direct speech (Elephant said: "I get the football ") and indirect speech (Elephant said that I get the football). According to Hypothesis 1, pronoun processing in direct speech is more demanding because it requires a perspective shift from the actual to the original speaker. Hypothesis 2 suggests the opposite, based on a previous study that found a positive effect of direct speech on discourse comprehension. In a referent selection task, 116 native speakers of Dutch identified the referents of first-, second- and third-person pronouns in direct and indirect speech. We found higher error rates and longer decision times for pronoun interpretation in direct speech, confirming Hypothesis 1. Furthermore, accuracy depended on the pronoun (most mistakes for he). We discuss how our results can be reconciled with seemingly conflicting evidence that suggests a processing advantage for direct speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, children, young adults and elderly adults were tested in production and comprehension tasks assessing referential choice. Our aims were (1) to determine whether speakers egocentrically base their referential choice on the preceding linguistic discourse or also take into account the perspective of a hypothetical listener and (2) whether the possible impact of perspective taking on referential choice changes with increasing age, with its associated changes in cognitive capacity. In the production task, participants described picture-based stories featuring two characters of the same gender, making it necessary to use unambiguous forms; in the comprehension task, participants interpreted potentially ambiguous pronouns at the end of similar orally presented stories. Young adults (aged 18-35) were highly sensitive to the informational needs of hypothetical conversational partners in their production and comprehension of referring expressions. In contrast, children (aged 4-7) did not take into account possible conversational partners and tended to use pronouns for all given referents, leading to the production of ambiguous pronouns that are unrecoverable for a listener. This was mirrored in the outcome of the comprehension task, where children were insensitive to the shift of discourse topic marked by the speaker. The elderly adults (aged 69-87) behaved differently from both young adults and children. They showed a clear sensitivity to the other person's perspective in both production and comprehension, but appeared to lack the necessary cognitive capacities to keep track of the prominence of discourse referents, producing more potentially ambiguous pronouns than young adults, though fewer than children. In conclusion then, referential choice seems to depend on perspective taking in language, which develops with increasing linguistic experience and cognitive capacity, but also on the ability to keep track of the prominence of discourse referents, which is gradually lost with older age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from child language comprehension show that children make errors in interpreting pronouns as late as age 6;6 yet correctly comprehend reflexives from the age of 3;0. On the other hand, data from child language production show that children correctly produce both pronouns and reflexives from the age of 2 or 3. Current explanations of this asymmetric delay in comprehension either have rejected the comprehension data outright or have argued that the problems are pragmatic or caused by processing limitations. In contrast, our account, formulated in the framework of Optimality Theory, handles the comprehension data as well as the production data by arguing that children acquire the ability to take into account the alternatives available to their conversational partner relatively late. It is this type of bidirectional optimization, we argue, that is necessary for correctly interpreting pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]